In recent years, more and more homeowners are jumping on the trend of trying to sell their properties without a realtor. The potential for tremendous cost savings drives some homeowners to try their own hand at a for-sale-by-owner (FSBO). Realtor commissions are no small fee—they often land somewhere around 5-6% of the home’s sale price. This is a large chunk of equity that sellers are forking over to their realtor, and the potential to retain these funds has caused many homeowners to roll the FSBO dice.
The chance to be in the driver’s seat of a home’s sale also becomes too tantalizing an opportunity for some homeowners to pass up. There is a sense of control that comes from having the ability to set your own timeline, oversee marketing yourself, and have direct interaction with the purchaser of your home. This guide will cover several of the aspects you’ll want to consider if you’re thinking about opting for an FSBO approach—the economics, the marketing, and the negotiating. Responsible homeowners will perform their due diligence when it comes to most—if not all—of these aspects of the sale. By conducting thorough market research, a homeowner should be able to appropriately set the price for their home on the “For Sale” market. It will just be necessary at that point for their marketing skills to take flight.
Effective Marketing Strategies for FSBO
Writing a gripping listing is crucial for bringing in potential buyers. Each listing should include special features of the home, like the architectural style, renovations completed, and a little about the neighborhood. Tell a story about your listing and try to make the reader feel something. In your property description, bring out the features that really sell this home and try to create an image in the buyer’s mind of themselves living there. For example, instead of saying, ‘This home has a nice backyard,’ a better way to sell that may be, ‘The spacious oasis backyard is perfect for those summer BBQs and family gatherings.’ Essentially, this would be the same back yard, but the audience from that is imagining what they’d do in that space. This strategy will help you bring in the right buyer!
Having excellent quality photos is one of the largest things you can do. Almost all sales are dictated on photos alone. After all, these photos are buyers’ first impressions. You want your client’s images to be the best representation of the property possible. Getting a professional real estate photographer is going to promise some images of the listing that are going to help you be successful. The photographer you hire should help you better understand their process—you want to make sure the listing has some natural light. Every single room you shoot should be super bright with angelic natural light. [..] Make sure you get wide-cropped, bright, high-quality, various angle photos of a room. Editorials shouldn’t be kept.
Staging a room is so important for people who want to sell a home. Simply staging furniture to where you see fit can help you sell a home. This process is pivotal for bringing in potential buyers—you’re creating an invitation. Also, staging a home can create a better perspective on buyers. ‘How would you use this space?’ [..] make a living room interact with followers. This process can help create content for people. How that might look is a post with the living room’s before, after, and after-in-use photo, and followers can guess, ‘Guess this room!’
Utilizing Online Platforms
In the digital age, the most basic thing you can do when selling your home is to post it online. Some of the best places to list your home are websites like Zillow, Realtor.com, and Redfin. These are among the most visited websites for potential home buyers because they have huge databases of homes for sale.
Create your own listing for your home on these sites (or have your real estate agent do it) and be sure to include good photos and a compelling description.
Just like the above-mentioned websites, there are many social media platforms that you can use to further your digital reach.
Facebook is one of the most common platforms you can post on. There are also several groups that you can join and then post to catch the eyes of potential buyers.
Instagram is another platform where you can post some nice photos of your house. Be playful and add some fun clips in your stories.
If you have a Pinterest account, it might be best to post there too! Set up your photos just like you were staging your home.
For the most part, staging your digital output is the same as staging a home. Do not be boring with your posts. Be personable and joke around with your audience.
Traditional Marketing Techniques
The following are essential sales tools in your home-selling marketing strategy:
Yard signs, flyers, and open houses.
The yard sign is a powerful selling tool that has the advantage of a well-chosen location. Everyone who drives or walks by your property is a potential buyer, so a well-placed yard sign is a no-brainer. Back in the day, you could just slap a piece of wood on a stick and spray paint: “For Sale: 3 BR/2 BA $300,000. See yourself.”
