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A Simple Guide for Selling a Home on Your Own
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Preface: Why sell yourself?
While the misconception might be that the real estate transaction process is too complicated for someone to go through without a real estate agent, the process really can be quite simple with a little effort. With ChangeMyStreet.com at your side, you have no need to fret and with the simple instructions provided for you, the real estate transaction could not be simpler.
» Save some cash!
By avoiding the costly real estate commissions usually saved for real estate agents, you can keep your hard-earned home equity to yourself.
» Sell quickly and efficiently.
Significant freedom is achieved through avoiding pricey real estate commissions. You can price your home in a way to get the most prospective buyers possible and take home a hefty price for your home without having to divvy it up with a real estate agent.
» It’s so simple.
Real estate agents would love for you to believe that selling a home is quite difficult. However, that is not the case and with the step-by-step process we have provided, you can get through the real estate transaction process with ease. Our help line is always available for assistance if you ever need it.
The real estate transaction process might seem daunting but you will never be alone through the process as ChangeMyStreet.com is available to you at any time for assistance. Because we are the largest FSBO site in North America and one of the most-visited web sites dealing in real estate in North America, you can be assured that a plethora of prospective home buyers traffic the site each day looking for your home. Don’t waste time. Start today and save thousands on the sale of your home.
8 Steps to Simple Sell Your Own Home
1. Dress up your home and get it ready for sale
Curb appeal is a very real thing and making sure your home is cleaned up both outside and inside can help buyers envision themselves living in your home. Giving your home a brighter, cleaner look will make your home sparkle in the eyes of a prospective buyer. Even things as simple as making sure your floorboards don’t squeak and your potted plants look healthy can make a difference.
Even something like the very smell of your home can communicate something to a prospective buyer and contributes to the overall perception of a property. Make your home feel inviting and more prospective buyers might just fall in love with the property. One way to get an idea of how it shows is to invite a friend over to walk through the home in the role of an interested buyer. An extra perspective is always welcome in these situations.
2. Establish the right price for you home
One of the best ways to scare off potential buyers is to price your home too high. You will get less traffic and less interested buyers, giving you a longer real estate transaction and perhaps more mortgage troubles when appraisals price your home in a very different way. The sale price is one of the biggest obstacles for the FSBO home seller, so taking extra care will put you ahead of a lot of other for sale by owner properties.
To determine the best potential sale price for your home, you must go through the process of comparing it to other homes in your area that are similar and have recently sold. Your newspaper and collecting flyers can be a great way to get these home values.
One rule of thumb that you can use is when you get an estimated value for your home, set your own sale price five to 10 percent higher than that cost. You will often land an offer that is near where the market price is, otherwise known as the real value for your home. Cost per square foot can also be a way to determine value and is somewhat uniform over similar homes that have sold in your area. However, some modification to that price will have to be done for amenities that your home might have that another did not or vice versa. Of course, it can always help to price your home in a way that makes it sound like a lower price, such as $149,900 instead of $150,000.
3. Think about a real estate attorney
Going through the real estate transaction process can be simple with ChangeMyStreet.com at your side, but many consumers see value in having an extra pair of eyes on the process to make sure everything goes smoothly. A real estate attorney can be a great way to make sure your transaction goes as it should, though there will be an extra cost involved. If there are contract conditions that you don’t understand or mortgage options that are unfamiliar to you, a real estate lawyer can cut through all of that confusion pretty readily. You will get information on what the law compels you to tell a potential buyer about your home and other local regulations.
If you are going through a real estate transaction with a title company that provides legal assistance, that can be another way to assure that you are going through the process correctly.
While you can certainly go through the process yourself, first-time sellers especially might want to seek out a real estate attorney to take any stress out of the situation. Having an additional expert on your side can be a great stress reliever.
