sell your home without a realtor

If you are wondering how and if you can sell your house yourself without a realtor, the short answer is yes, you can. There is a little to it though. You can’t just plop a for sale sign in the front yard and hope that a buyer will magically appear to buy your house. If you want some quick tips on how to sell your house fast without a realtor, keep reading.

How You Can Sell Your House Fast Without A Realtor

There is actually quite a bit that an agent does for you to sell your house. Thankfully with the invention of the internet, almost anyone can sell their home themselves with a little work and research.

One of the most important things when selling your house yourself is to price it correctly. If you are wondering where to start with that, check out our previous article “How To Price Your House For A Fast Sale” that will give you a lot of help of getting the price right.

The next thing you have to do, which we have said many times before is clean and clean some more. Pack up as many things as you can and rent a storage unit to help declutter your home. Make sure the yard is well manicured and your house is as appealing as it can possibly be for buyers that arrive. There is a reason that open houses are called “showings”, you want your house to shine and be seen in the best light possible. Once you are satisfied that the house is super clean and looks it’s best, it’s time to get to marketing –

List Your House For Sale In As Many Places As Possible

As we mentioned above, thanks to the internet anyone can sell their house themselves without a realtor. You need to list your property on the web as many places as possible – Craigslist, Trulia, Zillow, Redfin and many others. Now it used to be that you couldn’t list on the MLS, but check this out:

2. Get Your Home Listed on the MLS

“It’s tremendously important that you get on a platform that gives you exposure to buyers and agents,” McGillivray said. That platform is the Multiple Listing Service, or MLS, which is the database of homes for sale in a market. Homebuyers can see properties on the MLS through websites such as Realtor.com, Zillow.com and Trulia.com.

In the past, only real estate agents could have homes listed through this service. However, today’s homeowners can list their own properties on the MLS by paying a flat fee to various sites. McGillivray recommends using Owners.com, which places homes on the MLS and gives homeowners access to advisors who can help with the sales process, including the closing. The basic MLS listing package is $395 for six months.

Read The Full Article “13 tips on how to sell your home without a real estate agent” Here

Pretty cool, huh? And it’s nice that if you go through Owners.com that your house will appear in other places as well and cut down on the amount of time that you have to spend listing your property.

Another important thing you want to remember to have is a flyer about your property. It’s a good idea to have a flyer cylinder on your for sale sign that say’s “take one” for people that may drop by unannounced, or when you are not home.

Next, don’t forget about social media:

5. Use social marketing to help sell your house. Inform your friends and family members that you are selling your house via platforms such as Facebook, Linked In or Twitter.

6. Clean your house. Buyers will notice the smallest amounts of debris. Make extra efforts to clean your windows, carpets, floors, bathrooms and kitchen. Remove excess clutter from your house.

7. Improve the curb appeal of your house. Ensure that your lawn and hedges are well manicured. Clean your driveway, porch and all areas of your yard.

Read The Full Article “How Do I Sell My House for Sale by Owner?” Here

Social Media is a great place to market your property. By getting the word out there your friends may have a friend that is looking for a property in your area. You can also make a video highlighting the best things about your house and post it to YouTube and Vimeo and put links in your listings and social media posts to the video. We also added in the part of their article about cleaning and improving curb appeal to reinforce that point.

Lastly we wanted to give you this video that explains why you might want to sell without a realtor and ways to do it:

Conclusion

You can sell your house without a realtor if you follow the above tips. Make sure you  price the house correctly, clean up and market the property as many ways as you can find.

Lastly, don’t forget that our company, Mandich Property Group, buys houses everyday of the week, and for cash. By paying with cash we can close whenever you want. You won’t have to do any of the things mentioned above, no cleaning, no yard work – we don’t care how messy the house is, we would like the opportunity to make you an offer on your property. You can learn more by visiting our site at www.MandichPropertyGroup.com, or call us at 770 756-8680.

Is it time to sell your house? Are you thinking of doing it yourself without an agent? There is good news and bad news that goes along with selling a house yourself. The good news, with the web it’s much easier these days to do it yourself. The bad, it will take you some time and effort. If you tend to be on the lazier side of things, you may want to hire an agent. However, if you are motivated and stay at it, you can sell your house without an agent.

Why Choose FSBO?

Why would someone want to try and sell their house themselves? The main reason is because they are trying to keep as much of the sale proceeds themselves. However there is a lot of debate as to whether or not you can get more for your house if you choose to use an agent.

