Selling Gilbert AZ Real Estate » Home Seller Secrets

How To Sell Your Home Without A Realtor

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:05:23 +0000

Selling your home without a Realtor can mean thousands of dollars more in your pocket. Unfortunately for most FSBO’s their dreams of selling their own home are often shattered when they realize that most calls they get about their home are from real estate agents trying to get the listing.

It doesn’t have to be this way…

If you want to sell your home without a realtor, then you must learn the job a realtor does for you and do that yourself.

Step 1. Price your home correctly. This means you must do some market research and find out what other homes in your area have sold for. You must find out the condition of the house and the terms of the sale. Then you must use this information objectively to estimate an asking price for your home.

Step 2. Prepare your home for sale. Before you put the for sale sign up, be sure to declutter your home and declare war on dust. Improve curb appeal by making sure your lawn is mowed and bushes trimmed. Remember that home buyers will wait by the front door and will nit pick on everything around it.

Step 3. Give your home worldwide exposure. There are many people looking to move and many are not local. You may be selling your home to someone who is moving cross country or maybe a military member currently stationed overseas. The easiest place for this is online on sites that have RSS capabilites.

Step 4. Drive traffic to your listing advertising. Placing a listing online is much like placing a listing on the newspaper. The older the time it was published the least it will be seen. The nice thing about listing your home online is that you can continue to drive traffic to the listing which will ultimately turn into traffic in person. You can do this by visiting forums and online classified sites and place links to sites that have the details on your home.

Step 5. Show your home. When showing your home, you need to step aside and let the buyers walk around. A common misconception is that real estate agents “sell” the house. In reality, it’s best to let the buyer walk around the house and answer questions at the end. The buyer must be able to walk around comfortably and make comments or imagine themselves living there.

Step 6. Negotiate offers. This is the time to become a sales person and demand the price you want for your home. There are many variables and every home is unique so the only thing that makes someone a good negotiator is experience. Also, negotiatons are not over until all contingencies and terms of the contract have been satisfied. You may have to re-negotiate after the home inspection takes place or if the appraisal comes in lower than expected (an event that keeps occurring in today’s market).

Step 7. Co-ordinate the close of escrow. Your title company or lawyer should be helping you put together all the legal paperwork needed to transfer title to the new owner and make sure you get paid. If you don’t know what to do for this, you shouldn’t be doing it yourself. Hire a title company or lawyer. You’ve already saved thousands on the commission anyway.

Last. The hardest part of selling your home yourself is marketing your home. Even most real estate agents don’t have a clue on how to market your home.

Here are a few tips to help you out….

First, make sure you talk to your prospect’s self interest. Features tell benefits sell. I don’t understand why you keep seeing people advertising their homes and stating only features like “new roof, 3 bed 2 bath”. These are important but the benefits that sell are “home on quiet street, prestigious neighborhood, gourmet kitchen”….

Second, the only reason to run ads is to ge people to call. Give out enough information and make an offer to the prospect. Example “To learn how to buy this home with little or no money down call to get a free information package on special financing we have arranged…”

Hope that helps… Questions?

How To Create Demand For Your Home

admin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:40:45 +0000

Creating demand for your home is a crucial step in selling your home fast and for top dollar. Drive dozens of buyers to your home using the following lead generation strategies.

1. Let the world know your home is for sale using the world’s fastest communication medium, the internet. There are many powerful tools online to get the word out that your home is for sale. Sites like trulia, zillow, postlets and many other. Some are only for agents and yes, not all agents use these sites don’t ask me why. The most powerful sites have a RSS feature that uploads your listing to many other sites with a click of a button. Not only is the feature a time saver, it maximizes exposure for your home online. More traffic, more leads, more cash in your pocket.

2. Market your home to buyer’s agents. 90% of the showings on your home will be done by buyer’s agents, not listing agents. It is a huge misconception that seller’s agents will personally bring buyers through the home. The best way to do this is to find local brokerages and deliver flyers to the agents in that office.

