Selling Gilbert AZ Real Estate » how to sell fsbo

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.

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.

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.

3 Steps To Follow To Sell Your Home Without An Agent

admin — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:12:16 +0000

Selling your home without an agent can be very appealing when you pocket in the commission you would’ve paid out to that pushy salesperson. Oh yeah, let’s not forget that you would love to rub it in their face how fast you were able to sell your own home without their help. But are you really prepared to do just that?

Well, let’s test your knowledge…

Here’s what you should already know. Here are the basic skills you must possess if you are planning on humiliating the neighborhood expert and sell your home yourself fast and for top dollar.

1. You must have a good understanding of the market and the latest trends in the mortgage industry that will help you target qualified home buyers to sell your home. Are you in the first time home buyers price range? If so, you must know what types of financing programs are available in your area and find out if there are any special grants offered. You’d be surprised how many buyers don’t research the types of loans available to them and if you are able to offer them a good deal on financing they’ll be more considerate when buying your home.

You should also know if your home is a good cashflow property for an investor and use that as an angle to market your property.

If you are in the upper range or luxury home market you must know the potential buyer traps with jumbo loans and pay closer attention to how qualified the buyer is before accepting an offer and taking it off the market.

2. Know what to do and what not to do to sell your home fast and for top dollar. There are common seller mistakes that are never taken into consideration until the problem arises. Taking the time to prepare your home for sale and doing quick and easy fix ups can save you thousands and avoid traps during the home inspection period.

3. If you have the last two steps taken care of, you should have enough knowledge to market your property. You know what you are going to be offering your prospective buyers and you should know how your home compares against your neighbors. Part of getting to know the market means that you should know the condition of the homes that sold recently, the ones that are under contract, as well as the homes that are for sale. These are your competitors and you should know what type of upgrades they have so you can price your home competitively.

Your marketing materials should not talk about your home. This is the biggest mistake made in real estate. Even professionals make this mistake. You can look at homes being advertised and find that 95% of them are marketed poorly. Your marketing materials should talk about the benefits home buyers get from buying your home.

If you follow this advice your chances of being successful at selling your own home can increase.