Immobilienmakler Fan

Selling your home on your own is a challenge in today’s market. If you decide to go it on your own, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

Preparing the House

Start by preparing your home for sale. Clean, get rid of clutter, pack up items you don’t use and maybe having a garage sale to get rid of the rest.

Appearance Does Matter

The outside appearance of your home is as important as the inside. It’s the first thing that buyer’s see so you want to make a good impression. Make sure your lawn is manicured. Fix any broken gates, fences or windows. Plant trees, trim shrubs and add some flowers.

The inside of your home should be warm and inviting. Freshen the home by repainting, cleaning or installing new flooring or carpets and maybe new appliances, if your budget allows. The home should be spic and span inside. Removing clutter will give the home a more spacious feel.

Price Your Home Correctly

Price is the most important factor to consider when selling a home especially in today’s tough market where you are competing with distressed properties. You will need to price the home at or slightly below market to attract a qualified buyer. You must be motivated to sell. This is not a market to test. Only serious sellers are able to compete for buyers.

Offer Incentives

Offer buyers incentives such as seller financing, paying their closing costs, prepaying taxes and offering credits or making repairs. Remember, the competition is fierce out there. The more you sweeten the deal, the better.

Advertising

Set aside a budget for advertising your home. Will you use signage, newspaper ads, conduct an open house, and advertise the home on the Internet? These are all good ways to expose your home. There are several websites that owners can advertise their homes for sale other than the MLS. You want to attract as many buyers as you can. The Internet is a great place to advertise your home because half of all home buyers today start their home search on the Internet.

Talk to everyone you know and tell them your home is for sale Make up some brochure sand distribute them to local Realtors in the area who may have a buyer interested in your home. If they bring you a buyer, then offer to pay their commission.

Negotiating the Contract

If you are not going to use a Realtor, then hire a real estate attorney to help you negotiate the contract. If you cannot afford an attorney, then educate yourself on the local real estate laws, health and safety codes and disclosure laws in your area to avoid any legal problems down the road.

Remember that both parties need to walk away feeling like they each won something. Find out what is important to the buyer. Is it price, a longer or shorter closing time, do they need help with financing? This will help you with the negotiating process.

Ask the buyer to provide you with a pre-qualified letter from their lender to make sure they qualify to buy your home. If it is a cash offer, then ask for proof of funds such as a copy of a bank statement. You don’t want to tie up your property for 30 or 45 days with a buyer who is not qualified to close the deal.

Closing the Transactions

You will need to choose a title or escrow holder or attorney to close the transactions. Check around with friends, neighbors or local Realtors and get a referral. Always choose a reputable company. The title company will provide you with an estimate of your closings costs. Ask if they have a document management Internet system so that you can have access to the transaction 24/7 and share information with the buyer once you have an accepted contract. It saves time and is a great communication tool to keep everyone in the loop at all times so the closing process goes smoother.

Immobilienmakler Heidelberg

Makler Heidelberg

Selling your house without an agent my not seem all that uncommon. After all, everyone knows you can slap up a For Sale By Owner sign in your yard, put up a listing in Craigslist and the local paper, and wait for a buyer to bring a check to the title office. Simple enough right?

Well, not always.

Here’s why:

In today’s market, cash in hand buyers aren’t really interested in paying retail for property. After all, they have the cash meaning they have the negotiating advantage. And what about the first time home buyer? The bad news is, mortgage applications are at a 5 year low, meaning those that want to purchase a property conventionally are not getting their loans approved.

With the pool of buyers shrinking lower and lower, how can you sell your house, without agents or without having to sell for pennies on the dollars to cash buyer?

This is where the uncommon part comes in. There’s a little niche strategy of creative real estate called lease purchasing, or more commonly known as „rent-to-own.“

Selling this way is nothing more than setting a lease agreement for a term, which can range anywhere from 6 months to 10 years, and having an option to purchase within the lease term for a set price… usually the full retail price or the mortgage balance, whichever is higher.

Why should you even consider selling this way?

Maybe you shouldn’t.

If you have the time and equity to list your home and wait for a qualified buyer to purchase your house and cash you out… you’re probably better off doing it that way. However, if you don’t have the equity to take a discount or pay for fees and commissions, and you need immediate mortgage payment relief… this can be a great strategy.

