The best reason to sell a Lakeland house by owner is the bundle of money you can save on real estate commissions. Commissions can cost up to 7 percent of your home’s sales price. That’s a lot of money.
Before you take on the task of selling your house without a realtor, understand that you will have to commit 100% of your effort and a large part of your time if you expect to get results.
You will have to put on the realtor’s hat and do all the work you would expect a realtor to do on your behalf. That includes taking pictures of your house, marketing, responding to buyer’s inquiries, scheduling appointments, showing your house, negotiating the sale and seeing it through closing.
If you feel up to the challenge, continue reading. We will explain to you the exact steps you need to take to get your home ready to sell, point you to valuable resources to market your house and share pro selling tips that will increase your odds of a successful sale.
At the end of this article we’ll share an alternative available to you, if you decide that you do not want to sell your house FSBO nor want to pay a real estate commission.
Let’s dive in!
Prep your Lakeland house
Whether you’re selling a house by owner or through a real estate agent, you need to get your house ready to show. Take a critical look at your entire house from a buyer’s perspective. Work from the outside in.
- Clean and remove weeds from your yard.
- Point and power wash your sidewalk, walkways and front entrance stairs.
- Replace or repaint your front door
- Secure loose handrails
- Replace old or rusted front door hardware
- Clean and fasten gutters
- Clean and replace broken windows
- Prune overgrown bushes, hedges and tree limbs
- Reseed and mow your lawn
- Add attractive flowers and shrubs to both the front and backyard
- Thoroughly clean in crawl spaces and behind detached garage and sheds
- Replace missing or torn roof shingles
- Once you’ve finished the outside of your home continue inside. Start by decluttering your house. This will serve two purposes. It will help create the stage for eye-catching photographs and give your house a more spacious feel. If necessary, rent storage for those items you wish to take with you to your new home.
- Remove knickknacks and excess furniture from your main living areas.
- Organize and clear out excess items from your closets and pantry room
- Remove items from your porch, foyer, or mudroom that impedes the comfortable flow of traffic in and out of the house
- Clean out your basement and attic
- After decluttering your house, it’s the perfect time to make those repairs that you may have been putting off. Carefully inspect the interior of the house and fix anything you think may put off a buyer.
- Then proceed to clean the entire house. If necessary:
- Shampoo your carpets
- Clean your windows
- Dry clean drapes
- Paint drabby rooms
- Clean under your bathroom and kitchen sinks
- Clean around your kitchen exhaust fans
- Clean around HVAC ducts
- Deep clean those appliances that are included in the sale
- Replace your dog’s beds and mats
Take Great Photos
It cannot be overstated that quality photos are key in attracting buyers and making the phone ring.
Fortunately, there is no need to buy an expensive camera or equipment. You can take perfectly good pictures with an average smart phone.
By decluttering and cleaning your house, you will have set the stage to ensure taking quality photos. Follow the steps below to make your photos stand out.
- Take pictures of the exterior of your house on a slightly cloudy day to avoid bright spots or shadows.
- Take pictures of the front of your house at a slight angle to create more depth and make the house appear larger.
- Take indoor pictures on a bright sunny day when your home gets plenty of natural light
- We are accustomed to see the world in landscape rather than portrait. It’s preferable that you take landscape pictures with your camera. This will help you get a more accurate feel for the rooms in your house.
- When taking pictures indoors, emphasize each room’s best feature.
- Prior to uploading your pictures to your computer, you can touch them up with photo editing software. There are several free and easy online photo editors. They include Befunky, Free Online Photo Editor and Lunapic.
Once you have taken the pictures and edited them, upload them to your computer. If you’re not sure how to upload photos from your cell phone to your computer, follow one of the tutorials below.
Understand the importance of pricing your Lakeland house realistically
Pricing your house realistically is the most important step you can take to guarantee that your home will sell. The consequence of overpricing your house can lead to wasted money on marketing, months of no shows, and worst of all stigma that there may be something inherently wrong with your property.
Don’t attempt the failed strategy of pricing your home above the market value to test the waters and hook a naïve buyer. You will fail in two ways.
First, most buyers know the market better than you. A buyer that is looking for a home with your characteristics has probably viewed dozens of similar houses on the internet, visited comparable homes and attended open houses.
With easy access to so much free real estate information on the internet it’s very unlikely that a buyer will overpay for your home. On the outside chance you do find a gullible buyer, your house would likely under appraise and your buyer would not be able to secure a mortgage.
Second, the first several weeks that your home is on the market is crucial to getting it sold. As the new kid on the block, it will garner all the attention of buyers who are actively looking for a property. If your home is overpriced, you will forever lose this “golden” time.
As the days on the market increase, the desirability of your home goes down and buyers begin to question why your home has not sold.
Check out How to Sell a House As Is at the Highest Price Lakeland, Florida to get a deeper understanding of the importance of pricing your house realistically.
