20 Steps to Help Sell Your Home

As a homeowner you can play an important part in the timely sale of your property. When you take the following steps, you’ll help us sell your home faster, at the best possible price.

Make the Most of that First Impression
A well-manicured lawn, neatly trimmed shrubs and a clutter-free porch welcome prospects. So does a freshly painted – or at least freshly scrubbed – front door. If it’s autumn, rake the leaves. If it’s winter, shovel the walkways. The fewer obstacles between prospects and the true appeal of your home, the better.

Invest a Few Hours for Future Dividends
Here’s your chance to clean up in real estate. Clean up in the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen. If your woodwork is scuffed or the paint is fading, consider some minor redecoration. Fresh wallpaper adds charm and value to your property. Prospects would rather see how great your home really looks than hear how great it could look, with a little work.

Check Faucets and Bulbs
Dripping water rattles the nerves, discolors sinks and suggests faulty or worn-out plumbing. Burned out bulbs leave prospects in the dark. Don’t let little problems detract from what’s right with your home.

Don’t Shut Out a Sale
If cabinets or closet doors stick in your home, you can be sure they will also stick in a prospect’s mind. Don’t try to explain away sticky situations when you can easily plane them away. A little effort on your part can smooth the way toward a closing.

Think Safety
Homeowners learn to live with all kinds of self-set booby traps: roller skates on the stairs, festooned extension cords, slippery throw rugs and low hanging overhead lights. Make your residence as non-perilous as possible for uninitiated visitors.

Make Room for Space
Remember, potential buyers are looking for more than just comfortable living space. They’re looking for storage space, too. Make sure your attic and basement are clean and free of unnecessary items.

Consider Your Closets
The better organized a closet, the larger it appears. Now’s the time to box up those unwanted clothes and donate them to charity.

Make Your Bathrooms Sparkle
Bathrooms sell homes, so let them shine. Check and repair damaged or unsightly caulking in the tubs and showers. For added allure, display your best towels, mats and shower curtains.

Create Dream Bedrooms
Wake up prospects to the cozy comforts of your bedrooms. For a spacious look, get rid of excess furniture. Colorful bedspreads and fresh curtains are a must.

Open up in the Daytime
Let the sun shine in! Pull back your curtains and drapes so prospects can see how bright and cheery your home is.

Lighten up at Night
Turn on the excitement by turning on all your lights – both inside and outside – when showing your home in the evening. Lights add color and warmth, and make prospects feel welcome.

Avoid Crowd Scenes
Potential buyers often feel like intruders when they enter a home filled with people. Rather than giving your house the attention it deserves, they’re likely to hurry through. Keep the company present to a minimum.

Watch Your Pets
Dogs and cats are great companions, but not when you’re showing your home. Pets have a talent for getting underfoot. So do everybody a favor: Keep Kitty and Spot outside, or at least out of the way.

Think Volume
Rock-and-roll will never die. But it might kill a real estate transaction. When it’s time to show your home, it’s time to turn down the stereo or TV.

Relax
Be friendly, but don’t try to force conversation. Prospects want to view your home with a minimum of distraction.

Don’t Apologize
No matter how humble your abode, never apologize for its shortcomings. If a prospect volunteers a derogatory comment about your home’s appearance, let their experienced Realtor handle the situation.

Keep a Low Profile
Nobody knows your home as well as you do, but Realtor’s know home buyers – what they need and what they want. We will have an easier time articulating the virtues of your home if you stay in the background.

Don’t Turn Your Home into a Second-Hand Store
When prospects come to view your home, don’t distract them with offers to sell those furnishings you no longer need. You may lose the biggest sale of all.

Get Help
When prospects want to talk price, terms or other real estate matters that you are unsure of get help. We offer a menu of services so you only pay for what you need…

Contingencies

Contingencies in the Contract

In real estate contracts the contingency is a common element. Contingencies are clauses in a contract that give either the buyer or seller a way to get out of the contract if certain conditions or time-lines aren’t met.

