The real estate market offers no guarantees for house sellers. Thus, even if your home boasts lots of great features and is available at an appealing price, there is no guarantee that your residence will sell quickly.

Ultimately, a home seller must act aggressively to promote his or her residence to the right groups of buyers. With an aggressive approach to the home selling journey, an individual can boost the likelihood of enjoying a quick, profitable house selling experience.

There are many things that you can do to stay aggressive as you strive to sell your home, and these include:

1. Study the Local Housing Market

The local housing market may fluctuate. Fortunately, a home seller who analyzes the local real estate sector closely can gain the insights that he or she needs to speed up the house selling cycle.

Take a look at houses as they are added to the real estate market in your city or town. By doing so, you can see how comparable houses stack up against your residence. And if you find that your home pales in comparison to similar residences, you can perform myriad house upgrades.

Furthermore, if you find that the price of your home is much higher than the prices of comparable houses in your area, you may want to lower your residence's price. This may help you stir up lots of interest in your home from buyers, as well as accelerate the home selling journey.

2. Maintain Your Home's Appearance

You may have already dedicated substantial time and resources to upgrade your house's interior and exterior. However, if you fail to keep your house looking great, it may be tough to achieve your desired home selling results.

Perform regular house cleaning both inside and outside your residence. This will ensure that your house boasts amazing curb appeal. Also, once buyers enter your residence, they may fall in love with your residence's interior.

3. Work with a Real Estate Agent

A real estate agent usually has a simple goal: to help a seller seamlessly navigate the house selling journey. Therefore, if you collaborate with a real estate agent, you can work with a diligent housing market professional who will do everything possible to help you succeed.

Oftentimes, a real estate agent will meet with a home seller and craft a personalized house selling strategy. He or she then will put this plan into action and promote a seller's residence to prospective buyers. Plus, if a seller receives an offer to purchase his or her house, a real estate agent will help this individual review the homebuying proposal. And if a seller decides to accept the offer to purchase, a real estate agent will make it easy for this individual to finalize his or her home sale.

Ready to add your residence to the housing market? Use the aforementioned tips, and you can take an aggressive approach to streamline the home selling journey.

Dollar for dollar, you might determine that in this year, at this time, buying might be more to your advantage than renting. Alternatively, the numbers may show the opposite: that renting will save you money this year over buying. Given the conventional wisdom that buying is better on the one hand with your bottom line on the other, how do you decide?

The tangibles or the intangibles

Take the example of two identical homes in the same neighborhood. One is for rent, and the other is for sale. Do you choose to rent or to buy?

If tangibly (things you can accurately calculate) the dollars show that renting is less financial outgo (bottom line) than buying, you may choose to rent. However, buying might offset these tangibles with intangibles such as pride of ownership, the ability to make changes and upgrades, or the stability that comes with a fixed mortgage payment.

On the other hand, it might be that dollar for dollar, it would be less expensive for you to buy the home. In that case, is buying always the right decision? That depends. If you are new to an area, you may not be sure that this is the neighborhood for you. Renting for six months or a year gives you an out should you decide that you do not like it there. Perhaps the school does not have the right programs for your child, or you find the commute is too long to your place of work. Until you experience them, you may not be able to determine how these intangibles might affect you. 

Another intangible is flexibility. If you are nearing starting a family, or conversely of becoming empty-nesters, locking down a home via purchase might not be the best choice, because you will have more options in just a year or two. Moreover, if you need to move, repeatedly buying and selling homes produces extra costs in addition to the down payment that you would not have as a renter that needs to move. These include broker and agent fees and closing costs.

Of course, as a renter, you always should prepare for the possibility of your rent increasing with each rental contract or lease. Also, your property owner could decide not to renew your lease for any number of reasons, so you may need to calculate the cost of moving every year or two as well.

Before taking the leap into home ownership or determining to stay in the rental market, talk with a financial professional to determine which scenario best meets your current and future needs.