First of all, this is not simply renting your house out to a typical renter. You will be dealing with tenant/buyers, people who want to purchase a home for them and their families, but just can’t seem to get their loan to approve. They have the income, the background, the character to be home buyers. They are just having trouble getting a conventional mortgage in this market. And this market is huge.

And unlike your usual renter, they take care of all the day-to-day maintenance as well as all the repairs and are working with their mortgage broker every month to get their loan to close. They just need some time for their paperwork to make it pass all the hurdles lenders have attached these days.

When their loan does approve, they will cash you out for the full retail price of your house or mortgage balance and you keep it all since their are no fees or commissions to pay when selling this way. And in the event they can’t get their loan to close during the lease period, you have the choice of either extending their lease giving them more time or sell it to another buyer. Either way, you get immediate mortgage relief and full price when the tenant/buyer cashes you out.

Selling in this uncommon and creative way might not be the best solution for you. And that’s OK. It’s another strategy you keep in your arsenal in case your situation changes and you need a way out of a property quickly.

Immobilienmakler Heidelberg

Makler Heidelberg

For Sale By Owner or FSBO is a word that has been floating around in increasing popularity among the real estate community. In the past, the only way that you could sell your home is by using a real estate professional such as a broker, Realtor, or other real estate professional. However, with a realtor costing a sizable portion of the sales price, more and more people are thinking about putting in the time and work into selling the home themselves. This article will talk about what FSBO means, its advantages and disadvantages, and whether it is right for you.

What is FSBO?

For Sale By Owner is a term that means that someone is selling their house without using a real estate professional. In the US there is nothing that requires you to use a real estate agent when you are buying or selling your home. However some states do require that a real estate lawyer read over the contract and that there is one at the closing table when all of the paperwork is signed. Because of this many people have started to turn towards this method and that number has been increasing in recent years. For many people a FSBO sale means that they put a yard sign up, put some online listings out there, and then conduct all of the showings themselves until someone finally buys their home. However this route can include other things like selling your home at an auction, selling directly to an investor, or even something as unusual as a house swap.

Why, And Why Not, To Use FSBO?

The savings is the biggest reason people usually decide to sell by themselves. Most real estate agents take anywhere from 5-8% of the total price that the home sells for. If you sell your home for $ 100,000, and even using the 5% fee, you will be paying $ 5,000 just to the real estate agent in the form of commissions. This is a huge chunk of money that could be used for something like a trip, college, paying off other bills, or even adding to your nest egg. Sometimes sellers think that the best person to market their home is the person that knows it best, which is themselves. Most of the good agents will usually be juggling at least a dozen listings all at one time so the agent might not be able to devote the time and attention to your sale in order for your home to sell quickly.

The biggest disadvantage of selling your home is that it takes a lot of work to accomplish. Even though it is not required it does make the process of selling a home a lot easier to use one. They have all of the contacts that are needed for the various professionals that you need involved with a home sale, plus they will usually do all of the showings. If you don't have an agent you will have to read about all of the state and local laws to ensure that you are proceeding in the best manner, and you will also have to study what type of marketing is working right now. You will have to list the home yourself and you will have to speak directly with the buyers when it comes time to have showings and for the negotiations.

Who should use FSBO?

If you have full time job and other full time commitments, then FSBO is probably not the right route for you. If you are going through a major life change, the extra work from an FSBO may only lead to more stress. If you are selling a home that is extremely unique or would yield a smaller audience of buyers, then having a real estate professional will help you find the right buyers.

On the other hand if you have the time, and are willing to put in the work, you can save yourself thousands of dollars in the home sale process.

Immobilienmakler Heidelberg

Makler Heidelberg

There are numerous real estate investor ways regarding how to sell a house by owner. Before I reveal to you how to sell a home without a real estate agent, you might want to know basic fundamentals first. As a real estate investor, I have never used a real estate agent to buy or sell any formerly lived in home. To be truthful, realtors just slow down the process, and they want too much money for doing so.

Experienced real estate investors roll their sleeves up and complete the job themselves, and most likely, at least for me, I get a quick house sale. Sure, there is always that certain home that will take longer to sell than expected, and there is usually that single house of which I presume will take a long time to sell and it sells in one day, but most of the time I sell them inside of days or a couple of weeks. I even offer an approach that sells a house in 9 days.

