I need to sell my house fast but have no equity

The title says it all — how can you sell a house fast in the current market when you have no equity.

Here are your 5 options as I see it.

1.  Don’t move.

If you have no equity, it may not be the time for you to move.  Since 2007, many home owners have seen their equity positions destroyed or wiped out.

If you are at a place where you can wait for your equity to recover, wait it out.

I personally own one house where I have negative equity.  That means I owe more than the house is worth.

I’ve been in a position to wait and the value of the house has almost recovered back to where I have no equity.

If you need to sell your house fast, this option doesn’t help.

2.  Lease Option your house

You can set your house up in a rent to own situation.  As long as you comply with the laws of the state of Virginia, this is a potential option when you have no equity.

You can lease your property to a credit challenged buyer who needs 12-48 months to qualify for a mortgage.

This is not a fast sale.  It will help you cover your holding costs until your buyer is ready to bring in their own mortgage.  If you need to sell hour house fast, the lease option will not help you.

3.  Contract for Deed

A contract for deed is where you sell your house on owner financing to a buyer.

I have experience in this.  It’s not easy and the laws of your state may tightly regulate your ability to do this.

I had to sell one of my houses fast, and this is how I did it.

This is also known as a mortgage wrap or a land installment contract.

With some of the new requirements of the Federal Government and the SAFE act, you’ll need to make sure you comply with those laws to set up your contract for deed correctly.

When you have no equity, but you need to move, then this can be an option to sell your house fast.

4.  Sell your zero equity house and bring money to the table for closing.

When you have zero equity, you won’t have the thousands of dollars necessary to pay commissions, closing costs, and seller assistance.

In the decade that I’ve been selling my investment property where I use a realtor, the costs to complete the sale run between 10-15% of the purchase price.

That includes money to help the buyer with acquisition, money for repairs, commission money to the selling agent, and all sorts of legal costs involved in transferring title to a property.

If you owe $200,000 on a $200,000 house (you have no equity), then your sales cost via a traditional Realtor would be around $20,000.

If you can bring that to the closing table, you can move on with your life.

We’ve done that and know the pain of that solution.

While you get to sell your house fast, you’ve got a lot of out of pocket costs.

5.  Persuade the lenders to accept a short sale.

Your final option when you have zero equity is to persuade the lender or lenders to accept a short sale.

Short sales are where the lender will agree to accept less than what is owed on your property.

This process is not fast, it is not easy, and it is not a guaranteed option.

The fastest way to sell your house

The fast way to sell your house is to drop your price and make up the difference from your reserves.

That hurts.  We know.

We’ve done it when one of our investments turned out wrong.

But maybe a short sale is the way to go

We don’t know exactly what your situation is.

If your payments are already following behind, then a short sale is a potential option.

While a short sale is not the fastest option, it can be an option that leads to a solution for you.

We have ways of helping you negotiate with your lender on a short sale and working with your real estate agent if you have one to help get it done.

If you are thinking about pursuing a short sale, we’d like to help you with it.

Simply give us a call at 804/719-1489 or fill out our contact form and we can at least talk about your situation.

Calls are confidential.  We can talk, no matter where in the nation you are.

Though we are based in Virginia we can handle calls from anywhere in the US.