Today, you need more sophisticated signage when selling your home. You’ll need to be sure it’s pleasing to the eye and has all your key selling points, but don’t forget your price and all your contact details. It’s the first port of call for anyone interested in your property, whether they have been considering a property move or not!
Flyers are simply another selling aid to ensure your property’s key features are easily consumed. They should follow the design rules you’ve used for your yard sign, but this time they contain much more detail of all the property features you believe may be key selling points for your property.
Create a “distribution” strategy for these flyers. Local supermarkets are the obvious choice, but think of the surrounding restaurants or any other place people are shopping or gathering. In addition, when you decide you are going to market your property, you are going to be pigeon-holed somehow, so be ready!
An open house is literally that. An invitation to any prospective buyer to just come on in and take a look around. You’d be surprised just how effective “outdoor” selling is. Just like having the designer label of a famous fashion house, a strategically chosen signature room can seriously enhance the appeal of your property.
If the expected person comes to see your open-house day and doesn’t leave, at least you’ve plenty of time to tidy the mess before your spouse returns home!
Negotiating Like a Pro
Something that every sales or negotiation professional should know is to understand buyer psychology. A buyer’s decision is often dictated by their feelings, thoughts, and mental shortcuts rather than rigorous analysis of the alternative options. One must be able to recognize these heuristics and biases to better market their product in a way that aligns with the buyer’s values, and solution. In negotiation, the person across the table is looking through a different lens from your own. The product should not be sold as a product, but should be pitched as an idea to solve one of their problems. When a buyer starts asking personal benefit questions about a product, it is clear that they are interested in a product and there is a high probability of making a sale.
In general, buyers appreciate flexible sellers. It is comforting for a buyer to know that the seller is willing to adapt to the buyer’s needs. When a buyer offers any terms other than the price given, this opens a door to negotiations. It also gives a more casual and relaxed tone to the negotiation, if only subconsciously. Worst case scenario, the buyer screws you over and you don’t go through with it. Incomplete information can hurt a deal, but if the buyer’s max price is feasible, a negotiation is beneficial to both ends of an agreement. Avoid this section if it is unrealistic to negotiate under circumstances. Similarly, the process of negotiating allows sellers to gather feedback about what a buyer wants, and what The BLUF of selling a product is to get that product off of the market.
How to Price Your Home Like a Pro
If you’re a homeowner curious about the value of your house, it’s likely already evident to you why understanding local trends matters. Real estate is extremely local—home values can change dramatically from neighborhood to neighborhood. They are subject to the same “supply and demand” variables as other “market” goods, and a neighborhood “in demand” almost always translates to higher property values. The same logic applies to more considerable local economic trends. Cities on the rise with substantial incoming corporate infrastructure (read: jobs) are likely to see property values increase.
• An online valuation tool will give you a quick estimate based on recent sales data and property metrics; for a more definitive answer, you’ll need a comparative market analysis (CMA).*
Going through the process mentioned above of, at a minimum*, using an online tool, and then ideally speaking with an agent for a full CMA (comparative market analysis), will prepare you for the next steps. You’ll understand what similar properties are selling for in your neighborhood, allowing you to either set an attractive and realistic price if you’re thinking about selling your home, or have more data points and rationale to back any pricing increase you have in mind if refinancing is your goal.
Handling Offers and Counteroffers
Understanding how to evaluate offers (and make counteroffers) is a key skill, particularly when you are involved in a real estate transaction. Of course, when evaluating someone’s offer, you need to think about the price they are willing to pay, as well as the other terms and conditions they want to include in the deal. This could relate to contingencies, timeline of closing, and/or how qualified the buyer is, financially speaking, amongst other things. Every factor can (and likely will) add to (or take away from!) the overall value attached to the offer you have been given. Thinking about which points might be most important to you will help you decide whose offer might be the best (and, for that matter, whose warrants any negotiation).