3. Offer a tour of homes. It used to be that car dealerships, jewelers and other retailers would build their businesses far away from each other to fight competition. After being in business for a while, they realized they would be much better by building their businesses close to each other. This increased traffic and made up for customers going for the competition. Similarly you’d be better off by offering more than one home as buyers will be more likely to go out and spend an afternoon looking at various homes instead of just one.

4. Prepare your home for sale. Driving traffic through your home will be almost useless if your home has no emotional appeal. There are many things you can do without hiring a professional stager that can increase your home’s worth. Start out with the outside. Take a look at your home from the car on the sidewalk. This is the view you buyers get and the true first impression of your house. Trim trees, bushes, mow the lawn, plant some flowers to add color to your home.

Last, pay close attention to the front door area. These is the area where most home buyers hang out waiting for the door to be opened. It is often left vulnerable to the nitpickings of home buyers.

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Recent Home Sales – Best Sources To Find Them?

admin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:19:05 +0000

If you are looking to sell your home in the near future or just want to get an idea of what your home would sell for if you were to place it on the market then finding out what homes in your neighborhood or immediate sorrounding area are selling for will give you a good idea.

The absolute best source to get good sales data comes from the MLS.

Now I understand you may not want to get hounded by agents especially if you don’t know whether you’ll be selling or not, so here are a few options.

You may try and find a real estate agent who focuses on commercial real estate and are more than likely not going to be interested in listing your home. Then ask to get a CMA in your area.

Another option would be to talk to a local title company and they have a pretty good database of homes that have sold. Their information is structured a bit different, but it is still useful.

There are sites like zillow, and trulia that may also have this information available, but it is not reliable.

Take into consideration pending home sales and active listings to really get an idea of what the market is doing. Pending home sales will let you know what buyers are looking at and making offers today. Active listings will let you know if the market is going up or down. If you see active listings selling for less than recent home sales than the market is going down. If you see them listed higher than recent home sales then the market is going up.

Another alternative would be to talk to a mortgage broker and ask for a CMA from them. They may do some for refinancing purposes and again, it’s not going to be accurate, but it will give you a good estimate.

Hope that helps.

How To Sell Your Home Faster Using Photography As A Tool

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:42:52 +0000

One thing about pictures when it comes to selling your home is that the picture itself won’t sell the home. It will simply let the buyer make a decision whether or not they want to look at the house or not. The question then becomes, how many pictures to use?

The answer obviously varies depending on the house, location, price and yes your camera. I used a point-and-shoot sony camera when I first got started in real estate and it did a great job at taking pictures. My upgrade to a better camera came when I started seeing the plethora of it-is-not-about-the-pictures agents who use their mobile phone (did I really just say mobile phone instead of cell phone or camera phone?) to take pictures of the house they intend to sell. These pictures are smaller than my thumb and blurry so I don’t really know what the point of uploading them really is.

Or what about those who take pictures of a room using a standard lens and therefore you get a nice shot of two walls and the corner of a room. If this is the picture you are hoping will get the buyer to jump out of their seat, call their agent and arrange a showing, trust me you are better off to just have a picture of the front of the house. At least it builds curiosity on what the rest of the house looks like. So, unless you have a wide angle lens, I would stay away from taking pictures of small rooms and bathrooms.

What makes good photography, umm…. good? Well it’s not so much about the camera, it’s more about the lens and the lighting. I personally use a Nikon D60, but if you don’t want to look like a tour guide (or where’s waldo), and if you are not into photography then a good point-and-shoot camera should be sufficient. Keep in mind that with point and shoot cameras you don’t have to worry about ISO settings, shutter speed, aperture, etc. We have enough to learn as agents to even bother….

