sell your home yourself

Can You Sell Your House Without An Agent?

You may be in a position where it’s time to sell your house. You may need a larger property due to an expanding family, or the opposite down sizing because you are an empty nester or  a host of other reasons. Now you could be asking yourself or wondering if you can sell your house without an agent. The short answer is yes, and we are going to cover a few things in this article to help you do just that.

How To Sell Your House Yourself By Owner

There are some distinct advantages of selling your home yourself. The first and most obvious reason is the amount of money that you can potentially save yourself. It could be as much as 3 percent of your actually selling price. Simple math – if you sell your home for $100k, that’s 3K that you get to keep.

On For Sale By Owner’s website they wrote a great article about selling a property on your own:

How much money can a homeowner save by not using an agent?
If you cut out all agents—meaning post your own online ad, put out a yard sign, and sold your home on your own—you would essentially cut out on average about 6 percent of commission. On a $300,000 home, that’s about $18,000 of savings. There are some markets—and I believe Maine is one of them—where commissions run even higher, I believe 7.5 to 8 percent.

Why wouldn’t a home seller need to use an agent?
The No. 1 reason that you don’t need an agent to sell your house is the rise of the Internet. The Internet has essentially changed the face of real estate. It’s essentially leveled the playing field across the market. The Internet allows sellers to easily market their homes to millions of people within minutes. Pricing information—recently sold homes, the competitive landscape of the homes that are being sold—is accessible within seconds on a search engine. Ten years ago, agents controlled all the information, and that’s why you had to go to them. Today, it’s a completely different ballgame.

What about someone who has never sold a home before?
Again, with the Internet allowing access to information, companies like ours provide information and show sellers step-by-step instructions on how to sell your home. That information is easily readable. We provide it—and other services provide it—to bring that confidence to that person who has not done it.

Read The Full Article “Selling a House Without an Agent” Here

Good info from them, however when they calculate saving 6% of your sales price, that is also assuming that the person buying your house doesn’t use a real estate agent either. We totally agree with them that because of the internet selling a property on your own is a whole lot easier these days.

Preparing To Sell By Owner

So what are some of the things that you need to be prepared for when getting ready to sell? Bank Rate put up an article that covers a few of the things that you need to think about before putting the for sale sign in the front yard:

1. Do I know the value of my home today?

A common mistake FSBO sellers make is pricing their home too high, leaving the property to languish on the market.

“When a home sits for a long while, buyers start to wonder what is wrong with it,” says Piper Nichole, author of “The For Sale By Owner Handbook.” “The best option is to come out of the gate priced right.”

To market a home competitively, sellers should research the final sale prices of similar properties in their community.

Real estate websites typically offer local sales trend information, selling prices for comparable homes (“comps”) in the community and the average length of time on the market. But these websites do not have all the data that a real estate agent has access to, so it might be worth asking a Realtor to perform a market analysis or hiring an appraiser.

Many real estate websites offering a quick estimate “are not doing a market analysis, they’re just writing an algorithm,” says Michael Seward, broker and owner of Michael Seward Real Estate.

2. Can I work with a buyer’s agent?

In a typical real estate transaction, you would hire an agent to list your home and you would pay a fee, traditionally about 6 percent of the purchase price, Nichole says. The buyer’s agent and seller’s agent often split the commission in half.

But if you’re selling on your own, sometimes you can offer a commission to the buyer’s agent to incentivize them to show your home. The commission is about 3 percent of the sales price. A buyer’s agent typically expects this, so not paying a commission could shrink your pool of potential buyers.

However, you should first learn about your state’s real estate laws so you don’t overpay the buyer’s agent or get stuck in a transaction that’s more harmful for you.

“It’s been my experience that a lot of real estate agents don’t know the laws or the code of ethics,” Seward says. “If you offer a commission to a buyer’s agent, familiarize self with state and local laws first.”

Read The Full Article “Should you sell your home without a real estate agent?” Here

Those are 2 really good points, with the first probably being the most important. You need to competitively price your property to make sure that you get a buyer in the time frame that you have to work with. Over pricing it could keep you from selling your house for a long time. Again, with the rise of the internet, this is much easier to do.

As far as working with a buyer’s agent, that’s usually not that hard to do, as long as you pay them. In Georgia it’s usually 3%.

In Conclusion

Yes, you can sell your house yourself without an agent. You will save some money by not using a realtor on your end, but your buyer may have a contract with a realtor and you will have to pay them. Make sure you price the home right and you should be able to sell your property in no time.

An easy way to sell your house yourself fast is to contact real estate investors who buy houses. You can always find them by performing a search on the web like “we buy houses” with your city at the end and you should find someone to buy your property fairly quickly. If you are in the Metro Atlanta area, we would like the opportunity to buy your house. You can reach us at (770) 756-8680.

