Home Selling Tips

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Selling your home by owner can be greatly rewarding with a few simply tips to set yourself up for success. We offer regularly-updated tips and techniques to help you sell your home by owner successfully. You may also want to check out our Step-By-Step Seller's Guide for an easy to follow guide to the home-selling process.

Getting your house ready to sell is one of the most important and often overlooked steps in selling your home. Here are a few easy things to remember to get you home market-ready.

• Give your interior a makeover by replacing dated faucets, light fixtures, and the handles and knobs on your kitchen cabinets.
• Remove the clutter especially in hiding spots! People will look behind your doors, in closets and crawl spaces. Throw away dead plants, make sure storage boxes are neatly stowed away, and keep counters cleared.
• Clean your carpets or replace worn out flooring. Renting a deep cleaner from you local hardware or grocery store may be a wise investment for high-traffic areas. Clean any surface floors to a shine and make sure to remove those dust bunnies.
• Give your home a fresh coat of paint in any rooms that may need it.  Make sure to choose colors that are fitting to your home's time period or leave potential buyers with a blank canvas with which to work.
• Brighten things up by cleaning windows and mirrors, polishing fixtures, and switching low watt bulbs to high watt styles. Also, turn on all lights in your home even for daytime showings.  
• Enhance your curb appeal by painting the front door, tidying up the landscaping, and sweeping walkways and porches.

TIP 2: Know the Value of Your Home

Knowing the value of your home can make determining a fair selling price that much easier. Here are a few simple ways to find the fair market value of your home for little or no cost.

• Conduct your own research of comparable homes by collecting real estate flyer's of neighborhood homes.  Also, become familiar with homes prices in your local newspaper or real estate magazines. Be sure to pay attention to the age of homes, features, and school districts. 
• Get a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) compiled by a real estate agent at no charge.  This will give you a good idea of what your asking price should be in comparison to other homes for sale and let someone else do the work for you!
• Have your home professionally appraised.  This service is usually fairly affordable and will give you a very good estimate on a realistic listing price that is reasonable and competitive.
• Use an online service such as Zillow.com to calculate the market value of your home based on your square footage, number of bedrooms and baths, homes sold recently in your neighborhood and more.

TIP 3: Price Your Home Right

Beside knowing the fair market value of your home, it is important to know how to price you home to sell.  This means not only making sure you get as much as you can for your home, but using the ideas below to make a smart pricing decision.

• Leave room for negotiation since buyers like to know they are getting a good deal. If you list your house for $200,000 and refuse to negotiate an offer received of $195,000, your potential buyer may not feel that you are a willing participate. If $200,000 is your goal for the sale, set your price at about $210,000 to $219,000. If you are negotiating a contract and come down to your desired price of $205,000 - then you are happy and the buyer is pleased that he got a good deal.
• Test the real estate waters and be sure your home is priced competitively. Buyers do comparative shopping and act fast on a good deal. A good priced home will attract attention and generate activity from home buyers and brokers. If you aren't seeing any traffic from buyers, it is a clear indication that the listing price is not satisfying the marketplace test.
• Consider the additional costs of selling your home (or preparing your home to sell) such as improvements, repairs and advertising. Include in your budget incentives. For instance, you may want to offer a "cash back at closing carpet allowance" if your carpet is old or a non-neutral color. People love to know they will get cash back at closing.

TIP 4: Market Your Home Effectively

The phrase "if you build it, he will come" may be true in the movies, but selling you home takes a dedicated marketing effort to drive buyers to your front door.

• Online advertising on AreaByOwner.com as well as other for sale by owner websites will give your home maximum exposure.  Not only will your home information be easily maintained and professional looking, but a very targeted group of home buyers will be browsing for your listing.
• Professional yard signs will help passer-bys notice that your home is for sale.  Be sure to indicate contact information on your sign and leave plenty of printed flyers.  Directional signs posted at major intersections are also a great idea to drive traffic to your location more easily. 
• Newspaper ads and Print ads are usually expensive, but it can be an effective tool in selling your real estate. If you do list your home in the local paper, be sure to list your AreaByOwner.com direct link website address so interested buyers can browse your home for more information.
• Bulletin Boards can be an easy way to share you home.  Place your printed flyers on every bulletin board you know of - grocery stores, your job, colleges and universities, libraries, your church or gym.
• Have open houses instead of showing your home each time someone calls and wants to see it.  Several times a month, schedule a formal "Open House". Set snacks out on a table with full-color flyers. Put up big red open house signs and advertise the open house in the local newspaper.  You may also want to leave a prerecorded message for when you are away from the phone with your upcoming open house.
• Word of mouth can go a long way in marketing your home and getting the word out. Tell your friends, fellow employees, relatives and members of groups you belong to. A lot of times people haven't given much thought to pursuing another home until they find out that yours is up for sale.