Yeah it’s nice to take good pictures, but really you don’t have to go spend hundreds to promote a listing as long as you keep in mind what pictures are doing for you and how they are helping you sell the listing. It’s as simple as looking at your own listing and thinking to yourself “if I were a buyer, would I want to go look at this home based on the picture(s)?”. If your answer is no then you need a better picture or you are selling a home that doesn’t need more than a picture of the front.

Good pictures can really help you drive traffic to your listing, but I think that more pictures and better quality should be left for higher end listings that really require more attention to detail.

Pictures are like the SAT’s. If you get them right you get points towards selling a home. If you don’t use them well you don’t get points, but if you get it wrong, you can actually lose points. So use pictures to drive traffic and know that some pictures can actually cause you to lose traffic. (It’s worth repeating)

For Sale By Owner – 10 Inside Tips For Selling Your Home Yourself

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:21:25 +0000

If you interview anyone who has ever tried to sell their own home, they’ll swear the “For Sale by Owner” sign will keep the phone off the hook. Unfortunately, many of the calls will be from real estate agents looking to obtain your listing. Oh darn…

This is not why selling FSBO is challenging. No way Jose, there’s more to it. But in the end it is worth it if you are able to sell your home and pocket the commission you would’ve otherwise payed the agent.

The secret of those who have successfully sold their own home is being properly prepared. Preparing your home for sale will serve to attract and get offers from qualified buyers. This is the first step. It is the step at which most sellers get frustrated and give up on their dreams of selling the home themselves.

However, some sellers accomplish selling their own homes without a struggle. You can be one of them.

Here are 10 tips (stolen from industry experts) that you should be aware of to help you get the cash out of your home.

1. Set Your Asking Price Correctly
This is critical and often misunderstood. Setting your price too high can be as costly as setting it too low. The market decides what your home is worth not you. Therefore, establishing the price of your home must be done objectively. This means comparing features, upgrades, condition of your house against others in the area. Also the terms under which a home was sold affects the price. You must budget if it is customary for seller to pay buyer’s closing cost or jump with joy if home sellers are not shelling out a dime.

2. Get Your Home Ready For Showings
There are many first impressions in the real estate world, but nothing like a personal visit. If you want to demand a higher price for your home, your buyers should be able to walk through your home and see nothing but perfection. One blooper on your part as small as a tiny carpet stain or mold in the bathroom will bring down the sales price far more than what it would cost to repair. Buyers are constantly looking for the most minute details to pick on your home. Trust me I’ve seen them.

3. Get Out The Paper And Put Your Words In Ink
Ok, so this is probably where you will wish you had someone else do this for you, but relax, it’s not that bad. You must know what a contract says and understand what it means when you put your signature in there. In most states you are able to buy a standard real estate contract through the board of realtors or a real estate lawyer. Aside from the purchase and sales contract make sure you gather the following:

Mortgage Payoff
Loan Application
Earnest Money Deposit Receipt
Property Profile Fact Sheet
Buyer’s Cost Sheet
Closing & Settlement Statement (Preliminary)
Personal Property
Exclusion List
Property Survey (if needed)
Sellers Statement /Plot Plan of Representation

4. Let The World Know Your Home Is For Sale.�
Beyond the sign you will put on your lawn, you should find effective ways to spread the word about your home. Include advertising through the newspaper, online, real estate agents, investors. Most importantly, make sure buyers are able to get information on your home 24/7. You’d be surprised the times people will inquire about your home. And yes, they will want to see it now.

5. Do Not Let Buyers Get On Your Nerves When Showing.�
Buyers will pick on your home. That is almost guaranteed. It’s best to let the buyer roam around on their own. Point out the positives and do not get defensive at their negatives.

6. Do The Buyers Have Money?
You will be amazed, shocked and almost disgusted at the number of buyers who don’t have any money and are out and about looking at homes. Make sure to deal only with quailfied buyers by getting them pre-approved before wasting much of your time.

