They sold and saved thousands!

Who did?  Every year, thousands of home sellers save thousands of their hard-earned equity selling their homes themselves.

You can too…but, there are some things you need to know.  Let’s take a look:

Price your home right!  We all want to get top dollar for our homes when we sell them but…the market determines what it’s worth.  Over 80% of the success in marketing your home is reputed to be due to the price.  Google up sources for doing your own “comparative market analysis” or use ours above.

Then, get your home in good showing condition…de-clutter and start packing up all the small stuff that prospective buyers don’t care to see.  You’re going to be moving, so do yourself a favor and start packing up the small stuff now. You can store it in your basement or garage.  First impressions are critical!

Next, take pictures of your home inside and out but not until you have it looking great.  When you shoot a room, make sure all the unnecessary stuff is out of the picture.  Remove personal memorabilia.  Do this on a sunny day and take about ten good pictures.

Now, you need to make up brochures and complete the required disclosure document. You’ll hand these out to prospective buyers that come to see your home.  Brochures should be designed to remind the visitors about what they saw in your home.  Brochures don’t sell homes but some of the people you show your home to will have looked at many other homes…make sure they’ll remember yours.

Get a professional-looking yard sign and post.  Make sure your phone # is on the sign.  Don’t try to save a buck here…if you do, you’ll regret it.  Informed sources claim that up to 17% of homes sold are due to yard sign.

Now, get your home in the MLS!  Realtors know that this is the most effective way to market their listings.  Most do not do any other advertising.  There’s a good reason for this.  The Sunday papers have more homes advertised than any other day.  However, what most people don’t know is…less than 5% of the homes in the MLS are shown in the paper.  Newsprint has proven to be a waste of money, other than to list Open houses.  Many other tabloid publications are also ineffective and a waste of money. The huge newspaper, LA Times, has recently done away with their Sunday Realty section. That speaks to the issue.  Get your home in the MLS!                      (All this can be done for less than $500.)

So, you’re ready to start showing your home.  The next event will be a purchase agreement.  You’ll need to negotiate with the buyer.  Make certain the purchase agreement allows you to keep the earnest money if the buyer qualifies to buy your home but cancels the agreement.  This may be the hardest part for you, but if you did your homework when you priced your home, you should be able to handle the transaction.  You’d be well advised to have an attorney or a facilitator represent you though, just to be safe.

With an accepted agreement in your hands, you have to set up title work and get a “closer” to represent you, easy enough…just talk with a Title company representative and they’ll walk you through the process.

(Call or e-mail me for a # to a Title company if you need one.)

By the way, we offer a free two hour seminar to help home owners sell their homes themselves.  Just e-mail me for more information about this. (ed@metrohomesmarket.com)

Every day, home sellers are paying 5% to 7% of the sale price on their home for what is usually no more than about 20 hours of work on a Realtor’s part.  What’s wrong with that picture?  On a home selling for $300,000, that’s from $15,000 to $21,000 for what I’ve described here.  You can learn how to do this on your own or with

Technorati Tags: twin city homes,st. paul homes,mahtomedi schools,white bear lake homes,maplewood homes,FSBO,discount home sellers,short sales

limited assistance and save thousands of dollars of your equity for yourself.  It’s easier than you think.  All you need is a little guidance.

Let’s meet again on 9/8/2008 to talk about how to buy right and be financially rewarded for doing just a little work in the search process.

Ed

Metro Homes Market › Posts — WordPress

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.