4. Sell that property!
Getting your home in front of the most eyeballs possible is the best way to sell your home quickly. That cannot be stressed enough and ChangeMyStreet.com will help you do just that. With a web site that attracts hundreds of thousands of prospective buyers each month, you can be sure that your listing will get the level of exposure needed to sell it quickly and efficiently. ChangeMyStreet.com is in the top five of all real estate web sites in North America and that standing comes with extensive advertising to bring more and more visitors to your listings. We are a part of all major search engines and see a steady stream of new prospective buyers each month.
Select cities might also have local ChangeMyStreet.com offices that distribute magazines within the community to give your property additional exposure for prospective buyers. These magazines are generally made available for free at supermarkets, convenience stores and other locations that generate additional high-quality exposure for your home.
Write a motivating ad for your property
The best way to generate copy about your home is to keep it short, simple and to the point for prospective home buyers. Getting carried away and writing a novel on your home will make interested buyers lose interest in your listing. With 3,000 words at your disposal for the ChangeMyStreet.com description your listing will receive, you can write an information-packed piece that does not get carried away. Make sure you communicate all of the aspects of your home you would be interested in if you were purchasing it.
Because the majority of prospective home buyers run through a large number of ads in a short amount of time, you want to make sure that your listing is one that catches the eye. Use buzz words like low-price or great school system to attract interested buyers. Reading other ads will give you a good idea of what to include and staying away from terms that sound technical will give your listing a more personal feel.
Show off your home: take great photos
Your photo will be the first thing most interested buyers look to when trying to make a decision whether to pursue your home. Get a great shot of the front of your home with a clean look to the yard and driveway that makes your home show well to an interested buyer. Inside your home, make sure your rooms are clean and show off the way your furnishings make the home look homey. A buyer wants to envision living in your home, give them the best look you can to make that happen.
Lawn signs
Use your home to sell itself. Making sure that everyone that drives by your home knows that it’s for sale can help your marketing efforts tremendously. A lawn sign will bring extra interest into your property and ChangeMyStreet.com will send you professional-designed signs to generate additional interest and project a professional image as you sell your home.
Open houses
An open house is probably the most overused marketing technique in real estate. While they can sometimes sell a home, they are usually done to make a client believe a real estate agent is doing all they can to sell a home and to attract interested buyers for other homes that a real estate agent can then represent. Largely, you do not need an open house to be successful, but they do generate more eyes on your home.
Home Brochures/Information sheets
Giving interested home buyers a piece of paper they can take away with all of the details about your home listed and a great photo of the front can make your property stick with them throughout their home search. Copies of your listing on ChangeMyStreet.com can also be used for that purpose.
Multiple Listing Service
The MLS is one of the key tools real estate agents use to sell your home. It is a large database of homes that can be searched by interested buyers and their real estate agents to develop a list of homes to be looked at. ChangeMyStreet.com is happy to put your home into the MLS database for a small fee, giving your home exposure to all of the real estate agents in your area. One thing to keep in mind for MLS listings is that a commission must be paid to the agent that brings a buyer on the home, usually in the neighborhood of 3 percent.
No one can sell your home better than you
Knowledge of your home is the biggest advantage you have over a real estate agent that you might hire to sell your home. Because you have lived in the home and know what the area is like, use that information when a prospective buyer shows interest in the home to sell your home effectively. Make sure you give the best features of the home and area to an interested buyer, but don’t get carried away with personal events in the home that make no impact on a prospective buyer.
5. You’ve got an offer, now what?
The next step in the process takes place when a buyer has enough interest in the property to make you an offer on the home. If you have a real estate lawyer, now would be the time to involve him or her in the process. You have a three day window typically to decide what you’d like to do with an offer with the consultation of your attorney. Every offer is unique and there will always be clauses in there that might be difficult to understand at first. Don’t get bogged down in just looking at the price and accepting or rejecting the offer. Make sure that you understand the entire document before making a decision on whether to accept it, reject it or make a counteroffer. Make sure you know the ways the buyer can back out of the process without penalty as these loopholes are always eligible to come into play later in the process. Typical clauses that you’ll want to review involve basing the purchase of your home on the sale of the buyer’s old home or a clause that says the offer is contingent on securing financing for the property.
