How to do For Sale By Owner
Ten easy steps to selling your home yourself
Though selling For Sale By Owner is more widely accepted every day, and desirable for the savings that can benefit both buyers and sellers, some homeowners are nervous about navigating a sale without a realtors. But with online advertising, and a real estate lawyer, you can sell your home youself with confidence. Here’s an ten-item, ordered list to help you through the process.
1: Hire a Real Estate Lawyer to Help You Navigate the Process
You are going to do the work of the realtor, a marketing professional, when you sell your home by owner. And though you don’t need a lawyer to sell your home, having one to handle the contracts, hold money in escrow, and give you advice about disclosures and the legal aspects of selling can provide both you and your buyer with a sense of confidence in the process, and you can hire one at a fraction of the cost of a realtor.
2: Clean Out and Fix Up
Your home should be a blank slate that a buyer can see themselves living in, help them do so by removing personal items and photos. Now’s the time to get rid of excess belongings and make rooms look big, uncluttered, and neat. No one wants to move into a messy house, so clean up. One that needs repair will also discourage buyers, so fix as much as you can before showing, or adjust the price accordingly.
3: Take Pictures or Hire a Real Estate Photographer
Wide angle photos of your rooms is best. Have lots of light and remove clutter. A photographer with experience in Real Estate photos will make quick work of showing your house to it’s best advantage. Given that most buyers search for homes online, your home photos are your most important marketing tool. Do the best job possible on this step.
4: Decide on a Price Based on Market Research or Hire an Appraiser
Look at sold listings in your area (select “sold” in the real estate site where you search for homes), and focus on the most recent sales, the last six months if possible. Find as many homes that compare to yours in terms of size (square footage), age, and ammenities. Drive by some of the homes if possible to see how well they and the neighborhood compares with your home. Once you’ve got a number that are similar (the more the better), calulate the price per square foot of each by dividing the sold price by the square footage. Add all the price per square foot numbers and divide by the number of homes to get an average price per square foot, and multiply this by your home’s square footage to get a estimate of it’s market value. You can also factor in your tax assesment, though those are sometimes behind the market value of a home.
Alternatively, you can pay for a professional home appraiser to determine asking price, and then this appraisal can be used in price negotiations, as it should be very accurate.
5: Prepare Marketing Materials
Purchase a For Sale By Owner sign where you can display your phone number. Create a brochure to give to buyers with your contact information and information about the house, pictures, floor plans, and information about the neighborhood and town services. If you have a home appraisal, home warranty, landscape plan, anything that makes your home more desirable, have those available at showings or make copies to distribute.
6: List Your House Online as For Sale By Owner
A lot of people try using a flat-fee listing in MLS for their online advertising. I don’t recommend this. What you want is to be easily recognizable as a For Sale By Owner, and have people contact you directly, because if they believe you have a realtor, they will bring their own. Then, as the seller, you will be obligated to pay the realtor (should you choose to) of people using their own buyer agent. So, note in the beginning of your house description that you are For Sale By Owner and are happy to work directly with buyers and put your contact information right in there. There may be ads for realtors on your listing page. Put that you are For Sale By Owner in any part of your listing that you can. Gather your pictures and compose a good house description. Use feeling words and point out what you have loved about living there, this is where you do your marketing, so don’t just re-state the amenities listed elsewhere in the listing.
7: Schedule Open Houses on the Weekends by Thursday of Each Week
Open houses are low-pressure ways for people to view your home. On Thursday update your online ad with the open house information, so people can plan their weekend and come see your home. Realtor’s open houses are usually around the same time frame, but you can have one that lasts all day, or later into the afternoon to try and catch people who are out for the day after they see other houses. And, you can have an open house every weekend if you like, something that realtors don’t have time to do since they have lots of house listings.
8: Submit Offers and Earnest Money to Your Attorney for Escrow, Sign P&S
I recommend using a real estate attorney to handle the contracts and deposits, so once you have an accepted offer in hand, most of your work is done!
9: Schedule an Inspection and Walk-through of your House
The buyer may have an inspection as a contigency of the sale in the Purchase and Sale Document, get that scheduled as soon as possible as sales sometimes fall through at this point, and you don’t want to miss valuable time in selling to someone new. A walk-through usually happens just before closing to insure the property is being delivered in good condition and broom-clean.
10: Prepare For and Attend Closing
Check in with your lawyer about any items you need to prepare for closing (septic or fire certicates, for example). You can attend closing or ask your lawyer about representing you.
That’s it! Though selling a home is exhausting and time-consuming, most of the work in preparing the house to sell has to be done by you anyway. The marketing of the house, which is the job you hire a realtor to do, can be done pretty easily. Most people find their homes online and if yours is there, they will find it. Selling your house For Sale By Owner can not only save you money, you can take some of the realtor’s fee off the price to help encourage buyers, so it’s a win-win.
Adapted from: Real Estate Without Realtors, Save Money Buying or Selling Real Estate. Donna Rucinski, Copyright 2020.