A commonly used example is that of a buyer making an offer on a new home before selling their existing home. The buyer needs to sell their present home before being able to get financing on the new one. So they make an offer contingent upon the sale of their existing home. There should always be a time period associated with such a contingency. If the buyers are able to get their present home sold within that time period, the deal can go forward. But if they fail to sell within the specified time period, the seller has the option of getting out of the deal. In most cases, sellers are hesitant to accept this kind of contingency, because they will most likely feel that they can find another buyer capable of closing the deal without needing to sell another home first. But new home builders are often willing to accept an offer contingent upon the sale of an existing home.

Every contract can be unique. The possibilities for contingencies are virtually endless. Some of the more commonly used contingencies would include:

• Financing – Contingencies that depend on the buyer being able to obtain financing are very common. 
• Home Inspections – Probably the most common type of contingency is the “contingent upon satisfactory completion of inspection”. There are any number of specific types of inspection for which a contingency might be included in a contract. Some of the more common would include inspection by a qualified home inspector for hidden defects, pest inspections, water and sewage system inspections, inspections dealing with the presence of radon or mold, etc. 
• Appraisal – It’s not unusual for a buyer to have a contingency that allows for a formal appraised value at or above purchase price. Since lenders will nearly always want an appraisal performed too, sellers usually don’t have a problem with this. 

Remember, just like everything else in real estate contracts, contingencies are negotiable. Always take care before signing that you are comfortable with all contingencies included in your contract. Likewise, take time to think about what contingencies you might like to have added.

Understanding Your CMA

A Competitive Market Analysis (CMA) is an important tool to use and understand when pricing and buying homes.

What exactly is a CMA? It is a comparison of prices of recently sold homes that are similar to a listing seller’s home in terms of location, style and amenities. Generally how it’s done is that the subject home’s neighborhood is searched for similar homes (active, sold, pending, expired, etc.) in the last 6 months. A quick report will show you pertinent information about other homes such as size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, price and price per square foot. As long as homes and lots are similar, the price per square foot of the SOLD homes is a good indicator of where other similar homes will be sold at.

CMAs are a very good indicator of pricing in most cases, but some provide more reliable information than others. The smaller the area searched, the more similar the homes and the more recent the data, the more reliable the information. Knowing this, you should ask anyone doing a CMA for you:

• Did you just search my neighborhood?
• Some areas in my neighborhood vary greatly (custom/non-custom, age of homes, etc.), did you just include the areas most similar to mine or did you search the entire neighborhood?
• Did you look at the homes individually to ascertain that they were good comparables?
• What is the time frame of the search? Six months to a year is ideal.
• Were there foreclosures or short sales included in the search?
• Were there closing costs paid that weren’t taken into account?
• How reliable do you feel like this CMA is?

We offer a CMA as a optional service to our clients, but often we will recommend a fair market value appraisal when we don’t feel that there are enough similar homes that have been recently sold. Obviously we want our clients to get the most money possible, however we do want you to sell. We value our success rate and since we don’t receive a commission on our flat fee MLS listings, we tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear!

If you decide to consider a 6% real estate agent, it is a good idea to meet several and ask for CMAs. You will most likely hear different suggested listing prices. An inexperienced agent may not know how to properly do a CMA, or an unethical agent can skew the data simply by modifying the search. You’ll want consider an agent’s motivation when you receive CMAs. A newer agent or any agent in today’s buyer’s market may desperately need the commission and advise you to price lower for a quicker commission. While another agent may tell you what you want to hear knowing that he or she needs the listing for advertising and leads. Pricing your home correctly is crucial to selling. Make sure you trust the person advising you.

What is the MLS?

The term MLS stands for “Multiple Listing Service” and is a database of properties currently on the market in the area. It’s only available to Realtors and not to the public. The MLS allows participating Realtors (which includes virtually all Realtors in the area) to list their homes for sale and agree to share in the sales commission of the properties.

The MLS feeds data to many sources including Realtor.com, most broker and agent websites, and many large franchise sites like remax.com. The exposure your FSBO home will get with our service will increase your chances of finding a buyer faster. And remember, the faster the better. Buyers are less likely to make a low offer on a newly listed home that’s price right for the current market!

