I want to sell my home (house/apartment) myself, what are the eight things I need to know?
Homes do not sell themselves. This doesn’t mean you need a professional to sell one, any more than you need a professional to cook dinner, but it does mean that if you choose to do it yourself, there will be work involved:
1) You need to have high-quality professional photos taken. This doesn’t mean you can take them with a good camera. You need a real estate photographer who carries accessory lights, and knows how to make shallow rooms look like they have depth. It’s a few hundred bucks. Spend it. P.S. draw floorplans too.
2) You need to make sure those photos reach your intended customers. If you’re using a cheapie listing service to get into the local MLS, double-check on them once the listing goes up to make sure you get what you’re promised. And be prepared to buy advertising in the local paper.
3) You need to make sure the customers who like those photos can get into your home. That means you need to be able to show it, a lot. Depending on your market, you should expect an offer to come from every ten showings.
4) You need to be realistic about price. If you aren’t getting offers, your vision of what your home is worth, and the market’s vision, may be different. You can give it more time, if you’ve got time to burn, but eventually those two things have to align. Wishes aren’t contracts.
5) You need to make sure that those customers who make offers for your home can actually pay for it. It’s not unusual, in New York City, for a buyer’s agent to send over evidence of down payment availability and mortgage pre-approval when submitting an offer. You’re within your rights to request the same things.
6) You need to make sure that when an offer is accepted, a deal is facilitated. This means someone needs to shove the paperwork around, and be nice to the other side, and pay attention to the details. Do discount brokers do this? Heck, many full-service brokers don’t do this. Other people’s failure to be good at this = why I have a job.
But I digress, you’ll certainly need to do it. This is one of the keys to a sale so if you don’t have time for it, hire a broker.
7) You need to make sure your interests are protected, so you need to hire a capable attorney. Note that many lawyers who will do a perfectly good job of looking out for your interests while reading contracts don’t believe that their job involves facilitation. If you try to dump it on them, you may be disappointed.
You need to get all this done within a reasonable timeframe. Your local board of realtors should be able to tell you what the average days on market — from listing to close — are in your area. If you need to beat the average, trim your price a little.
There we go, that’s your free course on selling your home yourself, or FSBO. If you want more advanced tips, you can buy my new book here.