Sell Your House Yourself

Save Thousands of dollars

What Is A For Sale By Owner

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For sale by owner real estate sign and beautiful house
Sell Your House Yourself

It sounds obvious and I guess it really is. What is a for sale by owner? It’s something being sold by the person or entity that owns it.

Mostly though when someone hears or thinks about a For sale By Owner it means a house for sale. A house for sale by the person that owns it or more specifically without the help of a real estate broker.

Why would someone want to go through that pain?

Why A For Sale By Owner?

The number one reason a person sells their house by themselves is to save money. You could consider it making money since your essentially paying yourself rather than an agent.

What’s The Cost

Selling your home yourself without an agent saves you money but costs you work, and time. In economics there is a term called opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is defined as “the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen”.

In the case of selling your house yourself the question is what is your time worth? is there something you could be doing that is more valuable than the time it will involve to sell your home? That will depend on the price of your house, what kind of deal you could make with a real estate agent and how much money you make, or your net worth.

The price of hiring a real estate agent like myself is very expensive and it amazes me when people don’t blink at the price. For instance if I “list” your $300,000 home and charge the what consumers consider normal rate you’ll pay me $18,000. Did you catch that? $18,000. You can do the math or I can tell you that’s 6% of the sale price.

Think for a minute what you could do with $18,000.

In a sellers market like the we’re in now, 2019 going into 2020, a house sells really fast as long as it’s priced right. Often the next day or sometimes even the same day. When you factor in that most home buyers are finding the homes they want to see online themselves you have to ask yourself if you really need an agent. Home buyers are searching real estate themselves on sites like Zillow and Trulia. It’s free to advertise your for sale by owner on many online real estate portals like Zillow.

As far as the monetary aspect it can cost nothing at all for the actual marketing. You may need to spend some money getting ready to sell but the sale itself is not that difficult.

How To For Sale By Owner

There are a million and one sites and blog posts on the internet that will give you the basic steps to sell a house. If you want or need more detail I can help you with that by teaching you the same thing I teach other agents. The best practices to squeeze the most money possible out of a home sale.

There is enough information on my site here to get you through it for free.

Whatever you decide to do I know for a fact that in the end, when it’s all said and done, you will be very pleased with yourself.

Now just to figure out what to do with all that money.

Joel

The Truth Behind the Success of FSBO’s

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Easily sell your home yourself

I am a licensed real estate agent in the state of Kansas. Personally I believe a homeowner can easily sell their home themselves, or sell their home FSBO (For Sale By Owner). What do you think? The real estate industry would have you believe it’s damn near impossible. The stats for successful for sale by owners according to the real industry are around 8%. That seems low. What is the truth behind the success of FSBO’s.

First, way back in 1981, before we had the internet in our homes, the percentage of successful FSBO’s was 21%. That’s very believable and I would expect that the number in 2018 would be even higher. But it’s lower? That doesn’t make any sense. It’s so much easier to sell a house these days. In fact, if priced right and properly prepared for market, homes are selling themselves. Literally!

What I mean by that is with all the real estate sites that are available for public use FSBO’s should be easier than ever to market, right? Well, they are, trust me on this one.

Consumers get online these days to look for homes themselves on sites like Zillow, Trulia, and homes.com just to name a few. Home sellers can go directly to these sites and market their homes themselves. In fact a lot of Realtors do just that trying to avoid paying commissions to other agents, go figure.

Home buyers are often shopping before they approach a real estate agent for assitance. Many of my clients prefer to look at homes themselves and then send them to me. Yes, I know it sounds backwards but it’s what’s happening. Consumers are shopping online for homes on their own. Real estate agents are useful for unlocking doors and filling out paperwork.

So where do these numbers about successful FSBO’s come from.

It’s actually a very slick play on semantics, and not dishonest. The industry grabs the numbers by only counting homes that have been sold by owners with absolutely no help or involvement from a real estate agent.

