When it comes time for you to move and sell your home, you can use a real estate agent, who will arrange open houses for you, take prospective buyers on a tour of the home, and create postings publicizing the sale of the home. However, they will also require a small percentage of the total sale of the home as compensation.
You can also choose to sell your home yourself, which means you cut out the middle man and also save money. Although this may seem like the better option, selling a home by yourself isn't as easy as you think.
This guide will help you navigate the process of selling your home by yourself, and provide you with tips and advice on what you need to do to make your home more appealing to buyers.
List your home
The first step is advertising your home to prospective buyers. This means you'll have to put your marketing skills to the test, and the first part of your marketing plan will be to get your home listed anywhere you can.
Real estate companies generally have the upper hand when it comes to this because they can easily print their listings in brochures that get passed around to local businesses, on their website, and on all of the major real estate websites. The good news is that you can too, for the most part. Many of the popular real estate websites on the Internet like Zillow and Trulia allow homeowners to create a listing on the site.
Since there is no better place to be visible these days then on the Internet, creating listings on these real estate websites is your best option at attracting prospective homebuyers searching for available homes in your area. Since these websites attract a large amount of traffic, how you list your home is just as important as where you list it. It's absolutely essential for you to create an attractive listing that will not only draw interest towards your home, but will make prospective buyers want to come out and take a look in person.
Creating the perfect online real estate listing isn't easy, and there are a lot of potential mistakes that one can make when attempting to list their home on one of these websites.
Making your home appeal to buyers
On real estate websites like Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com, one of the main mistakes homeowners make is including poor pictures of their homes that don't attract buyers or appear unprofessional and hastily done.
Sometimes it's surprising how little care goes into these pictures, which are basically the seller's first chance to make a good impression and reel in a buyer to take a look at it in person. So what are some of the ways you can use these pictures as a chance to attract potential buyers and make your home look as appealing as possible?
- Clean up your mess! You won't believe how many listings exist that show a messy house with clothes strewn all over the floor, unmade beds, food left on the kitchen counters and dirty carpets. None of that is appealing to a potential homebuyer--and leads them to believe that if your home is that messy maybe you have fallen behind with your upkeep on maintenance as well. This problem can be resolved pretty easily by simply cleaning up when you know that you're going to be taking pictures to post on a real estate website.
- There's no such thing as too many pictures. Many of the listings have an incomplete set of pictures. For example, there will be only pictures of one of the bedrooms and no pictures of the kitchen, or too many pictures of the kitchen and no pictures of the living room. The best way to attract potential buyers is to draw them in with as many pictures as you can--that way you'll entice them and they'll want to come and see the property in person.
- Avoid bad lighting and bad angles that can mislead the buyer. Sometimes, sellers will post pictures of certain rooms at odd angles that make the room seem bigger than it is. This is actually a pretty common trick used by professional real estate photographers and it's misleading for prospective buyers. Avoid these odd angles, as well as angles that fail to show the entire room. Also avoid dim lighting and make sure the room is always lit by natural light. Even if you're not a professional photographer, it's still possible to take great appealing pictures of your home.
Hire a real estate lawyer
Selling your home by yourself is a great way to really become acquainted with the real estate process. It's certainly a job that you can handle yourself, if you're up to the task. However, there are some aspects of the process that you'll need outside help for, and one of those things is the legal aspect.
Selling a home requires a lot of paperwork, especially legal paperwork, which is necessary when the title of a home is signed over from person to another. For these proceedings, you'll need to hire a real estate lawyer who can guide you through the process and help you navigate the sometimes murky waters of real estate law and what you need to know before the sale is finalized.