This also means that if I list your property on the MLS with our Flat Fee service, and an agent finds a buyer for your house, that buyer’s broker is entitled to a commission at closing. With our MLS Flat Fee program, you set the selling commission up front, so the buyer’s agent always knows how much they are earning to sell your home.

It’s important to note that the MLS is not the same as Realtor.com. The MLS is what Realtors use to list homes and can only be accessed by licensed Realtors, while Realtor.com is the public website used by consumers to search for homes.

The big advantage to you, as the seller, is that every single broker and agent participating in the MLS has an incentive to sell your home. This effectively puts every agent in the area to work selling your home! The first place a buyers agent looks is always the MLS. There is simply no better way to gain instant and widespread exposure for your home than listing it on the MLS.

Preparing to Sell

Preparing to Sell Your Home

Making the Commitment to Sell by Owner. Preparing to sell FSBO takes more than just getting the home ready; YOU need to get ready. Recognize that if you are to be successful, you must understand the process and develop realistic expectations.

Be unemotional about the sale. Your home has meant a lot to you over the years but your buyer is not looking at the purchase through your eyes. Once you decide to sell your home, it simply becomes a business transaction and you must take the emotion out of it.

Here are a few of the “Must Do’s” that have been suggested by many successful FSBO’s over the years.

• Educate yourself on how long similar homes in your area are on the market before they sell. You must be realistic or you can become prematurely disillusioned when you think your house should sell in a matter of days, when in fact the market dictates that it will take two to three months. If you should sell sooner than expected, wonderful.
• Price the home at its true market value, not what you just think it’s worth. Pricing should be based on market conditions, not emotion.
• Prepare to spend some money on advertising. You must let the market know your home is for sale.
• Understand that you will spend time answering phone calls, setting appointments and showing the home. Your rewards are well worth it.
• Be prepared to handle real estate agents. Know ahead of time whether or not, and to what extent, you will cooperate with agents. You may decide that you will want to offer a “half” commission (typically 2.5 -3.5%) to an agent if they bring a buyer to see your property who ultimately ends up purchasing it.
• You must recognize that the successful sale of your home depends on you.
• You must coordinate the process and see it through. Most of the effort requires no more than making a few telephone calls.

Develop a Marketing Plan

GETTING THE HOME READY

A potential buyer should have a good impression of your home. Chipped exterior paint, loose gutters, overgrown shrubs and lawn, marred interior walls, cluttered closets and counters, and stained or dirty carpets are simply unacceptable to home buyers. These are all examples of problems that are easily resolved with very little expense. The objective should be to get your home in good condition with minimal expense. Make the decision of what must be replaced or repaired and get it done. Painting some, or the entire interior, is usually necessary and should always be done. Fresh paint is clean and clean is mandatory. Clutter must be eliminated because clutter, whether it’s in the closet, on the counters or on the walls, closes-in space and will make any space look smaller. In some situations, it can be advisable to even remove some furniture. If you’re selling your home because you need more space, then chances are you have more furniture than the home can really accommodate and probably, more clutter. The feeling someone should have when they enter your home is that it’s well maintained, spacious and clean.

Getting your home ready to market does not mean renovating. In fact, it’s probably the worst thing you can do because you most likely will not recoup the expense of renovation. The most recent national figures provided below indicate the cost vs. resale value for various home remodeling projects.

If you decide that remodeling a certain area of the home is absolutely necessary to achieve a sale, then make sure that the job conforms to the home and the neighborhood… in other words, don’t over-remodel. Homes that overachieve in their neighborhoods often underperform on the resale market.

MARKETING THE HOME

You’ve got a house to sell and it’s time to let the world know it. First determine your budget. Recognize that you may well spend $500 to $1,000 advertising your home. Next, target your market. Answer the question: “Where do people find homes for sale in my price range”? Don’t waste time, effort and money advertising in a local shopping paper when you’re trying to sell a $400,000 home… it’s not where your buyer is looking.

