The Seven Easy Steps to Selling Your House

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” This saying has never been truer than with selling your house. Selling a home yourself, or anything worthwhile for that matter, isn’t really easy. But the savings you can achieve by doing the legwork yourself can save you tens of thousands of dollars. For example, by avoiding a typical 6% real estate commission on a $300,000 house, you can save as much as $18,000. As a seller, that is your hard-earned equity you would otherwise be giving away.

But how can a homeowner manage the home selling process? Preparation. With education and preparation, even something that looks difficult at first becomes easy. Here are the seven easy steps.

1. Educate yourself.

If you haven’t bought and sold a house at least a couple times before, reading books and online material about how to sell your home is essential. Our Books page has several suggestions on top rated For Sale by Owner books from leading authors.

2. Prepare your home.

This is where preparation truly pays off; particularly in the price a buyer is willing to pay for your house. To sell a home fast and for a good price, it must be as close to perfect as possible. It’s that simple.

You should look at your house as objectively as you can, plus solicit the opinion of friends and family, and even a professional home stager. Does it need new paint? Better landscaping? Neutral colors? Crown molding? Or even an updated kitchen or bathroom? It’s surprising how some of the lowest cost items can make the biggest difference in price and selling fast. Two of the best things to do are low-cost front yard landscaping and new interior paint.

The cheapest thing you must do? Clean and de-clutter. You should clean your house so well that you are afraid to disturb anything because of how great it looks. Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes – when someone walks through your house, it must look and smell so wonderful they should wonder if someone really lives there.

Additionally, now is the time for filling out the seller’s disclosure, not when you get an offer.  Fill out a seller’s disclosure form early in the process and you won’t be scrambling later.

3. Price your home to sell.

Many home sellers price their home too high. A lot of real estate agents will tell you this is the number one mistake that a For Sale by Owner (FSBO) home seller will make. Take time to assess your home’s market value carefully. Online resources such as Zillow’s Zestimate® or a home appraisal are good first steps.

The best thing to do is watch your local neighborhood (within a few blocks of your house) for comparable listings and sales. If there are similar houses in your neighborhood for sale, attend an open house and assess the condition and price. If a neighbor’s home recently sold, try to find out the price it sold for by asking a neighbor or a local real estate agent. If you want a very accurate assessment of your home’s market value, pay for a local home appraiser to appraise your home.

Once you have a few data points, you will be able to zero in on a price for your home. Ultimately it’s an educated guess based on your market research and intuition.

4. Market your home.

Once your house is completely prepared and looking perfect, you need to market it. Pull out all the stops. Since you are selling without an agent, this is where you need to shine. One note of caution: make sure you are familiar with state and federal regulations about what you can and can’t say when marketing your home. Discrimination based on race, gender, sex and several other factors is against the law. The Books about home selling can be good guides for what is permissible.

 

• Create a compelling listing. Make sure all of the selling features of your house are mentioned – hardwood floors, granite counter tops, updated plumbing – anything that a buyer would find desirable or places your home above other houses in the neighborhood should be highlighted.

• Take great photos. To sell a house, a picture is worth more than 1,000 words. And you need more than just one picture. With home photos, more is better. Make sure to include quality, staged photos of every significant room in the house, plus outside amenities. Always include photos of the kitchen and bathrooms, as buyers can be wary of home listing photos that are missing those two important rooms, asking themselves “is there a reason the rooms were left out?”

• Get feedback. You need objective feedback on your listing to make sure everything looks great. Did you miss highlighting a certain feature? Do the photos look good? Is the house priced right? This is where YigDigs can help tremendously through the use of the “YigDig it” Ratings and Reviews. The YigDigs community of experts can give you constructive feedback on your listing – curb appeal, value (is it priced right?), and neighborhood (is it close to shopping and other amenities?) Top rated homes are then displayed on the home page, giving your home maximum visibility and marketing value.

• Yard signs. A professional looking yard sign is an important signal to a buyer that not only is your house is for sale, but it is being sold professionally. In this case, by you, rather than a real estate agent. YigDigs yard signs are high-quality signs designed to stand out in the crowd.

