Transcript

I had a call from a client of mine yesterday who has a townhouse in a pretty attractive area of Saskatoon that they'd like to sell. They've been renting it for the past few years. They've had enough of that. And they'd like to take advantage of the market conditions that exist right now. Fair enough.

So she mentioned that they have two tenants that'll leave at the end of this month. And another two that'll leave at the end of next month. And she asked me about getting it on the market quickly and or whether she should wait until the tenants were gone before we began marketing it.

My answer was the same one that I give in 90% of these cases. You're almost always better off to market a vacant property than one that's tenant occupied.

I mean I've talked about the four factors that you can influence when you want to get a fast top-dollar sale. Preparation and presentation are the most important of those elements. And when you have a tenant living in a property, those areas are always weak. So, you know, tenants don't prepare the house properly for showings and it looks like a chaotic gong show when people arrive or perhaps. You have access issues just because the tenant isn't excited about having it shown and fair enough. You can appreciate why a tenant would not want to put a whole lot of effort into marketing or cooperating with the marketing of your home, right? They don't have any money invested in it and it's a massive infringement on their life to accommodate showings.

So in my view, you're better off to forego a couple of months of rent. Properly prepare the house and perhaps do a little bit of staging and you'll probably see offers that are 10% higher than you would have had you gone ahead and marketed the property occupied.

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Norm Fisher

Royal LePage Vidorra