How To Sell Your House In Orlando During COVID-19: What Are Your Options?

Video Transcription

Hey, this is Matt with My Florida Home Buyers and in this video, I wanted to talk to you about options for selling your house in Central Florida and in the Orlando area during this whole COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic.

What are some of your options for selling your Orlando house during this time?

So prior to the coronavirus pandemic, prior to COVID-19, you basically had three options for selling your house and that was, you could either list it with a real estate agent and everybody’s familiar with how that works; just go through the traditional sale process. You could also sell your house to an iBuyer. So those are companies like Zillow, Redfin, Opendoor, Offerpad, those sorts of companies. And you could also sell your house to a local cash home buyer, like My Florida Home Buyers.

The iBuyers Backed Out Of The Orlando Real Estate Market

So as soon as the coronavirus thing became a pandemic and became a big situation, all of the iBuyers backed out of the Orlando market. They backed out of Central Florida. They stopped buying houses. They’re still not buying houses now and we don’t know how much longer that’s going to last. Probably once the coronavirus thing is over, they’ll pop back in and they’ll start buying again.

But basically what they did is they backed out of a lot of contracts that they had with people. People who thought they had a solid contract and we’re counting on that contract to close, these companies backed out and just left these people with nothing, with no contract and we’re actually in the process of buying a house right now where, I don’t know if it was Offerpad or Opendoor, one of them in Leesburg, these people they’re in the process of buying their dream house basically, but that contract was contingent upon them selling their current house and their current house was under contract to sell to one of these iBuyers.

Basically the iBuyers backed out at the last minute. The sellers, they were in jeopardy of losing their contract and their dream house because it was contingent on the iBuyer contract, so they called us. We were able to go out. We’ve actually got it under contract now. So we kind of saved the deal for them. But that’s happened a lot. These iBuyers really left a lot of people out there hanging with no contract on their house just because they just dropped everything and decided they weren’t going to close. They weren’t going to follow through on their obligations or anything, follow through on their promises to buy these people’s houses. So that’s happened a lot. We’ve gotten a lot of phone calls from people who the first thing they say is, “I had my property under contract with the iBuyer,” whether it be Offerpad, Opendoor, Zillow, we’ve heard all the names. “They stopped buying. They backed out of our contract last minute and I have to sell this house. Can you help me?” And, we’re getting that phone call more and more now during this whole coronavirus thing just because they’ve stopped and they’ve backed out.

So these type of companies, they’re not really committed to the local market. They’re not committed to Orlando, to central Florida. They’re here when it’s easy to make a buck, but as soon as the going gets tough, they pull out and they’re only here when it’s convenient for them basically.

Option #1: List Your House With A Local Real Estate Agent

So now that the iBuyers backed out, like I said, you have the option to sell your house with a real estate agent. What we’re seeing now with real estate agents is the market’s definitely slow. There are fewer buyers out there just because everybody, with the stay at home order in Florida, there aren’t as many buyers out looking for houses. People don’t want to go into someone else’s house and risk getting exposed to the virus, that sort of thing. So activities definitely down a lot, but things are still going under contract. Things are still closing. The real estate market is still kind of chugging along through this, but just not at the levels we were seeing before.

So if you list your house with an agent, it should sell eventually. It’s just not going to be as fast as it was back in January or even last year when everybody’s getting multiple offers. Everything’s going crazy. So it’s going to take a little bit. It might take two, three, four, five months to get your house sold, especially until this coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is over. We expect once it’s over everything will kind of pick back up as far as activity goes and get back to somewhat normal.

But as of right now, if you need to sell your house right now, the agent, it’s possible, but it could take a little bit just because things are slower. Like I said, people are staying home, not going out looking at houses.

Option #2: Sell Your House To A Local Cash Home Buyer

The other option you have to sell your house right now is to sell it to a local cash home buyer, companies like My Florida Home Buyers. We’re still buying houses. We’re still following through on our obligations. We haven’t backed out of a single contract. We’ve actually put other houses under contract, like I said, that these iBuyers have backed out of to try to save these people from in the case that I told you before, the people in Leesburg, saved them from losing the contract on their dream house.

So we’re still out there. We’re still around. We’ve been here before the iBuyers and we may be here after the iBuyers. We live in Orlando. We live in central Florida. We’re dedicated to the community. We’re not going anywhere and we can’t afford to be backing out of contracts left them right like they can.

Which option is best for you?

So those are basically your two options right now. If you can list with an agent, if your house doesn’t need any repairs, if you don’t need to sell it immediately, an agent’s a good way to get the most money possible for your house. It may not sell until the coronavirus thing is over, when showing start to pick back up. But that’ll really guarantee you get the most money for your house.

If you don’t have that luxury of, of time, like the people in Leesburg I told you about. If you don’t have that luxury of being able to wait until this whole pandemic is gone, the other option is you can sell to a local cash home buyer like us. We’re still buying houses. We’ll come out. We’re taking extra precautions. Some sellers, we’re actually viewing their house via Zoom or Skype or FaceTime or whatever they prefer instead of an in-person showing. So we can do that if that makes you more comfortable. But we’re just changing the way we buy houses a little bit, just to be safe and make sure that we’re as safe as possible throughout this whole thing.

So you can sell it to us. We’re still, we’re closing fast. We’re paying cash for houses, more offering guaranteed closings. We’re buying as-is. Same as we’ve always been but we’re still operating even though the iBuyers have backed out and even with the real estate market being so slow right now, we’re still buying.

So if you need to get a cash offer on your house, if you need to sell your house fast, even during the coronavirus pandemic, we can come out. We can make you a cash offer on your house. We can not come out if you don’t want us to. We can do a Zoom call or something like that to see your house and we can actually let you stay in the house after closing if that’s something you need to do if you can’t find a place to go right now, we can set something up where you can actually stay after closing and kind of make that transition between your current house and your next house seamless as possible.

So if that’s the case, if you need our help, if there’s anything we can do for you, please go on our website, myFloridahomebuyers.com. Submit your property information, we’ll get right back to you and we’ll figure out a way to help you the best we can as far as buying your house and solving your real estate problem.

So again, my name is Matt. I’m with My Florida Home Buyers. Stay safe out there. Follow all of the stay-at-home quarantine type orders that you’ve been given and we’ll all get through this as quickly as possible, hopefully. We’re Floridians, we deal with hurricanes. This is not a big deal and we can get through this. So again, my name is Matt. I’ll see you on the next video.