  
  

• Flyers. Having printable flyers on your online listing, and printed flyers in a brochure box attached to your yard sign, are a must. Buyers will want something physically in their hand to carry with them to see your house, or to take with them when they leave. YigDigs makes this easy by automatically creating PDF flyers for you.

•  MLS and other Listing Sites.Getting your home listed in the local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and other listing sites like Yahoo Real Estate and Trulia is the best way to drive traffic to your listing and make buyers aware that your home is for sale. The MLS is the main place people will look for homes for sale. Posting to the MLS is only possible by a real estate agent, and once again, this is a perfect place that YigDigs can help. We work with local agents to post your listing in the MLS for a flat fee, saving you thousands of dollars.

• Social Media. Social media is much more than a buzzword. Our own surveys show that over 60% of home buyers and sellers use social media – Facebook, MySpace, Linked-in, and Twitter being the most widely used. Therefore social media can be an important factor in selling your home. Reaching out to friends, family, and colleagues through social networking when selling a home is highly beneficial – and not much work on your part. You may already be connected to someone that is looking for a house in your neighborhood and just not know it. Why not send them the link to your listing on YigDigs?

5. Receive and negotiate offers the smart way.

Working with an interested buyer will be a different process depending on whether or not they are working with a buyer’s agent. If they are not, you negotiate directly with the buyer. If they are represented by an agent, you will be talking to the agent rather than the buyer.

When a buyer (or buyer’s agent) expresses interest in your home, it’s important to have a steady and confident demeanor when talking on the phone or in person with them. For example, if asked “We are thinking about putting in an offer on your home. Do you have any other offers?” It isn’t a good idea to say “No! We haven’t had any offers or calls in two weeks!” That won’t get you a good offer.

Rather, an answer like “Not at this time.” Or if another person has expressed interest in making an offer soon, say so. “We definitely have interest and have been told to expect an offer, but I don’t have it in my hands yet”. There is nothing better for receiving and negotiating offers than a little competition.

Work with interested parties fairly and accurately at all times, and remember that they will look for nuances in your voice to give them hints on what type of offer to make. Don’t be desperate! Confidence is the key. Expect that you will need to counter-offer, maybe twice or more.

You will also want to make sure a home buyer is pre-approved by a lender. In addition, always consider the full offer, not just the sales price. Are they asking for closing costs to be paid by you? Will they be making a healthy 20% down payment? or something less?

After you accept an offer you are now “under contract”. Once this happens, as a seller, usually most of your work is done. Now the real work begins for the buyer or buyer’s agent for the time period between contract acceptance and the closing date – usually 30 to 45 days after the contract is signed and given to the Title Company or attorney.

A home inspection and possibly termite inspection will need to be completed. These are both typically arranged and paid for by the buyer. The mortgage lender will begin to “draw docs” (create the lender documentation) and will likely order a survey and property appraisal. Once again these are typically paid for by the buyer.

Based on the results of the inspection, the buyer or buyer’s agent may ask for repairs, or concessions on price. You will negotiate what works best for both of you, and if needed, you will contract with a professional vendor to complete repairs on the house.

If you make it past the inspections and any possible re-negotiation, most often the deal will stay on track to close. If not, don’t worry – it happens to everybody, and there will be other offers. But likely, you are headed for the closing table.

As a seller, in this final closing period you don’t have to do much. Most of the work is for the buyer or buyer’s agent in working with the lender, making sure they are approved for the loan and the lender documentation is ready in time for the closing date.

At the closing, you will sign a lot of paperwork. Do not be alarmed – this is normal. Once you finish signing, you will usually receive a check which represents your equity in the home from the Title Company or attorney, minus fees and any commissions owed to the buyer’s agent. This is the moment where all of your hard work pays off – the check! It should be anywhere from a few thousand, to tens of thousands more than if you had used a real estate agent.

Getting to the closing table is the goal, and YigDigs can help.