Susan Johnston Taylor wrote a very indepth article covering this and more:

Forsalebyowner.com is one of several websites that let consumers list their properties on the Multiple Listing Service, or mls.com, instead of paying a real estate professional to do it for them. Eddie Tyner, general manager of forsalebyowner.com, says the website has seen listings grow by 14 percent in the past year. “If a person has the time and willingness to invest in the process, we believe that almost anybody could do this,” he says. “The benefits are pretty substantial.”

Beyond saving on commission (5 or 6 percent is typical when both parties have an agent), Tyner says FSBO gives homeowners more control over negotiating price and other factors. “If you take out the person in the middle and you’re able to negotiate with the actual buyer, you’re the only two people who have an interest in it,” he says. “If you add other people, some of their interests get put into the equation.”

Jane Hodges, author of “Rent vs. Own: A Real Estate Reality Check for Navigating Booms, Busts, and Bad Advice,” offers a different point of view. “Most people choose to FSBO because they want to keep as much of their post-sale proceeds as possible,” she says. “However, the Realtor argument against this is that a good Realtor can get you sufficiently more for your sale, or accomplish the sale faster, such that their fee and your higher sale price still wash out in a way where you make the same or better money.”

Read The Full Article “How to Sell Your Home Without an Agent” Here

If you search the internet for pros and cons of using a realtor you will find a lot of opinions on the subject. From the article above though, we have to wonder about being able to sell the house faster. We would recommend that you do your homework on the realtor you choose. Ask a lot of questions and check their online reviews to make sure that they can sell your house quickly.

Anyhow – let’s move on.

Selling Your House Without A Realtor

There are a few things that you are going to have to do, whether you choose to use an agent or not. The first, which we have covered in other articles, is that you HAVE to clean up the house, inside and out! Your average home buyer isn’t going to be impressed with trash and toys in the yard, or dirty floors, laundry that needs to be done and dirty dishes in the sink and counter top. You have to make your home look it’s absolute best. There’s just no way around it, unless you choose to sell to an investor, which is another topic.

Something that a lot of people fail to do is to consider the timing of their sale. Sometimes it’s unavoidable and you have to sell now. But there are better times than others to sell your house.

WikiHow has some good info on this:

Determine a good time to list your home. There are certain times of the year more likely to yield a profitable sale. Generally you want to sell when the weather is good, before school begins and not near the December holidays.

• In the U.S. some suggest that the week after the Super Bowl is the best time to list your home (meaning February). While studies show that this time is ideal and has the most buyers, it also tends to be the time of year with the most sellers. Some find that the spring is the best time to list.
• It will be more difficult to sell a family-sized home at an advantageous price once school has started. After all, it can be tough for families with children to change schools mid-semester.

Consider the weather. Sooner is generally better if you want to “beat other homes onto the market,” but think about the weather. Depending on your location, you may have excessive cold and/or snow to deal with. How does your yard look with two feet of snow? Would your home look better in the spring when your yard and landscaping are at their most appealing? If the yard is not that great looking, then your home might look more appealing when the yard is covered in two feet of snow.

• Weather-related websites or newspaper offices can provide you with historical data regarding the best time of year to sell in your area. Keep in mind that job relocations occur throughout the year.

Read The Full Article “How to Sell Your House Without an Agent” Here

Really good info about times of year to sell your house. Most people that have children know that selling during the school year could prove to be difficult. Parents don’t want to change their kids schools mid year. With younger children it’s not as difficult, but with teenagers it could prove to be really hard on them emotionally and academically.

Summing It Up

We’ve just touched on the tip of the iceberg here. There is a lot to consider when selling your house without an agent. Whether you choose to use an agent or not, you are going to have to clean and tidy up the house. Depending on how fast you need to sell will also determine the best time to put your house on the market. Stay tuned for more tips or search or blog for more on selling your house yourself.

Don’t forget, if you don’t want to worry about cleaning or the timing of your sale, here at Mandich Property Group we will buy your house no matter it’s condition or the time of year 🙂

It’s time to sell your house and you are thinking about doing it yourself. Maybe you have a new job in a new city, downsizing or the opposite, need a bigger home for a growing family. Whatever the reason you need to sell your house, you can do it yourself without hiring an agent, thus saving yourself some money in realtor commissions. However you must take some careful steps to make sure the process goes smoothly.

Getting Your House Ready For Sale By Owner

You may think that all you need to do is put a sign in the front yard “for sale by owner” and you will have a buyer for your house in no time. However, without some careful planning it may take some time to get the right buyer, or even a buyer for that matter, to put your house under contract.