What I mean is…

  • Some FSBO’s end up using a buyers agent because the buyer had a contract or “agency agreement” with a brokerage. (More on that in a future post, and it’s not nice) Those sellers still sold the house themselves. They attracted a buyer, the buyer viewed the property, liked it and wrote an offer. Those sellers still saved thousands of dollars in commissions but in fact ended up having someone to do all the contract and closing work for half the price.
  • Sellers sometimes want to get their listing on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and there are services now that will do that for a few hundred dollars. Yes, the same thing you may pay another agent several thousand dollars for. The industry does not consider those FSBO’s. But who cares about semantics right? We care about saving money and putting it to better use.
  • What if you used a Realtor to help you price your house? You know, interview a Realtor, or two,  with the assumption that you might list with them so they give you a price analysis? Or what if you called up a Realtor and got some free advice? Would that be considered a true FSBO?  Again, who cares. It’s still a For Sale By Owner and you still saved thousands of dollars.

Those low numbers are thrown out there without an explanation for a reason. To scare you. To make you think twice. To stop you.

Don’t be fooled. It’s really not that difficult to sell a house once you know how.

Joel

p.s. If you have questions about the process you can join the discussion at  fb DIY Real Estate group

p.p.s.  For an in depth complete guide to learning how to sell your home yourself and get the most possible money click here!

How Disruption Will Happen in Real Estate

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How disruption will happen in real estate and how it will save you money. Disruption is the catchphrase of the times.  The word itself has almost run it’s course and is hardly relevant anymore.

The world is changing so fast that’s it’s not so much disruption as simply massive inevitable  change. Change in the ride share business-Uber replacing taxis. Change in where we sleep when vacationing-AirB&B replacing hotels. Change in how we watch movies-Netflix replacing the video store. Change in real estate business-Artificial intelligence  replacing real estate agents.

Disruption in real estate -Uber

It’s going to happen. The real estate business is going to change radically. No one knows yet what that change is going to be but it is happening now. Investors are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in startups trying to do just that. To disrupt the real estate business.

Agents are becoming irrelevant. The general public hasn’t caught on yet in masse. But they will. Homeowners are starting to wonder what they get for their money. Those huge commissions they pay when buyers are finding homes online on their own.

The problem with the startups trying to dislodge real estate agents is they still cost consumers money. Still quite bit of money. Some are trying to make it “easier” to sell  home but still relatively expensive. Others have adopted the buy low sell high technique but that doesn’t make much sense for consumers. What does make sense is for someone selling their home keeping their money and actually making a profit.

An agents marketing these days consist of putting homes online, where consumers are looking. A task that can easily be performed by just about anyone . Seriously, it’s not rocket science.

While all these slick expensive startups are searching for the magic bullet I believe disruption will come from the source, the consumer. The guy selling his house figuring out he can do it himself and save thousands of dollars. I believe that’s how disruption in the real estate industry will occur. When the general public figures out how they can easily sell their homes themselves.

Find out how you can easily sell your home yourself.

Joel

 

 

Consider Replacing Your Old Furniture

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Consider replacing your furniture. Think about removing or replacing old worn out or outdated furnishings. Your favorite recliner with the cup holder and the faux leather ripped seat may be special to you but to a buyer viewing your home it is an eyesore. That old chipped “antique” table that needs refinishing can still be used …but in your new home. For now get it out of sight.

Furniture

If the matching furniture doesn’t work do something about it. Break up your sets. Old dated furniture can easily become something eclectic with a little rearranging and maybe a small addition or two. If needed borrow some pieces or even rent. Look through magazines and professionally staged homes for ideas. it’s important your house looks comfortable, livable and generic. By generic I mean it has to appeal to anyone and everyone.

You may want to consider consulting with a professional staging company for design direction. It’s OK to rent furnishings. Remember, you want to create an inviting home that will have broad appeal to a wide range of buyers.

I can literally see the difference in faces of buyers when we walk into a home with old ratty or outdated furnishings. It makes the house drab. The buyers have a hard time getting past the “decoration”. Furniture can be a very personal thing. Earlier posts and advice has been to depersonalize. Furniture is a great place to start.

The title is of this article contains “replacing” but often you can simply get rid of excess stuff.  Put your extra furniture in storage.  For instance if there is matching furniture and too much of it take the larger pieces out. You want the house to be sparsely furnished with smaller pieces to give the impression of larger spaces.

There’s nothing wrong with matching furniture itself as long as it looks nice and doesn’t crowd.

Make your For sale By owner shine and it will sell.

Save tons of money by doing it yourself!