7. Effective Negotiation Skills
It is almost a given that a buyer will offer you something below your asking price. One too many buyers have the mentality of offering 10% below asking everytime. Don’t get discouraged. Part of negotiating is to test each other. If they send you something below what you are willing to take, then counter them back at the price you want keeping in mind that if the buyer is financing the home it must appraise. If you priced your home right you should not have to worry about this.

8 . Get Inside The Buyer’s Head
Often times your best negotiating tool comes from understanding the buyer’s motivation. Maybe there is a financing program and they must buy before a certain deadline. If you home is the only one they’ve liked, they’ll be motivated to pay more for it. Maybe the just sold their home and will be without a place unless they buy now. Find out their story.

9. Stay In The Home Until You Sell
A vacant home is harder to sell than an occupied home. Vacant homes have an empty feeling and you are also letting the buyer know you’ve bought another home and must sell quick to avoid paying two mortgages. Not a good idea

10. Keep Your Own Story To Yourself.�
Just like you’ll try to understand the buyer, the buyer will try to understand you. Don’t let them find out the real reason why you are selling as this will give them an advantage over you at the negotiating table.

Mega-Valuable Home Preparation Tips

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:13:06 +0000

If there is a word that is universally loathed it must be the word prevention. Normally we don’t prevent things from happening. We just try to fix what’s already wrong and put off everything else.

Preventing home buyers from finding a little blunder throughout your house is something to dread for. But hey, if you want to sell fast and for top dollar, then this must not be ignored.

Here’s how to do it without compromising your sanity.

The first step in preparing your home for sale is in decluttering the house top to bottom. You’re moving, why not start packing what you don’t use (which will be a lot as you’ll find out). Your closet should have about 50% free space. I know it’s harder for the ladies, especially with many shoes and what not.

Book shelves should also occupy only about 50% of the designed space. Go to places like Ikea or model homes to get an idea. They’ll have only 2-3 books on a shelf where you could easily jam 7-8 books.

This will give you the ilusion that there’s more space and it makes buyers want to fill in that space.

You want them to do that (hint, hint!)

Keeping your home neatly organized can work wonders, but we are after the buyer’s pockets. Yes, we want to ask them for 3-5% more than the home that just sold. We can do that if we can have the buyer feel like they are home.

Here’s a tip I got from a home seller when I was showing a home with a client. She had the cleanest house I’d seen out of hundreds and hundreds of homes. What’s more interesting, they had 2 young kids.

Unlike other homes, there was not a single toy in sight, no hand prints on the wall or dust to be seen or detected even with a white glove. I had to ask her how she kept it so clean and how long did it take? Did they allow the kids to play? I mean this was unbelievable.

She actually cleans less than the average person. It was simply a habit and it was methodical. One day she’d focus on one thing and the next day on another. Since you’ll be showing your home to home buyers you want to keep your home clean at all times. Cleaning your home top to bottom everyday would just be insane, but by focusing on small areas at once, you may keep the house clean and ready to demand for more money than the homes around you for sale.

How To Drive Dozens Of Buyers When Selling FSBO

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:17:38 +0000

Your success in selling your home depends on being able to bring buyers to see it. Drive dozens of buyers to your home using the following strategies, find a place to market, communicate your message, talk to the right people.

Find A Place To Market

1. Let the world know your home is for sale using the world’s fastest communication medium, the internet.
The tools you have available online alone can be overwhelming. Depending on your market, some of these mediums will be highly competitive while others won’t be. Your listing should be placed in the various free classified sites such as craigslist, backpage, kijiji, and others.

You should also upload your listing to sites like trulia and zillow. Like these sites there are many that offer RSS (real simple syndication) to post your listing in different websites all over the internet.

Last, you should also consider writing a blog about your listing to drive traffic to it.

2. Newspapers are not out of print yet, and may be the source of your next buyer.
As hard as it is to believe, there are still many home buyers who search the newspaper classifieds to look for homes. You should not ignore this medium if you want to increase the number of buyers going to see your home.