In reality there are a few things that you must do to get your house ready to sell. People are going to want to look at your house. So a dirty or cluttered house most certainly won’t entice any would be buyers. Getting the house ready to sell should be at the top of your list. For Sale By Owner has a great article that explains this and more:

1. Make Your Home Look Great
Presentation is everything. Home buyers are attracted to clean, spacious and attractive houses. Your goal is to dazzle buyers. Brighten-up the house and remove all clutter from counter tops, tables and rooms. Scrub-down your house from top to bottom. Make it sparkle. Simple aesthetic improvements such as trimming trees, planting flowers, fixing squeaking steps, broken tiles, shampooing rugs and even re-painting a faded bedroom will greatly enhance the appeal of your house. Also, make sure your house smells good. That’s right, clean out the cat box and light mildly scented candles.

Invite a neighbor over to walk through your house like a buyer would. Get their opinion on how it “shows.” The stuffed donkey in the family room may have to go to your in-laws for a while.

2. Price Your Home Right
Careful not to over price your home. Over-pricing when you sell a home reduces buyer interest, makes competing homes look like better values, and can lead to mortgage rejections once the appraisal is in. Over-pricing when selling a home is the single biggest reason why many “for sale by owner” (FSBO) home sellers don’t sell their homes successfully. The home selling market dictates the price (not what you think it should be worth).

One of the best ways to correctly price your house when selling is to find out how much other homes, similar to your own, recently sold for in your neighborhood. Talk to home sellers, buyers and check out the real estate listings in your local newspaper.

Typically, if you set the price of your home at 5 to 10 percent above the market price, you are likely to end up with an offer close to your home’s true value. Also, you may try calculating the cost per square foot of your home compared to the house selling prices in your area (divide list price by square footage of livable space). If your house has more features or other desirable qualities, you may want to set a slightly higher house selling price.

The easiest way to accurately price your home is to contact your local home appraiser.

Finally, set your house selling price just under a whole number, such as $169,900 rather than $170,000.

Read The Full Article “8 Easy Home Selling Tips” Here

All good stuff. Your house HAS to be kept clean when you are trying to sell it, whether you use an agent or not. Some more good advice is to go ahead and pack some things and put them in a storage unit before you start to show the home to make it less cluttered. You don’t want potential buyers to think the house doesn’t have enough storage.

Also pricing is another big point. Over price your property and you won’t get any interest. When you are trying to determine the price make sure you are comparing “apples to apples”. You can’t expect to get as much for your home that was built in the ’70’s and never updated to one that was built around the same time frame and has a brand new kitchen and bathrooms with granite counter tops.

Please read the full article as there are a lot more good tips on getting your house sold.

Closing The Deal And Getting Your House Sold

So you have cleaned the house top to bottom, put the sign in the yard, maybe done some internet marketing and ready to start showing the property. What next? US News has some good info on that:

4. Be available

Once your listing is up, potential buyers will likely come to you. Are you ready?

Udelson says being available in multiple ways is essential for good marketing. In other words, potential buyers should be able to reach you by email, phone or in person. Some prospects will email first and won’t want to meet in person until later. That’s OK. Your goal is to engage prospective buyers in conversation, and try to get them to look at the home in person eventually.

Also, be sure to welcome calls and interest from agents. “Just because you elect to sell without an agent,” Udelson says, “doesn’t mean that the buyer should be expected to go without.”

On this note, be prepared to work with a potential buyer on arrangements for showing the home. If the buyer is coming with an agent, you can most likely leave the home, allowing the agent to take his client through. But if you’re showing directly to a buyer, you’ll need to be there to highlight the best points of your home, and answer any questions the prospect might have.

5. Get ready for closing

Before you even start marketing your home, it’s important to know what you’ll need for closing. This can be a complex process with lots of paperwork. You’ll need to stay on top of the paperwork, and make sure your buyer is on top of things, especially if the buyer doesn’t have an agent. Closing is one good reason to use a FSBO sellers website, since many of these sites have helpful information to walk you through the closing process.

Read The Full Article “5 Tips for Going the For Sale By Owner Route” Here

Great advice. We would add that you might want to go ahead and schedule a few Saturday’s & Sunday’s for showing to tell people about when they call or email about your property. That way it will be a little easier on you to have the house spic and span when a buyer is looking at the property and not just have people popping in.

You may also want to contact a closing attorney to check and see what documents you need to sell your house. They may have a template that you can use and make the selling process that much easier.

In Conclusion

Selling your home by owner can be a lot more involved that just putting a sign in the front yard. As long as you clean your house well, do some marketing and make sure you contact an attorney to help you with the closing, the entire process should go smoothly.

