Keeping your utilities on during your home sale is important for a variety of reasons.
Selling your Iredell County or Lake Norman, NC home?
If you’ve listed your home for sale and you’ve vacated the property, why do you have to keep utilities on?Selling your Iredell County or Lake Norman, NC home?
First and foremost, our North Carolina listing contracts state that home sellers have to make their homes reasonably accessible for buyers to look at, and that accessibility extends to the existing utilities. That means, water, sewer, electricity, gas (if it applies,) and any alarm systems that are connected to the phone line.
In this hot weather we’re currently experiencing, and the cold weather we experience come wintertime, it’s critically important that your home is comfortable and its temperature is moderate. If it’s hot outside, you don’t want a buyer to walk through your door and feel the same temperature. This can negatively affect their experience and make them wonder if your HVAC system is working. You definitely don’t want that question to come up.
You also want the buyer to know that all your utilities are working—that the water is coming through your pipes, your toilets flush, your HVAC system works, and your water heater heats. They will be checking those things to see if they’re functioning, so be prepared. If they aren’t functioning properly because you cut your utilities off, buyers might assume you haven’t been taking care of other things in the home. That can be detrimental to you when you get an offer because buyers take that kind of thing into consideration.
Be proactive—not reactive.
When you accept an offer to purchase your property, that offer will require that the utilities be on and functioning. The buyer has the right to check all the things in your home, and their home inspector will also check all the functions that depend on your utilities being on, so have them on and ready. Sometimes when you cut your utilities off, you create a problem that you didn’t have before. If you turn everything back on and suddenly there’s a problem that didn’t exist when you lived in the home, that can spell trouble. Don’t let that happen to you.
You want your home to make the best impression possible, so in addition to keeping your utilities on, make sure your yard looks great, your shrubs are cut, and your gutters are cleaned out. Buyers pay attention to those kinds of things too.
If you have any questions about this topic or you’re interested in buying or selling a home, give us a call or send us an email. We’d be happy to help you.