How To Sell My Home Fast By Owner

Quick Tips To Learn How To Sell Your House Fast By Owner

Selling a property these days doesn’t have to be that difficult. You don’t need to hire an agent, it can be done all on your own, provided you do a little research and preparation first. If you want to sell your property yourself quickly – keep reading for some helpful tips.

Probably the easiest way to sell your house yourself by owner fast is to contact a real estate investor. Usually these investors will buy your house in it’s present condition without you needing to make repairs. However this isn’t always the best option for everyone. You may have time to wait on a buyer, or may just want to hold out for a better offer. Whatever the case may be, there are a few things that you can do to help sell your property quicker yourself without hiring an agent.

Tips To Get A Buyer For Your House Quickly

You need to take a little time and get your house ready to sell before you put the “for sale by owner” sign in the front yard. The last thing you want to do is have that one buyer who would have bought your house turn away because you or your property weren’t ready.

Stacey Bradford gives some good info for anyone wanting to sell their property themselves:

1. Price it right
With homes sales slowing and prices plunging, there’s little doubt that selling for a good price in today’s market is going to be tricky. The median existing home price dropped more than 7% last month compared with the same month last year, according to the National Association of Realtors. So if you try to ask as much for your property as your neighbor got six months or a year ago, you’re going to turn off potential buyers. Instead, price your home conservatively by looking at similar houses currently on the market, says Michael Corbett, author of “Ready, Set, Sold!” Also look at the homes that aren’t selling. Chances are those owners priced their dwellings too high, he says.

“If you really want to stimulate a sale, you should under price your property by just a hair,” says Susan Singer, a New York-based real estate broker with Corcoran. Just shaving a few thousand dollars off can generate more foot traffic and create a buzz.

2. Make it inviting
There’s no faster way to turn off a potential buyer than to show them a home stuffed with kids’ toys, family knickknacks and a stinky kitty litter. Even stodgy furniture can make a property more difficult to unload. That’s why many high-end real estate agents employ professional “home stagers” when they want to guarantee a quick sale. For anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars, these folks will do everything from remove clutter and rearrange furniture to rent all new furnishings. Corcoran’s Singer says her staged properties tend to sell faster and for more money than ones that aren’t prepped in this fashion.

Fortunately, there are some inexpensive things homeowners can do on their own to attract a buyer. Whether you live in a cozy Cape Cod or a 4,000-square-foot McMansion, make your space feel as open and clean as possible. Get rid of clutter, organize the closets and remove all personal items that may make it more difficult for someone to imagine living in your house, says Corbett. See our story for more ways to make your home inviting or watch our video for advice on how to do it on your own.

Read The Full Article “Top Five Ways to Sell Your Home Fast” Here

A few good points made in that article. While the market may not be as bad as it was when that article was written, you still need to price the property right, maybe a little less than that of one that is comparable to yours in your neighborhood.

Susan also makes a good point about making sure your house is inviting and that things are put away. Another great idea for making sure your house is neat & tidy comes from Trulia:

1. Get a storage unit

You might think the easiest way to declutter your home is to shove everything into the closets. Bad idea: Anyone who tours your home is going to check out the storage spaces, and disorganized, overstuffed closets only serve as evidence that your home is lacking. Opt instead for a storage unit to house the things you won’t need while your home is on the market. The general rule? Get rid of a third of your stuff. “If you don’t use it every day, store it,” says Justin Seeby, principal at the Graham Seeby Group with Keller Williams Intown Realty in Atlanta, GA. Holiday decorations, baby gear, seasonal clothes, that bread maker you’ve never used — they can all go into storage. Bonus: If you choose a portable unit, it can be transported to your new home, making moving day a cinch.

2. Hire a professional to stage and photograph your home

A professional home stager sees your home from a buyer’s perspective — a good one understands how to highlight its strengths and soften its flaws. Your buyer’s first impression will be the listing photos, and studies show that homes with more than six listing photos online are twice as likely to be viewed by buyers. But not everyone wants their home staged (or has the money for it). Forss poses another option: “A friend can stand at the curb and walk through the house with fresh eyes to offer their perspective on decluttering, and then the agent can go through from a marketing standpoint. Either way, staging of some sort is necessary on almost every home, no matter how beautiful it is.”

Read The Full Article “How to Sell Your Home Fast in 9 Easy Ways” Here

Using a portable storage unit is great advice to help make moving day a whole lot easier! We also like point #2 of hiring a photographer. You may be able to stage your house yourself, if you are good at decorating and keeping up with the latest trends, but taking really good photos is another thing. Some people are good at taking photos, but just using the camera on your smart phone isn’t going to cut it here. You have heard the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, and when posting photos of your property online or any other advertising platform, you want to show your house in the best light possible.

Summing It Up

You can sell your house yourself by owner, provided you follow the above steps. It doesn’t have to be a long drawn out process, as long as you get your house ready before you put it on the market. Price it right, tidy up the home and either put things away or store them and make sure you have professional photos taken to make your house look the best it possibly can to potential buyers.

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