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So you want to sell your home on your own? Well, I’m going to show you the best way to market and sell your home like a Realtor while putting some dollars back into your pocket. I broke down this report into 4 parts:
1. Preparing your home
2. Marketing your home
3. Closing the transaction
4. Mistakes to avoid
1. Preparing Your Home
Although you don’t want to do it, the first thing you need to do is either call a local Realtor or log onto a Realtor’s website and request a free Comparative Market Analysis or Competitive Market Analysis.
The second thing I’d suggest any home seller to do is to hire a professional appraiser. This will help eliminate the guesswork and ensure you get all you can out of your home. However, before the appraiser steps foot into your home, show them the comparables from your local Realtor. This will not only help the appraiser, but also help you get the price you want.
After you have determined your sales price, get your home inspected. There’s nothing worse than accepting an offer, yet finding out that your home needs repairs. Once again, you have to negotiate with the buyers and this may cause them to back out of their offer. Now you’re back at square 1 and looking for another buyer for your home. So do yourself a favor and get an inspection.
The next thing to do is run a title search on your property. Why do this now? Because you want to avoid any “surprises” that may scare off potential buyers. Following these steps will ensure your transaction stays on track.
Finally, you must get your home ready to show. If you’re tight on a budget, consider checking out this fantastic article, “10 ways to show your home like a model home, in one weekend, for less than $200”.
2. Marketing Your Home
Obviously, you want to put a “For Sale” sign in front of your property. Now I’ll help you get more prospects to buy your house while saving some money.
First, I’d advice you to distribute fliers around your neighborhood. Give fliers to at least 100 neighbors that live closest to you. In fact, I’d send one to all your friends and family. You’d be shocked how well “word of mouth” works.
Second, get a FREE website to market your property http://www.realtyreports.biz/1601/fsite. You can add up to 15 photos, write a detailed description and it even includes a map to your home for buyers. Having your own website will increase your response for this simple reason. Because people have looked at your photos and description, you will only receive “serious” inquiries. Your website will have a section for where prospects can ask you a question and it will be emailed to you without giving away your email address.
Create an account at http://www.postlets.com and syndicate your listing to 14 different real estate related websites for Free. You can add up to 12 photos and write a description of your property. You can also paste your website in these ads to re-direct prospects to your main site.
Unfortunately, this next tip won’t be for everyone. However, offering creative financing such as “owner financing” will increase your traffic, therefore puts your property in high demand.
3. Closing The Transaction
I highly advise you to hire an attorney (preferably a real estate attorney) to handle your paperwork. Trying to do the paper work yourself will run the risk of future lawsuits.
Once your offer is accepted and your paperwork is ready to go, hire an escrow company to switch the title of the property to the new owners.
4. Mistakes To Avoid
* Not including photos – Buyers do not read, they look and if there aren’t any photos or only a picture of the front of the house, they won’t even waste their time.
* No address – There are times when buyers just don’t feel like picking up the phone, dialing a phone number (if you listed it) and speaking to someone to get the address. Put the address in your ad and let people drive by.
* Not answering the phone – you do want to sell your house… right? I understand it can get crazy and you don’t want to deal with Realtors but you have to understand, we’re just trying to do our job. Here’s a secret, if you really want them to stop contacting you, just tell them you’re working with a Realtor…me!
* Relying on Zillow and other real estate websites to determine the value of your home - The biggest flaw in these websites is that they haphazardly give you a list of homes without taking into account the date the home was built, the model, and most importantly, the location. Do you know how to compare your home to others besides square footage? Do you take into account houses that are on busy streets? Bad neighborhoods? Bad curb appeal? No to little home improvements? That’s why you must call a Realtor, even though you don’t want to.
* Stating that you’re “willing to negotiate” in your ads - When buyers see this, they’ll try to take advantage of you and will only give you lowball offers. Putting this simple line in your ads will only waste your time with most likely unqualified prospects.
©Rick and Ress Skarbo
Main Street Realtors
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