Selling a house is a complicated process so you must be well prepared for the whole process. You need to ensure that you are ready and well equipped for everything required before you make this decision.
Houses for sale by owner (FSBO) have their fair share of pros but they have their cons as well and we recommend that you read about them so that you are prepared to put in the effort. Selling yourself requires a lot of dedication and time so make sure that you have them in abundance!
On the other hand, of course, there are many pros to selling yourself but only if you deal with the whole process perfectly to have the best possible sale. You can save up on the money you would have to pay to the realtor but houses sold by agents tend to sell for a higher price so this balances it out.
Now, let us begin with the top things you need to keep in mind to sell your home yourself.
Pricing
The first step for you is to decide the price you want to ask for your home. This is an extremely important step and it is crucial to get this right. You don’t want to undervalue your house as that would mean you don’t get the best price possible. On the other hand, you don’t want to overvalue it either as that could put off buyers.
To get a realistic price, you need to do thorough research. Look up prices of similar houses in the area, how much were houses sold for recently. Also, consider the area of the house, and features such as rooms, and other facilities. The condition of the house is what you want to consider next, for example, how old the house is and if it is old, has it been recently renovated or not, and does it require any urgent fixes? Locality matters too so checking the prices of houses nearby will give a decent idea of how much you can get.
You can also get an appraiser to price your house but that should be your last priority as an appraiser will charge money and the main reason for selling a house yourself is that you want to save money!
Staging house
Next, you will need to get your house ready for the market so that you can upload pictures and videos of it and so that it is ready for showing too.
The first thing we would recommend is to get a home inspection done so that you are aware of how the condition of the house is and what repairs and fixes are required. You can get some fixes done yourself if you feel it will adequately raise the price of the house.
Now, for staging, you should try to make your house look spacious so that you can present a blank canvas. That’s helpful because it will allow people to envisage how they could set up and decorate the house should they choose to buy it.
We would recommend that you clean up the house, and remove extra furniture and decorations to make it look spacious. A bit of cleaning and polishing up the house will do wonders.
For the exterior, try to make your garage and lawn tidy too. A thorough wash and trimming of the lawn should be just about enough.
You can also hire a professional company to stage your house but that would also cost money so only use this option if you feel you can not stage it yourself.
Marketing and promotions
Now that your house is ready to sell, it’s time to market it as much as possible. According to research, many houses are sold online these days so make use of every social media and real estate website to market your house. We will recommend 2-3 steps for marketing that can optimize your reach and exposure.
Create posters and ads to post online and finally this is something you won’t need to spend money on as you can find a lot of templates of real estate ads and social media graphics online which are easy to use as well. Use these to make attractive ads and posters which you can post on all the relevant places with a detailed description of the house.
After the staging of the house in the previous step, take photos of the house and make videos to give a virtual tour so people can see what the house is like. For this, we would recommend getting a professional who can shoot the pictures and videos which you can upload online as this is something that needs to be executed perfectly. If you can do this yourself very well then that is even better as you would be able to save the cost of hiring a professional.
Finally, you can also conduct an open house to promote and raise awareness but handling this all alone could be tough and hectic for you. In addition to that, research also shows that it is very rare for houses to be sold through an open house. People who are willing to buy will often contact you for a private showing.
Dealing with offers and negotiations
Gradually, offers will start coming on, and dealing with buyer’s agents could be a bit difficult unless you have experience in this yourself as well. If you have multiple offers coming in, you will have the upper hand and will be able to get the price you want. You must know how to review the offers as well.
You could get a real estate attorney to deal with the offers as they can provide you with contractual and legal advice and can help you close out the sale as well. They will deal with the contracts and the paperwork and this is an extremely complicated and lengthy process. You can also get them to look into the buyer’s financials and their proposed payment plan.
Finally, considering the technicalities and the complicated nature of the process and looking at how often you would need professional help, you need to make sure that you can handle all this yourself and that the pros are worth it before you decide to sell your house yourself.
If you can, then the mentioned steps will guide you through everything you need to do to sell your house. Good luck!