3. Networking with neighbors can be speedy with flyers.
So maybe you don’t know your neighbors, but that’s not the point. You can create a flyer and go for a walk in the neighborhood letting people know that your home is for sale. Many times your neighbors will know friends or relative looking to move in the area. They may just want them to live close to them so don’t discard this option.

4. Go where the buyers are already… with the agents.
As much as you’d like to avoid talking to agents, many of them are working with buyers. Don’t scare off agents by trying to save on the full commission. All the agent wants is to get paid for selling the home, and if you can get the agent to bring a buyer, then they’ll do all the work and you save the listing side of the commission. You can deliver flyers to real estate brokerages and have them go to all the agent’s inboxes to leverage your time.

5. For sale sign.
Your for sale sign is a lead generator, but most FSBOs don’t treat it like that. Your sign should be making offers to buyers to get them to pick up the phone and contact you. This leads me to the message you must deliver to make all these mediums work.

Communicate Your Message.

The reason why most sellers fail at selling on their own, is because they don’t have a clue on marketing. Getting a buyer to pick up the phone and call you is very different than making a buyer aware that your home is for sale.

The buyer doesn’t care about you or your home. The buyer cares about themselves and the deal they are looking for. A home buyer doesn’t walk around and say, I want to buy a house and pay over market value for it.

No way!

Buyers say things more along the lines of “will they take an offer $40,000 below their asking?”

Always looking for a bargain.

Turn around and echo back to them… “Buy this home with little or no money down… call for details”

Then we move on to the description of your home.

Again the buyer doesn’t care that you have a new roof, or a water heater. No. They care about the benefits they get from buying your home. The prestige, the emotional feelings.

So your home should be described as “Beautiful family home on a quiet street and child safe neighborhood”… or “exclusive neighborhood, cul-de-sac home….”

Talk about the benefits…

How do you determine that?

Talk To The Right People

If you are going to undertake the role of marketing your home, you must understand that not every home buyer wants to buy your home. Are you selling a home to first time home buyers? Move up buyers? Investors?

All these buyers have different emotional hot buttons you must push to get them to pick up the phone and contact you. A first time home buyer is usually looking for a move in ready clean place, while a move up buyer wants luxury and bigger space.

Always remember, don’t just say the feature, tell the benefits they get from the features. The more you market and expose your home the faster it will sell.

Recent Homes Sold – The Hunt For Your Asking Price

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:35:29 +0000

So it is time to move on and relocate. Maybe you need to move into a larger home. Or perhaps you are downsizing. Either way finding how much your home is worth requires careful analysis of the sorrounding market and the most current conditions.

Following are some tips to find the correct asking price of your home.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the most reliable information you can use is the MLS. There are some websites with good information such as zillow, trulia, etc., but for the most part are unreliable. However, a second source of good information to find good comps comes from title companies. They will be able to generate a report on recent home sales. You don’t get as detailed information but you do get enough to make a decision.

If you really don ‘t want to deal with a real estate agent at this time (them pushy salespeople them)… you can guesstimate a good asking price of your home if you follow these steps…

First, you must know exactly which homes sold that are the most similar to your home including the upgrades, condition of the home at point of sale, as well as financing and reason for selling. This is the hardest part of setting the asking price. It’s comparing your home against others.

If other homes were not as nice as yours, you must take that into consideration. If they were nicer, you must also take that into consideration (yes, even if it hurts to know you couldn’t keep up with the Jones’s). Then comes the question of comparing your home against foreclosures.

This is were you think like a buyer. If you are in a neighborhood with 10 homes for sale and one is a foreclosure selling cheap. Well the buyer on that may have just gotten lucky and everyone else must pay regular price. If on the other hand there are 6 foreclosure homes selling cheap then the buyer has options and you must come down in price to compete. There is no exact science. It’s just a judgement call.

Once you have all this information you can separate homes that don’t compare as well and the homes that do compare to yours based on condition, updgrades, etc. You find the price per square foot each home sold for and you average it out. This is your starting point to decide where to price your home for sale.