Cash, as a direct offer, is not necessarily particularly “special”—other than for the fact that (of all offers) it is presented more simply: it is less complicated. You see, unlike the alternative (which might be an offer that was “to arrive at financing”), a buyer who offers cash will likely not be interested in receiving an approval from a third-party mortgage (or the positive results of an appraisal). For you, this might mean—”let’s try to move things along a little quicker”; in relevant cases, it’s “no waiting” that has made the cash offer acceptable. A buyer with cash in hand might (often!) be in a far better position to negotiate, even if their presentation was bad! A buyer might be getting away with “handing out cash” (only) because that is exactly what someone else in your position may have wanted exactly ‘at that moment—before they changed their mind and captured a loss!’
When putting out some “counteroffer” or their ‘so-called’—because maybe, realistically, yours is really the first offer on ‘the log,’ and maybe only potentially as it is/is to be recorded as—such; but you do want to make sure that you communicate well and that you do suggest terms in a way (while your spirit helps you) that merely more or less reaffirms your position. Give someone a reason to buy a house! And let them know that the offer to buy with the right is “ahead”on what might be “clearer” deter/means, toward the right way, is a thing following such good news that lies along the same good path! Despite all stuff, for the savings that hold true to good aspects of most assumptions, and beyond the insistence that cash was already the way, try to make sure that you go ahead and press those guys. After all, it is “only” less than they need. Don’t get th_
Preparing for Closing
Once you’re ready to accept a job offer, you need to create a file for this position in your files. First, make sure that you have a clear understanding of the terms of your position. This should be outlined in your offer letter. The offer letter contains:
- Salary
- Benefits
- What you’ll be doing
- When you’ll be doing it
Do make sure you look over this carefully and make sure everything is matching up to what you understood from verbal agreements made during the interview process. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out and ask whoever sent you the letter to clarify what it is stating.
Many of you are naïve to the role legal documentation plays in the employment process. The offer letter is a good document to keep for your records. Oftentimes, one document that you will need to keep for your records is the NDA, or non-disclosure agreement. Other documents like a non-compete clause are also good to keep for your records. The non-disclosure and non-compete are what are protecting me and this company. These documents are outlining to you what it is you are not allowed to disclose regarding the goings-on of the company, and how we operate. The non-compete will also describe the manner under which you are able to back out of this position. Make sure you understand what is being stated here.
With any document you sign, it would be wise to keep your copy in a safe place where you will remember. This is just good organizational practice. If you don’t see anything mentioned in any of these documents about any conflicts of interest that you may have with colleagues or superiors, you should thoroughly review the signed disclosures, which could be sent to you in a private email link. In this way, you can anonymously report anything to us. The outlined policies would also indicate what measures are put in place and the intended workplace culture at whatever given department this may involve.
Again, the processes of these forms after being employed here are an entirely different discussion. Where it stands now, all you have done is accepted a job offer. This does not mean that you will be employed for the length of time unless you are told in full straightaway, which will be disclosed to you through this blog. When I have a chance, I will go through each of these items in more detail after further evaluation of the responses I am given.
Finalizing the Sale
“Closing” is the phase of real estate when the ownership of the property is officially transferred from the seller to the buyer. It’s potentially complicated enough that there are several steps to an “official” or “federal” definition of closing in the United States—seven, to be exact. Few homeowners will fail to recognize the steps: agree to purchase, inspect, continue to haggle over what needs to be fixed, secure financing…understanding these and all the rest of the quibbles is a task.
A good way to navigate this decidedly impure process:
- Take good notes. Management of this process includes understanding precisely what will need to be accomplished to complete the sale or purchase. A list should be generated, one which includes items like:
When do the attorneys need to be paid? And when do they need to be gotten off the phone?
A date for getting lenders involved. A variety of reasonable guesses about what the likely closing date will be. The first to know that a loan for purchasing a property might be needed will be the realtor and/or attorney. The bank needs to know as soon as possible about any new buyers looking to purchase.