As a reminder, one of the best ways to sell your house by owner is to contact a real estate investor like us. We have a streamlined process to purchase properties. In fact you don’t even have to worry about any of the things we have listed above, not even clean the house because we buy houses as is. You can contact us at 770 756-8680 for a free, no obligation offer any time 🙂

How To Sell Your House Yourself Fast Without An Agent

You may be in a situation where you need to sell your property quickly to raise capital, and don’t want to lower how much money you will walk away with from the deal by listing the property. You know that it can be as much as 6% of your selling price that is paid out by selling with realtors. So you may be thinking of trying to sell your house yourself without an agent and need to sell it quickly. Good news – it can be done.

How To Get Your House To Sell Quickly

Whatever the reason that you need to sell your property quickly, there are a few things that you have to do first to make sure that it does just that. You can’t just wake up one day and decide that you are going to put a for sale sign in the front yard and hope that a buyer comes in (unless you plan on selling to investors who buy houses in as is condition).

The first and most obvious thing that you need to do is to put things away and clean the house. Nobody is going to buy a house that is cluttered and dirty. Then you need to look around the house and see the things that are obvious and that need to be repaired, like leaking faucets and even burned out light bulbs.

Here is more along those lines about making repairs prior to marketing your property from Wiki:

3 – Have your home inspected. Many standard real estate contracts are going to give the home buyer the right to inspect the property, so be prepared. Have your home inspected before you advertise. Under a general inspection you might be obligated to make major repairs to appliances, plumbing, septic, electrical and heating systems, etc. You can expect your home’s roof and foundations to be inspected, as well. Follow the recommendations and make necessary repairs. Additional inspections requested by the buyer are customarily at their expense.

4 – As much as possible, get your home in move-in condition before you put it on the market. Buyers of homes are inherently lazy. If they feel like they’ll need to do extra landscaping, plumbing, appliance and electrical work before they can enjoy the house, they’ll balk when it comes to buy, even if the rest of your house is an absolute steal. So make it easy for them. Hire a handyman or general contractor to get the home as ready to move into as possible.

Read The Full Article “How to Sell Your Own House” Here

That’s really good info, especially about buyers being kind of lazy. The reality of it is that if it’s a family moving into the property with small children, they really aren’t going to have the time to make repairs.  Soccer games, band practice, swimming, you name it – they are just to busy being involved in their kids lives to spend a lot of time making little repairs. However, if you don’t have the money to make the repairs you can always advertise the property as “Handyman Special” which will then hopefully attract the right buyer and they know from the get go that they need to work on the property.

Start Marketing Your Property

Now you have the property presentable. It’s time to put that for sale by owner sign in the front yard! It can be an anxious time, but try to relax. Here are a few more things to help you to get people to call or come by to check out your property:

3. Market Your Property
In addition to listing the home on the MLS, advertise by putting up “for sale” signs, creating brochures, putting ads on Craigslist, and building a web site to market the property. FSBO.com offers home-selling packages for homeowners that begin at $69.95. The marketing packages include items like brochures and yard signs. There will be some costs involved in advertising the sale of your home, but they will be a fraction of an agent’s commission. The real cost is the amount of time and energy you will need to put into selling your home.

4. Hold an Open House
You can also hold an open house to advertise the sale of your home. Advertise for the open house by posting signs in your neighborhood. Have some light refreshments available and set out brochures about the home that visitors can take with them as they leave.

5. Know Your Property’s Selling Points
When writing your ad copy for websites or brochures, make sure to include basic information about the house, including the price, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, lot size, location, and of course the specific details that make the house special to potential buyers.

Take a look at other listings on Craigslist, Realtors’ websites, and Yahoo! Real Estate to get a sense of what sort of details sellers and agents are including in their listings. You’ll quickly find out that features like granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, and oversized windows entice buyers. Determine what’s special about your home and highlight those features in your marketing efforts.

Continue Reading “How to Sell Your House by Owner – Without a Realtor” Here

Great tips and we especially like the thought of having brochures for your property that potential buyers can take with them when they leave. Also listing your property on the numerous online website listing services is a great idea. Don’t forget about using social media as well like Facebook and Twitter.  You may not know it and one of your friends maybe looking for a house. The more eyes that see your property online, the faster you will bring in a buyer.

In Conclusion

You can sell on your own. It will take some doing though. No matter how you choose to sell, either with or without an agent, you will have to clean and make repairs to the property. Once everything is in order, market your property as many ways as you possibly can and afford.

If you want to sell your property without all the headaches, and you are in the Metro Atlanta area, you can always contact us for a free, no obligation offer on your property at (770) 756-8680.