Can’t Sell Your Home? What Should You Do?

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Depending on what part of the country you live in, selling your home can take more than months… it can take years.

“He had his house for sale for two years. I was his agent for two years. He obviously they didn’t get what he wanted.”
-Dennis Hearing, Agent

But if it’s time to move on… say because you’ve got a job elsewhere… you’ve got to do something. If you can’t sell your house, you can try to make money from it.

There are three ways you can make money from a house that won’t sell. You can try to offer it as a lease purchase, you can rent it long-term or you can rent it short-term.

A lease-purchase is essentially a rental, although you agree to a price to sell the house by some future date. Rent is normally higher than usual, and part of the rent goes toward a down payment.

Turning your house into a rental brings in money and tax writeoffs while you wait for the market to turn around. But you’ll more than likely have to pay someone 8-12% of the rent to manage it.

Finally, if you live near a resort area, a college, or other places with lots of visitors, you can try renting short-term… say by the week.

Short-term rentals make the most money, but need the most management. Plus, you’ll need to keep your house fully furnished, down to the silverware.

Of course, all of these options require owning your current house, and that makes it hard to buy another one if you’re moving on. But maybe what you can try a lease purchase at the new location, and everything comes out in the end.

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