Selling & moving
Selling Your Home But Not Sure What to Do With Everything Inside It?
Two problems, not one. Getting the property sold, and getting you and forty years of belongings somewhere else — often several hundred miles away.
Most people out here are selling and leaving the region entirely. That changes the plan.
The marketing problem out here
Your buyer is almost certainly not in your town
In a metro subdivision the buyer pool is largely local, and the job is to look better than the four comparable houses currently listed within a mile.
In Panguitch, Escalante or Enterprise there may not be four comparable houses. The buyer is in Salt Lake, Las Vegas, California or Arizona, they have never been to the town, and they are trying to work out from photographs whether it would be a good idea. That is a completely different marketing problem: not staging, but reach and explanation.
Which in practice means the listing has to answer the questions a distant buyer will otherwise ask an agent three days later — water, access, outbuildings, heating, internet, drive times, what the road does in winter. Listings that answer those get serious enquiries. Listings that do not get tyre-kickers and then a price reduction.
Selling land is not selling a house
If you are selling acreage or a bare parcel
The paperwork you can put in front of a buyer is most of the value.
- A documented water right — with the certificate, not a description of it
- A recorded access easement, not an established habit of driving across a neighbour’s ground
- Any perc test results you already hold, or an honest statement that none exists
- Power distance to the building envelope, and any quote you have had for the run
- The zoning designation and what the county says it permits, in writing
- Whether the parcel has been surveyed, and when
- Anything a lender will ask, gathered before a buyer’s lender asks it
Sequence
The order that keeps a sale and a move from colliding
1. Decide what is leaving with you
Before photographs, not after an offer. What fits the next place, what gets sold, what gets given away. Every decision made now is one not being made in a fortnight under time pressure.
2. Thin it out
Outbuildings, barns and shops are where twenty years accumulate out here. Clearing them makes the property photograph better and makes the move materially cheaper.
3. Prepare and list
Priced against genuine local comparables — which sometimes means comparables from the next town, and being honest about how thin the data is — and marketed to buyers outside the area.
4. Plan the gap
Sale and purchase rarely close cleanly, especially over distance. Storage covers the gap so you are not forced into a bad date on either side.
5. Move
Our own crews, from a rural address, on a date we control rather than one a national carrier assigns you.
The furniture question
What happens to what is not coming
The standard answer — a driveway sale, then whatever is left to the tip — is expensive twice over: you get very little for good furniture, and you pay to dispose of the rest.
Good pieces can go to our consignment showroom and sell properly. Things you are undecided about can be stored rather than decided in a hurry. What is genuinely finished gets taken away in the same visit. All three run through businesses I own, which is why this is one conversation and not four.
The distance point is the real one here: from a lot of these towns, arranging a mover, a storage unit and a furniture collection separately means three vendors who each charge for the drive.
Selling questions
How long does a rural property take to sell?
Honestly, longer than a metro house, and it varies enormously by town and by property type. I am not going to quote you an average days-on-market figure — the sample in most of these towns is too small for that number to mean anything, and this site does not publish statistics it cannot source. What I will do is show you what has actually happened with genuinely comparable properties.
Should I sell before I buy, or buy first?
Over distance, selling first is usually safer — carrying two properties several hundred miles apart is expensive and hard to manage. Storage is what makes selling first workable: your belongings have somewhere to be while you find the next place.
Is it worth renovating before listing?
Sometimes, but be careful out here. The trades market is thin, quotes carry travel, and timelines run long, so a renovation can eat a whole selling season. Usually the better spend is on clearing, cleaning and documentation — a documented water right does more for a land listing than a new worktop does.
What about the price?
Out here the distance changes the number as much as the house does. Tell me the towns involved and I'll put a plan and a figure in front of you.
The commission is negotiated with the brokerage, which is why no rate appears here. And I will not hand you a valuation off a web form either — on acreage a figure produced without seeing the ground and the paperwork is a lead-generation device wearing a valuation’s clothes.
Selling, and then what?
Tell me where the property is and where you are going. The move is usually the half nobody has planned.