Know your buyer’s financial situation
Showing interest in a property is great, but proving you have the money to buy it is an entirely different thing. If you have a home that is priced at the correct market level, you shouldn’t have trouble with a particular loan amount. However, make sure that your buyer has secured reputable financing for the home.
Keep up to date on what the market dictates
Any offer on your home has to put into the context of the rest of the real estate market. If the market is in a bit of a downturn, you might feel a little extra incentive to sell and might accept something a bit lower than what you initially targeted as a sale price. If you are getting a lot of offers on the home, make sure that you don’t counteroffer on two at once because if both counteroffers are accepted, you are then in a precarious legal position. Make sure you understand all aspects of the home as sale price is not the only portion that makes a difference. A long escrow period or an over reliance on contingency clauses should be red flags.
You can always counteroffer and you can do so secure in the knowledge that most home owners will pay a little bit more than your first offer. As any real estate agent will tell you, negotiation is a key part of the process and if you have a real estate attorney at your disposal, you can use that person to help you decide what to offer.
6. Getting through your home’s inspection
The inspection is an accepted part of the real estate process, so you will no doubt have one when you go to sell your home. Sometimes these inspections can turn up issues with the home that have to be repaired or negotiated with the buyer. Be prepared if you have an older home to hear that your roof or foundation might need some work. Individual inspectors will point out different things, but no home is perfect and you should prepare to see at least something on the inspection report that your interested buyer might want to discuss when the time comes.
7. The lender’s appraisals and other details
At this point in the process, the lender on the buyer’s mortgage will request an appraisal of the home to make sure the loan is for the real market value of the property. You will also have your property record inspected to make sure there are no outstanding liens on the property and anything else the lending company and buyer might want to know.
The lending agency will then issue what is called a commitment that the buyer must then go through to satisfy the requirements listed by the mortgage company. This is a great time to inform your own lender that you will be paying off the balance of your mortgage and set dates with your utilities for service to be transferred to the new home buyer.
8. The end of the road: the closing
One of the final steps on the process is the final walk-through done by a home buyer on the day of the closing. This walk-through is designed to show the buyer that all of the agreed-to repairs were made to the property and that the home is in the condition agreed on by the buyer and seller. Issues at this stage of the process can be attended to with money that has been set aside in escrow. Generally speaking, closings customarily take place anywhere from 30 to 45 days after the contract is accepted by buyer and seller. Different regions of the country have different rules on just who runs the closing, but is usually the title company or a lawyer. Cash changes hands, outstanding loans are paid off, any insurance needed will be dispensed and the deed will officially be given to the new buyer. Money usually makes it to the seller on the property a day or two after closing.
Land Yourself A Home Buyer:
Write the best classified ad possible for your property
- DOES THE AD INCLUDE:
- THE PRICE
- THE LOCATION
- THE NUMBER OF BEDROOMS
- S THE AD DIRECT AND
- TO THE POINT?
- DOES THE FIRST LINE INCLUDE THE LOCATION?
- IS THE AD DESCRIPTIVE ENOUGH?
Getting through to a prospective buyer with your classified ad can be a very simple concept. All you have to do is give the information to a buyer that will motivate them to buy the home. Even simpler than that: tell the prospective buyer what they want to hear and you will generate great interested in your home. Of course, any ad should include the location of your property, the asking price and the bedrooms and bathrooms within the home. If you provide too much information, you will not give the buyer any need to do more research into the property, so make sure you provide enough information to whet the appetite of a prospective buyer but not too much more than that. Make sure you draw them in with the strong points of your home to sell them the home they never even knew they needed.
