Selling your house fast today in the real estate bad lands requires doing just about the most unreasonable thing you could now imagine. And, with any luck, it will sound like the smartest, most rational thing in the world in seven hundred words from now.

“Be good children,” “eat your vegetables,” “brush your teeth” may be good advice, but a lot of the commonsense that has been imparted over the years just doesn’t work today.

The biggest bottleneck, dead end gulch, and deal killer you are likely to find in selling a house today most probably is you. You know I hated to say that, but just consider this.

What is the first thing you do when you are presented with an offer to sell your house? Show it to our spouse, lawyer, real estate agent and ask for advice?

WRONG!

Here is what you must do first. Sign the damned contract. I know, I know, but you kind of signed on for the full seven hundred words, so stick with the next six hundred fifty.

Do not make the mistake of faxing the contract back with your signature on it just yet. DO NOT let it out of your powerful fingers. The same folks that told to eat your vegetables encouraged you to think before do things and consider the consequences.

And yes, you do need to consider the consequences of the contract and there will be time for that, but with your signature on the contract what you need to do now is make the contract acceptable to you.

If you think this sounds like common sense, just look around. Friend of mine just called me and said he had just had a variation of an owner finance contract rejected because he was not putting up enough cash to pay the real estate commission. So the offer was rejected.

He is a name partner in a successful law practice, substantial income and good credit and a house he needs to sell. I could have figured a way to make that all work and my guess is the seller could have done the same, if he had signed the damned contract and then tried to make it work. And maybe he was surrounded by people who were looking for reasons for the contract to not work. Everyone knows there are no buyers today. Sort of like there are no good parking places.

If you look for no parking places, that’s what you find. Maybe true of buyers as well. If you don’t look for them, you don’t find them.

I make an offer on a home three days ago. Guy says, “let me get back to you.” He does.

Must have been reading my book or my mind.

Comes back with a convoluted combination of conditions and terms that I do not understand. But, I know what he “really” wants. Seems to have to do with me paying back real estate taxes and some things I know I won’t do. But, he signed the contract and adjusted the terms to what he wanted before he sent it back to me.

It still may or may not work. But, at this point there are at least two people trying to make it work. And, that’s a lot better than looking for the reasons it can’t work.

Sure, there are a ton of things you need to so besides singing the damned contract. You need to have your (product) house catch the attention of enough people, and you need to create interest in the product and the desire to buy it. All of which comes in the following installments of this series.

But, after you create demand for the product, and you get offers it’s up to you.

Take every offer you get and treat it and the person making the offer as though they are of value and surround yourself with advisors who are optimistic and creative at finding parking spaces and buyers , where most everyone else things they do not exist.

Of course this does not mean take the first offer that comes along, unless you can make it work. It does mean that you take every offer and strive, strive to twist and turn to make it fit. Consider new ideas and test the potential gain with the realistic risk.

Sure, you’ve got to eat your vegetables and check with your competent professional advisors before making the decision. But if my memory is correct, you may have had some reluctance to try the vegetables, too. We all did. Today we are smarter and able to make rational decisions about grown up’s vegetables.

Author Bio: George Beardsley has written extensively on finance, business with the Chicago Tribune, an editor for financial publishing firm Dow-Jones, Irwin, worked for Merrill Lynch as a commodity broker and owned a commodity brokerage firm in Florida and is the Broker of Advanced Realty Team He has been buying, fixing and renting house in Florida for two decades. Get the FREE Report How to Rent Houses Fast for More Money

Category: Real Estate
Keywords: sell houses fast, rent houses fast, how to sell house fast, home sales, how to rent houses fast