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.

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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?