Should You Repair Your Roof or Sell As-Is?

The real estate market has been extremely hot for the last couple of years, and that’s prompted many people to cash in on their investment, sell their home, and accumulate the wealth that they’ve built through increased equity. That means people everywhere are preparing their homes to sell, but few are paying enough attention to some of the most important factors that can influence their home’s selling price.

Perhaps the single most important of these factors is the roof over your head. You depend on your roof to protect you from the elements, which means a roof that’s in good condition and water-tight is far more desirable than one that has leaks and needs repaired. However, repairing or replacing your roof could be a considerable expense—one which few people want to undertake when they’re trying to sell their home and make the most of their investment. This dilemma is one we’ll undertake on this blog: should you invest in repairing your roof yourself, or should you simply sell your home as-is and let the new owners be the one to worry about making the repairs?

Attracting Buyers

The first thing to consider is how attractive your home will be to potential buyers. When you consider that the majority of homebuyers don’t want to have to deal with the headache of replacing their roof, nothing sends buyers running quite as fast as a roof that’s in poor condition. One common mistake that far too many people make when listing their home is forgetting that their buyers are not ignorant fools—they will ask questions, and they will find out if the roof overhead is in poor condition. And most of the time, this can and will break a deal that was otherwise well on its way to going through.

This isn’t the case all the time. In some cases, home buyers who are not on an immediate time crunch and looking for a deal are willing to use the fact that the roof needs repair as leverage to negotiate. However, this isn’t something that benefits you as the seller. In many cases the buyer will get a few quotes as to how much it will cost to replace your roof and then use them as leverage to bring your asking price down. Thus, the offers you get will be substantially below your asking price, cutting a huge chunk out of the profit you would have made otherwise.

Making the Investment

Then there’s the other option: making the investment yourself and having your roof repaired or replaced before listing your home for sale. Upfront, this does mean a substantial cost on your part, but the many benefits could make it well worth it. First, you get the ability to say that the roof over your home is brand new, both when buyers come to visit and when your realtor lists the home on the market. Highlighting the fact that the roof is brand new will catch the attention of a ton of buyers because it means they won’t have to worry about repairing or replacing the roof for many additional years. That peace of mind means a ton.

And having more interest in your home also helps you in terms of selling at a better price. When there’s more buzz and interest in your home, you’re more likely to find more interested buyers. More interested buyers means you’re more likely to field more offers. When you field more offers, you can negotiate from a much stronger position and get a much better final sale price than you would have before. In fact, some people have even found that conducting major repairs or a full replacement actually paid for itself in terms of increased value and the final sale price of their home.