Developing a great ad is an exercise in writing a clear, concise ad. Placing your asking price at the top of the ad will generate immediate interest and supplying other details like whether it is negotiable or if financing is offered on the property is best put here. Financing available especially can generate interested for buyers that may look at the financing process a bit warily. By taking on some of that burden yourself, you make the process easier for buyers and that generates additional interest in your property. Pre-qualifying prospective buyers can be a great marketing tool and if you are working with a lender to do so, make sure that you mention that in your ad. Anyone looking for a home will be attracted by the potential of a low financing rate and a seller that is working to get buyers pre-approved as well. Another benefit of maintaining close ties with a lender on your home sale is that you can refer any questions on financing directly to that lender. Some sellers only show the property to those that have met with the lender of the home, which is one way you can sort out the serious buyers from those that might not be as interested in the property. This can be a bit controversial for some prospective buyers, but you will certainly show the home to more high quality prospects. For any interested buyers that make the claim that they are pre-qualified, make sure you do your homework and make sure that their claim is true with the lender they supply as their resource. These finance aspects are of course optional for both your listing and your ad, but if you do pursue them, make sure to explain what you are offering over the course of your ad.
Another one of the first things you should mention in our ad is the location of the property, one of the key bits of information buyers use to quickly sort through properties. Provide enough of the location to entice a buyer to research more into the exact location of your property. If your home is located in a particular desirable location, make sure you highlight that fact. If your neighbourhood has a great reputation, make sure you list it in the initial portion of your ad. Your goal here is to get the interested buyer to seek out your property and look at it for themselves. Getting your property in front of the eyes of interested buyer is worlds apart from simply looking at a photograph, so that should be your standard of success with a classified ad. Buyers typically narrow down home selections by price and location first, so catering to that desire and putting that information at the top of your listing will generate more high-quality prospects for your property.
Now we get into the descriptive portion of the ad where you basically sell your home. Make sure you go through standard amenities like the number of bathrooms and bedrooms the home has, as well as any other aspects like the garage or other addition. If you have done work to the home, make sure you highlight the new features of the property and anything else you think a buyer might find valuable about your home. If you have a great deck, make sure you say so. You’re trying to make a buyer want to know more and see your home as a great value. Use everything at your disposal to do so.
However, that advice comes with one caveat. Make sure that you are listing aspects of the home that will appeal to a wide range of interested buyer. You might have a particular affinity for the drug store within walking distance of your home, but that may not appeal to all buyers. Stick to the things that you think any buyer would want to know about the home to make an informed decision about whether to pursue more information. Stick to the highest of the high points of your home to avoid from cluttering your ad and description.
The best ads are the ones that get straight to the point, provide simple information about the home and entice a buyer to want to know more. Tell the buyer everything about your home that might appeal to them. Here are some great examples:
$159,900, MESA BLUFF, lovely 3 bedroom, new family room, attached garage, by owner. Call 555-4983 or view listing #XXXXXXXX at ChangeMyStreet.com.
$299,900, COLUMBIA, affordable financing available, quiet street, beautiful 4 bedroom home, private backyard, by owner. Call 555-3209 or view listing #XXXXXXXX at ChangeMyStreet.com.
$329,900, FIELD ESTATES, excellent financing available, GORGEOUS 3 bedroom home, fireplace, garage, great area, by owner. Call 555-1293 or view listing #XXXXXXXX at ChangeMyStreet.com.
All of these ads pique the interest of a prospective buyer without disclosing so much as to disqualify the home from further information gathering. The price should always go first in the course of the ad, followed by the location and then your description of the best parts of a home. These bits of information will drive high-quality buyers to your property without breaking the bank on a lengthy classified ad.
Summary
By following this simple guide to selling your home, you can get through the process with ease. While every location has its own intricacies and portions of the process, this guide is universal and helps all sellers get through the real estate transaction properly. Selling your home on your own can be a long process, but avoiding costly real estate fees is a great benefit. With the help of ChangeMyStreet.com, you can make the process simple to use and get through it efficiently.
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