Selling a tenant occupied home - Trick? or Treat? - One of the toughest homes to sell even in an extreme buyers market is the tenant occupied home. Every now and then you get a very accommodating tenant that really understands the importance of keeping the house in tip top shape, allowing every possible buyer through the doors, making the home available on weekend
s for open houses, basically living in a glass bubble until the home goes under contract, and then accommodating the inspector, and appraiser and all the rest that goes with selling a house.
But for the most part, tenants are not to cooperative, and understandably so, the whole reason for them to accommodate a potential buyers is so that they themselves can be homeless, or in the search for a new place themselves and who wants to spend their time doing that.
I have had a several of these over the years and for the most part they do work out, however I think in vast majority of cases, the home was on the market longer than it should have been and probably did not get the highest dollar it could have if it was staged and ready to go. Reasons are many but the number one reason is the tenants did not allow every showing, and when they did, the home was not in A1 condition.
Just today I pulled my signs from a listing, a very nice home backing to a golf course, we had the home on the market for a few months longer than I ever thought we would, only half of all showing requests were allowed to come through the doors and very few in the first 3-4 weeks, an extreme killer to selling at the peak of the market for that particular home. Sadly I had the conversation with the seller that it would be best to re-visit this again in the spring, for him to negotiate another 4-5 months on their month to month lease and then we hit it hard, but only when they are moved
out of the house so we can get this home properly prepared. It was sad because we had one of the best locations on the course, both mountain and golf course views, we were priced under every other home in the area and the square footage and condition was every bit as good as the others.
So, selling a home with tenants is no treat, I would encourage any of you thinking of doing this to really consult with both your agent and your tenants before putting the home on the market and if you must sell while tenant occupied, make sure to have an agreement in place that they can not refuse any showings (within reason) and must keep the home in show home condition. Let them know that the prime time for selling is the first few weeks on the market and if they can keep it tidy and allow showings, they will be displaced less often and on to their next chapter much sooner as well.
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