Are You Smart Enough To Sell Your Own Home?

How Easy FSBO Can Be

When I tell sellers that in most states a manicurist goes to school four times longer than a real estate agent, I feel like I’m revealing to them there’s no Santa Claus. The real estate industry has been successful for years perpetuating the myth that a real estate agent is comparable in the amount of training to an accountant or a lawyer. In actual fact, my accountant went to school a lot longer than my manicurist, and so did my lawyer. This shocker is something to consider if you’re weighing the idea of selling your own home versus hiring it out.

Need more thoughts on the subject? Here are some questions to ask yourself as you make up your mind whether to take over the reins of marketing your home.

  • Do I have enough time off from work to show my property?Granted, do-it-yourself selling does take some time. The average home sale takes about 12-15 hours for showings to close and is shown eight times or less before it sells. The reason for the quick turnaround is virtual tools. A buyer looks at 20 houses online, narrows that down to typically less than five, and then decides which one of those homes he or she wants to buy. Virtual tours are perfect in this medium because it eliminates the lookie-loos and brings you serious buyers who actually make an appointment to come and see your home. A recent study showed a home is shown 8 times or less before it sells if it is priced on the market. Besides significantly narrowing down interested parties, sellers who work can schedule appointments on Saturdays or Sundays and just space showings 30 or 45 minutes apart.
  • How do I learn how to get my house ready for selling?There are some great links and TV shows like HGTV and Bravo that show you how to clean and stage your home for photos and showings. ListingDoor has its own thorough blog/checklist. With or without an agent, you’re going to need to declutter and get your home ready anyway. Sorry, agents don’t do this.
  • Am I capable of setting a price for my home?According to the National Association of Realtors 2015 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, FSBO sellers price their home more accurately than an agent. Real estate agents don’t have a special algorithm that spits out the perfect selling price. FSBOs are coming up with more accurate pricing strategies through research. It’s certainly more thorough and accurate than the measurements agents use to determine how to price homes.

There are some great tools available that can help you. Be sure to include in your determination the results of sold homes in your neighborhood. If a home sells quickly it typically sold for asking price. Also, ListingDoor furnishes its subscribers with an IntelReport that has current information available in your neighborhood. It’s actually kind of easy. It just takes about an hour to go over all the numbers. Listing Door offers a handy worksheet you can download and use for this purpose. It’s similar to that of appraisers. Just fill in the blanks and you’ll arrive at a price.

  • Is the paperwork complicated? Not at all. Forms in most states are promogated. They’re fill-in-the-blank. There are two main forms you’ll need to complete when selling your home, the purchase contract (with fill-in-the blank questions like seller’s legal name,  property address and sales price) and a seller’s disclosure (This is always filled out by the seller anyway and not the agent.) This form asks about the condition of the property. The forms are simple, but at any time, if you don’t feel comfortable with the paperwork, no biggie. Any real estate attorney can help you usually for less than $200 to $250.

 Most of the other forms are to indemnify the real estate agent, should he or she not do her job. Many sellers make the mistake of thinking there’s a big stack of documents similar to when they bought their home. Those are the bank’s documents. Yes, you did have several documents when you were borrowing money for the mortgage, but there are just a few when it comes time to pay it back.

  • What if I’m not a good negotiator?The beauty of it is, negotiations have gotten easier. That’s because there is so much accurate information online. Most negotiations are pared down to a discussion of two or three items on a contract. That’s it. The three main negotiating items in a real estate transaction are the purchase price, the moving date, and repairs. You would negotiate repairs, a move-in date, and price with or without a realtor. Can you handle those items? Sure you can!

What do you think? Do you have what it takes to sell your own home? Are you smart enough to declutter and clean up your home? Do you have the time to show it eight times or less?  Is it worth your time not having to pay an agent commission? Let’s find out. Take your commission, divide it by 15 hours. You’re capable of filling out a couple of blanks on forms. Remember, you can always spring for a real estate attorney.

The reason why selling your own home has become so popular and so much easier than it was even three years ago is because there are so many amazing tools available to make the job so much simpler. One of them is ListingDoor. We build your listing for you. In other words, we handle all the marketing materials. And let me tell you, great marketing materials go hand-in-hand with bringing in a higher sale price.

Then there’s the question of how to let buyers know your home is on the market.  ListingDoor takes care of that too. We push it out to all the big websites where buyers are looking for homes. Our listing packages are customized for your home, 100 percent. No real estate advertisements. Websites are cluttered with real estate advertising today. That means you need to stand out from the pack with nothing in the way that will detract from that attention.

Buyers want information and they want it immediately. Research has shown that if a buyer doesn’t get an answer within 15 seconds disinterest sets in. I believe this is why realtors rank lower than politicians and just above bankers in Gallop polls. Buyers must also run the gauntlet past a receptionist, past being placed on hold, and then have to call back because the agent is out to lunch.

With Listing Door you get a mobile-friendly website where buyers just have to enter the number in their smartphone and boom, they’re looking at a virtual tour. They learn the price of your home and everything they want to know immediately.  Real estate firms don’t do that. They send buyers to their big website, which is nothing but a big supermarket of homes. Your home is used as a lead magnet.

So there it is, marketing your home really is just that simple. ListingDoor’s drag-and- drop technology automates everything, from picking up your marketing materials at your local FedEx usually within 48 hours, about the time the building of your website is complete! ListingDoor makes selling your own home and easy FSBO experience!


Want a free step-by-step guide for professionally selling your home (and keeping all the profits)?

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