FSBO – Some For Sale by Owner Advice
The main reason people decide to sell their own home, rather than using the services of a real estate professional, is to save some money. The commission paid to realtors on a typical home sale is 6% of the purchase price. 6% of a $250,000 home is $15,000. That’s a lot of money. Here are some tips that should help you if you do decide to sell your home on your own.
Price Your Home Correctly
If you set the price too low, obviously you are losing money. If you set your price too high, it’s just not going to sell. You can do some research on how much your home might be worth by using various sites on the Internet, but those sites are not always accurate.
Another option would be to get an appraisal. By having a professional come out and give you a value for your home, you can be sure that you’re pricing it right. Of course, an appraisal is going to be an additional expense.
Take Good Pictures of Your Home
About 90% of buyers begin their search for a home by going online. People value their time and they can quickly look at pictures online to determine if they want to take a closer look at a home, or if they’re just going to skip it and move on to the next one.
You need to have high-quality images and that usually can only be done with a high-quality camera. You’ll also want to stage your home so it looks as nice as possible. Clean up any clutter, put away any personal items, and wait for the right time of day so the lighting is perfect before taking your pictures.
It may be a good idea to hire a professional photographer to come out to take pictures of your home. The pictures are incredibly important so paying a photographer would be a wise investment.
Write a Detailed Listing
When someone goes online to search for a home they will look through the pictures you posted. If they like the pictures, they will want more information. People will want to know how many bedrooms and bathrooms the house has, how much square footage there is, the year it was built etc.
You’ll want to include as much information as possible. You could look at some other real estate listings online to see what type of information other people are including and make sure you include that same type of information.
Be Available
If you’re selling your house on your own, you’ll have to be there to allow potential buyers to tour the home. This may mean that your nights and weekends will be spent showing your house until it sells.
Why You Should Consider Using a Real Estate Professional
As you can see by reading through the tips above, selling your own home will be like taking on an additional part-time job. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to get the house ready for a show, and you have to be available to show it when people want to see it. A real estate agent will be able to show your house, even when you’re not available.
A real estate agent will also be able to bring you more potential buyers than you can get on your own. Real estate agents are always networking with other agents and buyers often go to an agent before househunting. If you’re selling your house on your own, you have to rely on newspaper ads, listings on certain websites, and word-of-mouth. Real estate agents have many more resources available to them.
Real estate agents also have a lot of experience with the contracts and legal documents used in a real estate transaction. It’s important that you dot all of your I’s and cross all of your T’s because a mistake could be very costly. This is something you won’t have to worry about when you use a real estate agent.
One final reason to consider using a real estate professional is that if you’re selling your house on your own to save money, you might not save as much as you think. Because buyers often have their own agents, and the seller typically pays the agent’s commission, you may only be saving about 3% of the purchase price rather than 6%. You’ll have to ask yourself if all of the additional work, not to mention the additional risk, is worth saving 3%.