SIGNS
First and foremost, have a professional, easy-to-read yard sign. The sign should clearly say that the home is for sale by owner and should have the owners phone number in large bold print. Do not go to your local hardware or discount store for signs. Presenting your home in an attractive professional way is essential and the typical red and black “house for sale” sign found in stores is not the answer. The sign should also say that the home is shown “by appointment only”. There are many reasons for this. You should always be prepared for a showing and setting appointments is the only way to be properly prepared.

Some buyers find a home simply by riding around in the neighborhood where they would like to live. Many homes are sold as a result of signage alone and its value should not be underestimated.

ADVERTISING

FOR SALE BY OWNER PUBLICATIONS
Many cities around the country have for sale by owner magazines and publications where individuals buy space in the publication to advertise a property. Information about these publications can be found on this web site and you should definitely consider using their services. This is very targeted marketing. The publications are broadly distributed in high-traffic locations such as local grocery, department and discount stores, as well as banks, restaurants, etc. Ads in the publication usually have pictures and allow ample space for a description of the property. The cost for advertising in these publications is usually substantially less than advertising in the local newspaper for the same period of time. Many of these companies offer other services from professional signs, fact sheets, blank sales contracts, Internet listings, appraisal, and even closing services. Using the services of such a business will substantially minimize the amount of time you would spend seeking these services on your own.

NEWSPAPER
You must consider this a primary source for advertising. Be careful that you get your moneys worth. If the newspaper offers photographs in the ad, do it. Do not advertise on a holiday weekend, rates are cheaper but there’s a reason. Provide the basic information especially price. Many sellers think they will generate more interest if you don’t put a price in your ad… all you generate is more phone calls from people who probably aren’t interested once they learn the price. Target your market by including all pertinent information about your home. You do not want people calling you who either can’t afford your home or who want something you don’t have.

INFORMATION SHEETS/PHOTO FLYERS
These are a must. They should be in a tube or box attached to your yard sign for prospective buyers driving in the area, as well as having them available inside the home. Providing these can substantially eliminate unnecessary phone calls. Again, if you don’t have what a buyer wants, you really don’t want to even hear from them. Information sheets are inexpensive but vital. They should provide a photograph and a complete description of the home.

OPEN HOUSES
This type of marketing can be very successful for a builder with a new subdivision but with existing, owner-occupied homes, it’s questionable. First of all, if a prospect has driven by the home, seen it in a FSBO publication or the local newspaper, chances are they would prefer a private tour. They already know the price and the amenities of the home. Generally they want to ask questions and get very detailed responses. Also private showings allow you to ask questions of your prospect that you probably would not ask during an Open House. Last but not least, you can lose control in an Open House. What if thirty people show up and start heading in different directions? You must control showings and you want feed back. It just doesn’t happen with an Open House.

It’s interesting that different parts of the country view Open Houses differently. In some major Midwest cities, for example, Open Houses are expected if you’re going to sell but in similar size cities in the South, having an Open House is the exception rather than the rule. Therefore, you may need to adjust your marketing strategy to local custom. If having an Open House is expected in your market, then by all means, do it.

INTERNET
Advertising your home on the Internet in today’s world is not something you need to think about, you just do it. You do need to make the decision where on the Internet you should advertise. Creating a home page and putting your home “out there” should not be an option. Your ad, and your home page, will simply get lost. Advertise on a site that has hundreds of other homes for sale. The best approach is to go to the various search engines, i.e. Yahoo, Netscape, Internet Explorer, Snap.com, etc. and search “for sale by owner homes”, “FSBO”, “homes for sale by owner”, etc. Find the sites that have the most merit. Visit the sites and maneuver around in them. If they’re difficult sites to find and they’re difficult to navigate once you’re on the site, then you don’t want your home to be there. Prospective buyers will have the same feeling and will simply “click off” the site and go somewhere else.

HomesByOwner is convinced that this is the site where your home should be advertised. It’s easy to navigate and displays the home exceptionally well. Internet ads should be the same as your other ads, complete with photograph and a full description.