If you’ve read any advice on how to make money and invest your cash, it’s likely you’ll be pointed in the direction of real estate. Similarly, it’s highly likely you’ve read articles that tell you how to make money via real estate, and it all seems so nice and easy.
Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case, and real estate investments can often take a turn for the worst. By far the biggest assumption in real estate is that if you buy a property, it will sell easily. This really isn’t the case as there are lots of reasons a property might not sell after you’ve bought it. When this happens, you could be holding onto a huge asset that may be costing you a lot of money in estate agent fee, etc.
If buying and selling is your aim, a property that refuses to sell will turn your real estate investment into a real mess. So, why won’t some investments sell? Largely, it boils down to these two factors:
Price
Of course, the price is always the biggest factor when it comes to selling your real estate investment. This becomes an issue when you increase the value of your property by making improvements. Naturally, this is a popular way of making money from a house. However, you might end up pushing the value too high that it goes over people’s budgets. As a result, you now have an exclusive property that few people can buy, which narrows the market down.
You have to be smart when flipping a house, so you don’t go overboard and make too many significant improvements. It may boost the value and make you think you will earn loads of money, but it could decrease the appeal as the house is too expensive now.
Location
The location of your property will play a huge role in if it sells or not. Just because you bought it, doesn’t mean everyone else will want it. Rural houses are particularly hard to sell as most people like living closer to the city, so your property appeals to a niche audience. This immediately means you’re catering to a smaller market, which makes it harder to find buyers. You can try and address this by being smart with how you list your property. If I were going to list my rural property, I’d find some estate agents that specialise in rural houses. They should have a lot of contacts that will be interested in this type of property and can get it seen by the right people. Therefore, it might not take as long to sell.
The same applies to any other property types in locations that maybe don’t appeal to the mass market. Instead of trying to sell them through major estate agents that are also selling properties in desirable locations, look for agents that deal with your niche.
To sum up, your real estate investment can turn into a real mess, real quick! Be wary when you’re buying a property, think about how you’ll sell it in the future. You don’t want to end up with a property that’s on the market for so long that it forces you to drop the asking price and potentially make a loss.