Delays in this process are usually only documented, or result from, other similar procedural abnormalities. Other people besides the buyer or seller will be well aware of how much it can cost to “keep” a house in suspended animation for an unnecessarily long time. - Plan to do a “final walkthrough” of the house prior to closing. This so everyone can confirm that the house has been closed in the “condition agreed to.”
- Read all relevant documents carefully. Amounts may change often, and at the last minute. Fees will differ widely; make sure to understand them all.
Understanding the For Sale by Owner (FSBO) Process
For Sale By Owner (FSBO) is where you sell your house without a real estate agent. Sellers adopt this approach because it allows them to:
- Avoid paying commission
- Control the sale
With new online tools that enable listing houses easily on web platforms and social media, FSBO sellers can find their buyers more easily than ever.
The percentage of FSBO sellers compared to the broader market is not trivial; the National Association of Realtors estimates that about 8% of home sales are FSBO transactions. While this figure is less than agent-represented sales, it is still significant.
The benefits of being able to negotiate a deal directly without the help of a real estate agent can be extremely satisfying.
However, be prepared to do the leg work yourself. Sellers who adopt the FSBO approach have to handle the viewing of the properties, the negotiations, and the marketing of the property. Doing all the leg work can be time-consuming and requires a basic understanding of selling houses.
FSBO houses also tend to sell for a cheaper price compared to those sold by agents. In most cases, FSBO houses also suffer from suboptimal marketing.
Why Choose to Sell Your Own Home?
“For sale by owner” (FSBO) has traditionally been a path well-traveled. The rewards are substantial:
- Avoid Real Estate Agent Commissions
- Depending on the local real estate market, commissions to real estate agents usually run between five and six percent. When you are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, this can add up fast!
- Your own timeline. You have the privilege of choosing when to sell the house.
- Home Education
- Personally handling the sales process can be a great learning experience. FSBO allows homeowners to participate in the research, marketing, and sales processes of their homes. In a market with tons of resource materials, motivated homeowners can learn quite a lot!
Setting the Right Price
If you want to sell your house at a higher price, you need to have consumer psychology and an understanding of the market. Firstly, you need to analyze what price range the house should be sold for. Look at how much other similar houses are selling in the local area. You can check https://www.zillow.com/, which provides housing data for buying and selling to determine the selling price. For example, other people are selling the same house for $300k. If you want to sell it at a higher price, you probably cannot sell it for $400k. You probably can sell it for $310k.
Listing prices do have psychology in them. For $299,000 and $300,000, you may rank the $3000 as a better deal when the difference price is only $1000. People love to find the savings. Moreover, you need to identify the profitable features that the house has such as new renovations, new AC filtration systems, or other things’ (the neighborhood, the school district, the design, etc.). These lovely features are huge leverage. When home buyers purchase a house, they imagine the living environment they will have with this selling house. Price your house right and make the consumers also believe the pricing is right and cannot find another house like yours. This is why you can sell the house faster than other house sellers. Beating your competition – that’s why it’s at a higher price!-Persistence, First, make the house in a liveable condition. Then, calculate the cost of the house selling price. There is some math to be done to determine, ‘how high?’ The first step to finding out is to try!
“To sell your home, you must understand pricing, marketing, and negotiation. Pricing has to do with setting an initial price that is both attractive to buyers and is also likely to provide you with an adequate return. If you don’t understand marketing, you will not see the need to create an online listing or schedule an open house. And if you can’t negotiate, you won’t be able to make the best deal.”
“Another huge bonus to selling your home the old-fashioned way is that you can accept a cash offer. That’s right, in cash. This is one of the most straightforward ways to sell a house, and it eliminates many of the tedious little steps that you wish you could skip. In many of these situations, the house sells very quickly, with no mortgage approval, house deeds, or time spent waiting. This is a good tactic for a housing market that moves quickly.”
“So, for those of you who wish you could avoid the whole process and just sell the house, trying to sell your house for cash is a good strategy. What you choose to do will, of course, depend largely on your own personal circumstances. Be sure to do your research.”