Did you know that approximately 80% of the homes sold are sold to individuals who currently reside in the same neighborhood? So does not it make sense to let everybody close by your neighborhood know that your property is available for purchase? It could take a little bit of work on your part, but if all goes as planned, that little bit of work may yield fast results.

For the most part FSBO’s, despite the fact that the property owner is trying to sell, many of them do not know the ways to sell a house by owner. It is my guess that most of them sell as a FSBO just because they are attempting to save the real estate agent commission. I do not blame them, but many do not know how to sell a house just like the real estate investors do it.

What I do is this: I place anywhere from 1 to 4 hand painted signs in the front yard. I then create flyers that tell anything and everything a potential buyer really should know about the home, and about how I am selling it. I affix the flyer box to the front of the house, or on a stake close to the front door. Always keep the box stuffed with flyers, do not allow it to run out of flyers like most realtor flyer boxes, and at all times make people get out of their vehicles and walk up towards the front of the house to grab a pamphlet. Why? Because, if the house is vacant, I would like to entice every potential buyer to glance in the windows just for them to get a closer look. Make certain you leave your blinds or curtains wide open.

You may not believe this, but I pay a visit to a sign shop and I obtain white blank Coroplast signs, the size of a basic realtor sign. I obtain different color paint pens from an arts and crafts store. Next, I travel to the hardware store and purchase a can of pink fluorescent paint. Lastly, I hand-paint a sign in several colors and I spray the edges with the pink fluorescent paint. It stands out like nothing you have ever seen! Plus, it is very important that potential buyers believe they are dealing with an inexperienced homeowner. Then, I place the signs in the front yard and on all four corners of the 4 major intersections near my house. I splatter the neighborhood with the signs so absolutely everyone driving within one mile of my property understands it is actually For Sale.

The pink fluorescent boarder on the white signs with all the multicolored words just draws your eyes to it. It just dares buyers to come have a look. ALWAYS place your telephone number on the signs and have arrows directing people directly to the front door. Every buyer that has purchased a house from me in the last 9 years, was found by my signs. One simple way on how to sell a house is by using hand painted signs. It works, at least for me! I normally place an advertisement in the classified section of the local paper too, but not once have I sold a property from the paper.

There are different approaches which I use for selling my homes. We will go over them in Part 2 of this 2 Part series, but how to sell a house by owner is to bring the prospective buyers right to the front door with my hand painted signs.

Recognizing how to purchase or sell a residence in this real estate market suggests doing it like a real estate investor. I would only purchase a home way under current market value. It only makes sense to discover how to purchase a „home short sale“. As for how to sell a house by owner, you need to learn about all of the real estate investor secrets.

Immobilienmakler Heidelberg

Makler Heidelberg

I am going to sell my property without an agent. This refrain is being heard more and more these days as the Internet and real estate market evolves beyond the realtor-based transaction.

FSBO is an acronym meaning for sale by owner. The advantages of selling as a FSBO are numerous. With real estate commissions of six percent, you are looking at immediately saving tens of thousands of dollars in commissions. If for some reason this does not entice you, keep in mind you can use the savings to undercut the prices of similar homes in your area. This will move your house quickly off the market and let you get on with your life.

The key to selling your property is to be prepared. First, you need to find out the value of the property by looking at comparables in your area or trying an online valuation service. Once you have the value in mind, you need to determine whether this is acceptable. You also need to determine what you are really willing to accept as a sales price once haggling is completed. Always make sure you know your bottom line and stick to it.

The next step is list the property online on a FSBO site. Over 70 percent of homebuyers now find their properties online as the realize there is no need to endlessly drive around looking at homes that they may or may not be interested in. By going online, they can see what each home offers and then visit the appropriate property.

Given the use of the Internet by buyers, it is vital that you spend the time to upload pictures with your listings. You are only going to generate interest if the buyers can actually see the property. Every site allows you to upload digital photos and you should do so. Take care to show as much of the property as possible so that you can generate leads that are truly interested in buying.

Sellers wonder if they are correct to think they can sell their property without a realtor. With the Internet revolution, it is easy to do so and save tons of money on commissions.

Immobilienmakler Heidelberg

Makler Heidelberg