Turnkey Real Estate Management Detroit | How to Sell Your Tenant-Occupied House – Part Two

OK, thanks for checking out part two on our talk about how to sell a house that has a tenant in it.

Click below if you missed part one:

Offering to pay for your tenant's moving expenses can make them more cooperative. — Offering to pay for your tenant’s moving expenses can make them more cooperative.

Turnkey Real Estate Management Detroit | How to Sell Your Tenant-Occupied House

Let’s finish-up, shall we?
I’ll pick up where I left off.

Pay Their Moving Expenses

You can even offer to pay all or some of your tenant’s moving expenses!

Wait; you don’t look to excited about that idea. 🙂

Example

Anyways, let’s say you offered to pay for them to have Two Men and a Truck to help them move..

If I were you in this situation, I’d be sure to reimburse my tenant after they’ve paid for the moving services…

…either that, or I’d give them the money to hire the mover, if they needed the money beforehand.

I would never hire the mover myself; for liability reasons. If you were the one that directly hired that mover, the tenant might be able to sue you, since you hired them.

Temporarily Reduce the Rent

Yet another option, is to offer you tenant whatever percent off their rent, while you have people coming in there to check out the house.

All they’d need to do, is let your prospects in, as long as their given the mutually-agreed upon notice beforehand.

Cash for Leaving House in Good Condition

This is a good idea, especially if you’re concerned about the tenant leaving your house in good condition.

Quite often, tenants in this situation feel like they’ve been done wrong.

Because of this, you might be at-risk of them wreaking havoc on your property before they leave.

Anyways, you may want to offer the tenant a certain amount of money (in addition to their deposit being returned to them, of course) for leaving the house in good condition.

As an incentive, you can offer to pay the tenant for leaving the property in good condition. (Image: quaziefoto/Flickr)

Ask the Tenant if they Want to Buy It

This is a decent first option if you’re planning on putting the house on the market.

It can also give you some “brownie points” in the minds of your tenant. There’s a good chance that they’ll take the news that you’re going to sell the house a lot better if you give them first dibs at buying the house.

Wait Until the Lease is Up

You could always wait until the lease is up with your tenant before you try to sell the house!

I can tell that you don’t like this option, so I won’t spend much time on it.

Moving on…

Sell the House Along With the Tenant

The bad part to this approach is that you limit yourself to buyers that are investors.

On top of that, you’re probably not going to get retail value for your home… that’s assuming that the house is in a condition where you could sell it for retail value, of course.

The good news about selling to an investor, is that they can usually close quickly.

Good News for Your Buyer

If you have a good tenant in there that’s paying fair market rent value or more, it might make your property “that” much more attractive to investors.

Especially if the property is in good condition.

A property that’s in good condition that requires no immediate work and comes with a good tenant is an investor’s dream.

What to Repair, If Anything?

If you’re going to sell the house with the tenant, I wouldn’t spend time or money fixing much inside the house, unless it’s absolutely

It's very important to keep good records of the tenant's payment history. (Image: mythabby/Flickr) — It’s very important to keep good records of the tenant’s payment history. (Image: mythabby/Flickr)

necessary.

Of course, a little improvement to the curb appeal can definitely help though, even for investor buyers.

Experienced investors are usually able to see around the cosmetic flaws of a house, but we’re human; we get attracted to houses that have nice curb appeal just like anybody else.

Bottom line, if you’re selling the house with the tenant, focus on the outside, because it will make the house more attractive even to investors, which could improve your chances of selling the house sooner, rather than later.

Take Good Records

So let’s say you want to do what you can to insure that the new investor buyer keeps your current tenant in the house.

You need to start keeping good records on your tenant’s payment history, if you haven’t already.

Hopefully, it’s not too late.

Why Investors May Be “Iffy” About Your Tenant

As an investor, I’d be reeeeeally iffy on buying your house and keeping your tenant in it.

Look at it from my perspective:

– I don’t know the tenant
– I don’t know how good of a landlord you’ve been with that tenant up to that point.
– Unless you can prove to me otherwise, I don’t know if this tenant pays on time
– I don’t know how good you are at screening tenants. This person could be a tenant from hell, for all I know.

As you can see, buying a house and keeping someone else’s tenant can be extremely risky, unless you can show me proof that can ease my uneasiness.

On top of all of that, I want to see the lease, so I can get a feel of how close your lease might be to mine.

For all I know, you might be letting them get away with a lot of things I’m not cool with, so that would make me very standoff’ish about buying your house and keeping the tenant in there that you currently have.

Good Resource for Landlords

I’m personally big on using online forums to get answers to pressing questions I have on business issues.

If you’re looking for a good place to go for answers to landlord-related questions, I recommend that you check out mrlandlord.com.

They have a LOT of useful information on the topic.

…and no, I’m not affiliated with them.

Anyways, I hope I shared something that helped you out, best of luck with the selling of your house.

Oh by the way, if you know of any other good tips for landlords in this situation, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.