Warning: As a home seller you’ll be tempted to price your home towards the upper range. This is the biggest mistake you can make. If you want to sell your home fast and for top dollar this will kill 90% of your chances. Instead price the home at its market value (which may be the upper range of the market… just make sure it is) or slightly below. If you combine this with a killer marketing strategy that creates demand for your home, then you’ll be able to drive up the price of your home and get the price you want and need while selling your home in record time.

How To Create Demand For Your Home

admin — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:56:18 +0000

You must combine desirability, demand, and affordability in you home to sell fast and for top dollar.

Today’s focus will be on creating demand for your home. This is not as hard as you may think. Demand for your home will inevitably be the catalyst to drive up the price of your home. This is nothing more than supply VS demand. Supply being only one home (yours), and demand being more than one highly interested buyer.

So here it goes…

The way to create demand for your home is to offer buyers what they want.

That’s it…. the big secret is out.

Yet this is the hardest thing any home seller will do. This includes pricing your home correctly. It is everywhere. Home sellers know this intuitively, yet the average home on the market is priced 7% over market value.

But wait, there’s more. Offering price alone is not enough. Oh, no. Home buyers are greedy. This is their weakness. It will be your lure at the end of your hook to reel them in and create demand for your home. Here’s what I mean…

If your home is within the first time home buyer price range, you must go talk to your nearest lender and have them give you different financing options you could offer to a qualified buyer. Specifically have them give you little or no money down financing options so you can offer that to your prospective buyers.

If your home is in a higher price range, you can have the lender give you low monthly payment options such as interest only loans.

Now take note here. The loan doesn’t have to be the one the buyer uses, but the terms will be what will attract the buyer in the first place and once you have them you’ve created demand for your home. It is at that point that desirability and affordability come into play.

How To Sell Your Home Online

admin — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:07:57 +0000

Traditional ways of selling homes is becoming more and more inefficient. 80% of home buyers start their search online. Because of this, it is more important than ever to give your home a strong online presence. The internet has changed the real estate industry and many real estate professionals have yet to adapt.

If you are looking to sell your home in today’s market you should be aware of the tools available to you to sell your home online.

Tools like RSS (Real Simple Syndication) supercharge the online presence of your home. Websites like Trulia, Zillow, and others are helpful in this matter. You should also find a way to get your home on blogs, forums, and yes even YouTube.

YouTube is among the top 10 most visited and used websites.

What’s even more important than the amount of places where your home is being advertised is the SEO practices behind this. You should consult with an SEO expert to make sure the right traffic is driven to see your home. This is the most ignored aspect of online marketing and has cause many to think that online marketing doesn’t work.

So here’s a quick guide to sell your home online.

First, write down the advertising copy of your home. This will be your description.

Make sure the description talks about the benefits the buyer gets from buying your home. Most advertising only talks about the features which is pure junk by itself. Buyers buy on emotion. You must therefore talk to their emotional hot buttons.

Most advertising sound something like this “3 bed 2 bath, new roof, water softner, etc.”

A good ad is more like this “Beautiful family home on quiet street, bonus game room with soundproof wall so you can relax even if you have loud kids, cozy living room with fireplace, etc.”

The main difference is that the latter one talks about the buyers benefits while the former talks about the features of the home.

Second… find websites where you would like to list your home such as trulia or for sale by owner websites. On the internet, pictures are everything. You should use a wide angle lens to take pictures of your home. You should not use a fish eye lens. Lighting is everything when it comes to taking pictures. That being said, make sure the house is well lit when taking pitures and avoid dark room pictures. Many buyers will discard your home just based on that.

Once you have your listing up, you should visit forums and blogs and begin sharing your listing and participating in the real estate community. Selling a home is all about networking and talking to people.

You may also hire an agent to do this for you, just be sure that they are online experts and can help you do this.