Xcountrymove

The first question you need to ask yourself is do you have enough time to sell your home. Let me clarify this. When I ask if you have enough time, I'm referring to how much time do you have before you have move out of your current home? People move for a number of reasons, some desirable and some not-so desirable. If you have to move quickly, you probably want to hire a real estate agent. If you have a few months, you might want to try and sell your home by owner. Both times I have sold my house FSBO, I have had roughly a 2 month cushion. If I would have had less time, I probably would have hired an agent. Selling your home, regardless how you do it, can add a lot of stress to an already stressful life. If you are on a tight timeline and try and sell your house by owner, you may be biting off more than you can chew to save some money. This is why sufficient time is my number one consideration.

So lets say you have plenty of time to sell your home. The next question you have to ask is how sellable is my house? I think this question can be easily answered, here are some considerations:

1. Do you live in a desirable area? Lets see, is your house in a good school district or does your neighborhood make the 10:00 news for the wrong reasons?

2. Are there other houses for sale in your neighborhood? A good way to generate traffic for your house is to put your for sale sign close to other for sale signs (hopefully from real estate agents). Let other people do the heavy lifting for you.

3. Is your house the most expensive in the neighborhood? You have probably heard the saying that you never want to have the most expensive house on the block, well, this is almost always true. Normally, the more expensive your house relative to the ones surrounding it, the harder it is to sell. If this is your situation, you might need an agent.

4. Is your house in good condition? Do you have a fresh coat of paint on the shutters or are they ready to fall off? Is the grass cut and are the bushes trimmed or do you have tumbleweeds rolling though the front lawn? Do you have Berber carpeting or shag carpeting from the 60s? I think you see where I am going with this. I will go into greater detail about basic home improvements in a different Blog.

5. How much are you asking for your home? If your house costs $750,000, you need to attract a different type of buyer. These buyers always have agents and these agents are used to dealing with certain types of selling agents. I guess what I am trying to say is that the more expensive your house, the more difficult it is to sell by owner.

Well, we have covered the fist two steps in successfully selling your house by owner. As you can see, it is all about asking yourself some questions and then answering them honestly. I will cover the remaining FSBO steps in the days to come.