Once you’ve got that property fixed up nicely you’ll need to sell it. That’s where your exit strategy comes in. Every real estate investor needs a good exit strategy to sell their fixer upper houses after having rehabbed their properties. That exit strategy is the plan you have set up to start bringing in homebuyers for your newly rehabbed property.

Now, there are several ways you could handle the sale of your rehab property. You could handle the sale yourself or hire a realtor. You could set up random open houses or wait until interested buyers call you to bring people into the home. Plus, there are all kinds of different advertising methods you can use to get the property out there on the real estate market.

In rehabbing, you’ll be attempting to bring in the traditional homebuyer in the sale of the property. This is instead of selling to another real estate investor as you might with foreclosures, short sales or wholesale property. Be sure to keep this in mind when creating an exit strategy for the fixer upper houses you buy. Everything you do should be aimed towards the homebuyer looking to live in your home.

Executing your Exit Strategy

After you’ve finished remodeling the rehab property it’s time to put it on the market. If you don’t want to deal with finding all the potential homebuyers yourself go ahead and sign with a realtor who specializes in rehab property. The realtor will have ready access to homebuyers interested in buying older, recently remodeled properties or lower cost properties that have had recent cosmetic fixes.

If you decide to sell the home yourself or just want to have more of a hand in the advertising there are plenty of advertising methods for you can use to get the home out there.

Bandit Signs: No matter if it’s ‘For Sale by Owner’ or a realtor sign, the bandit sign is really important for selling your fixer upper houses. Place a sign on the front yard of the property with your phone number on it for interested buyers to call. Also pick up ‘for sale’ signs and write the home’s address on them to direct people driving through the area towards the rehab property. Bandit signs are working for your twenty four hours a day!

Brochures: You can also make up a tri-fold brochure to hand out or leave in a brochure box on the front yard bandit sign. These brochures should provide enough information about those fixer upper houses to tantalize the homebuyers into looking through the property. List the price of the rehab property, along with the number of bedrooms, and any remodeling changes you’ve made to the property. Homebuyers like new stuff and remodeling so be sure to mention it! You can also leave those brochures around different places like Laundromats and local stores for people to pick up.

Classified Ads: Place an ad in the local newspapers and real estate magazines concerning your rehab property. Homebuyers love looking through classified ads on the weekends for likely properties. Make sure you list the address, a phone number, number of bedrooms and a selling price. These are the basics. If you are planning on having an open house make sure to place an ad starting in Wednesday’s paper going through until the day of your open house. This gives homebuyers plenty of time to mark the date of the open house on their calendars.

Setting Up an Open House

You’ll want to hold a few open houses for homebuyers to come out and look at your rehab property. It’s a great way to raise local interest in the home and get a bunch of people’s contact information at once. Even if they aren’t interested in this house, you may have some other fixer upper houses that the homebuyers will be interested in. Stage the home so it looks nice, smells nice and feels nice to anyone walking into the property.

Having a solid exit strategy and sticking to it will help you not only sell that rehab property, but get it sold faster. Get yourself a good realtor, set up plenty of advertising to bring in the interested homebuyers and make sure you have some appealing open houses set up so the homebuyers will really enjoy those fixer upper houses.