By Mitch Fields, REALTOR® with Century 21 Results · I represented the seller
Do you have to come back to Georgia to sell your house?
Not for most of it. This seller came back exactly once.
She had already taken a new job and bought a home in another state. Her house at 394 Easley Drive in Lawrenceville was still furnished, but nobody was living in it. It was sitting unused, costing her money every month, and she needed two things that usually pull against each other: sell it as fast as possible, and net as much as possible.
Fast and top dollar aren't opposites. They just take someone on the ground doing the work you can't do from another state.
That someone was me.
What needs fixing in a house nobody's living in?
An unoccupied home tells on itself. This one needed a cleaning, a few touch-ups and some repairs.
So I went through the house myself and built a list of exactly what buyers would care about most. Not everything that could be done. Just the items that would show up in photos, in showings and in a buyer's inspection. Then I worked through that list with the seller and got it done, while she stayed where her new life was.
What happens when investor offers start arriving?
At this price point in Lawrenceville, the listing drew heavy investor attention. Investors are a real part of the market, and they move fast. But they buy to rent or resell, not to live in the house, so their offers came in low.
Mixed in were a handful of buyers who planned to live there. They were the ones who would pay for a clean, ready, move-in home.
That's where the low offers became useful. Every offer on the table, even the lowball ones, was competition. So I told everyone who expressed interest the truth: we already had multiple offers, and the seller was evaluating them. If they really wanted the home, they needed to come in with a clean, agreeable offer.
The buyers who planned to live there heard that and stepped up, and one came in with an offer the seller could say yes to.
Under contract in 22 days, with the seller still out of state
It went under contract 22 days after it hit the market and closed at $370,000, with a buyer who planned to call it home.
The seller flew in once, for the final cleanout of the things she wanted to keep and to sign. I handled everything else while she was remote.
Selling from another state comes down to who's here
When you've moved away, you can't walk the house, meet the contractors, judge the offers in person or notice what a buyer will notice. Someone has to do all of that for you, and do it the way you would if you were still here.
For most people, that house is their biggest asset, and from another state, all you can see of it is your phone.
Her biggest worry wasn't the paperwork or the repairs. It was that someone would see an unused house and an owner in another state, and take advantage of her and her situation. With a stack of lowball offers on the table, she wasn't wrong to worry.
So I became her eyes. I walked the house, built the list, got the work done, read every offer and told her which ones were real. She flew in once. The rest of the time she had a new job and a new home to live in, and the one in Georgia was handled.
If you're an out-of-state seller and your Georgia house is still here, request an agent-prepared review of your home. I'll walk the house, tell you what's worth fixing, and handle the rest from here, with as few trips back for you as possible. Here's how selling from out of state works with me, start to finish.
More transaction stories, or see recently sold homes.