Price your Lakeland home to sell without giving it away
Start out by researching the sales price of comparable homes in your neighborhood that have sold within the past six months. Make sure you are looking at homes similar in size, age, condition and location to your home. You must be objective so you can price your home realistically. You can get this information on websites such as Realtor.com, Zillow, Homes.com and RealtyTrac.
Since correctly pricing a home takes experience, intuition and a profound understanding of the local real estate market, get an agent or two to tell you what they think your home could sell for. Even if you’re planning to sell on your own most agents will gladly provide you a free comparative market analysis also known as a CMA, in the hopes that you will list with them if you cannot sell.
Then compare the price you initially arrived at with the prices that the real estate agents recommended.
If you still are unsure about the price, order a real estate appraisal. This will give you the most accurate estimate of your home’s value. Make sure you hand a copy of the appraisal report to all interested buyers. This is one sure way to justify your asking price and discredit low-ball offers.
Selling your Lakeland, Florida home to a company that buys houses for cash isn’t for every seller
If your home is in great condition, you’re not under financial stress and have plenty of time to find a buyer, then selling your home through a real estate agent is your best choice.
As long as the previous conditions hold true and as long as you are willing to invest additional money for repairs that arise from home inspections, home appraisal and final walk through inspection, you will get the highest price for your home.
Selling your Lakeland, Florida home to a company that buys houses for cash isn’t for every seller
If your home is in great condition, you’re not under financial stress and have plenty of time to find a buyer, then selling your home through a real estate agent is your best choice.
As long as the previous conditions hold true and as long as you are willing to invest additional money for repairs that arise from home inspections, home appraisal and final walk through inspection, you will get the highest price for your home.
Marketing your Lakeland house
Now that you have cleaned and decluttered your house, have taken great photographs and have a realistic sales price in mind, you are ready to begin marketing your property. The key here is to get the most amount of exposure for your house.
- Online real estate sites get millions of visitors. According to realtor.com 2014 Real Estate Traffic Report in just one month Zillow had 498 million page views and forsalebyowner.com had 5 million visitors. That is an enormous amount of potential buyers you can tap into by listing your home.
Below is a list of free websites where you can post your property.
- Though this is an article about selling a house by owner, it is important to mention that you will dramatically expand your exposure and increase the likelihood of a faster sale at a higher price by listing your home in the Multiple Listing System (MLS).
Posting your home in the MLS permits you to take advantage of the selling power of thousands of Realtors in your area. As soon as you list in the MLS, all of your local Realtors will know that your home is for sale and can start bringing prospective buyers to you.
You can list your home in the MLS and still sell your home as a FSBO by selecting a flat fee plan from one of the websites below. Most of these FSBO sites will include a FSBO sign, tools to help you price your house, your state’s standardized real estate home sales contract, customized professional brochures and social sharing campaigns. They’ll also syndicate your home’s listing to national search sites such as Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow, AOL Real Estate and Yahoo homes.
Note that besides paying a flat fee, you will have to pay a 2% to 3% commission to a selling broker upon a successful sale.
Put up a for sale sign
There are many places where you can buy a FSBO sign. You could go with a standard economical for sale sign available in most hardware stores for $3 dollars or less.
If you prefer, you can customize your sign right down to the shape, size and color on sites such as Signs.com or BuildASign.com.
Hold Open Houses
Schedule your open house to coincide with other open houses in your neighborhood. You can find when they’re being held by looking at the classified section of your newspaper; visiting real estate websites such as Realtor.com, Trulia and Zillow; or searching for the hashtag #openhouse in your social media accounts.
Once you’ve decided on a date, advertise your open house by putting out flyers throughout your neighborhood and placing an open house sign in front of your home.
Have plenty of property flyers available for your visitors with a picture of your house, price, property description, sales pitch on your property’s unique selling points and your contact information.
If you need professional looking flyers join Canva for free and easily create them online. Their drag-and-drop format is ideal for non-designers.
Negotiate the contract
It is unlikely that you’ll get a full price offer that meets all your conditions. So you’ll have to negotiate directly with your buyer. Remember, the negotiation process is a give and take. If you’re not satisfied with an offer, don’t get discouraged.
Counter the offer and perhaps sweeten the deal by offering to pay part of the buyer’s closing costs or a home concession such as a repair or update to the house. The goal is to meet the buyer half way and create a win-win situation where both you and the buyer can walk away happy.
Unless the offer is presented through an agent, you’ll need a real estate sales contract to spell out the details of the sale. If you need real estate forms, visit Eforms.com and sign up for a free account to create your own custom Residential Real Estate Purchase Agreement and property disclosure statement.
You can also visit US Legal Forms, they offer State specific Real Estate Home Sales Packages which includes among other things an Offer to Purchase Real Estate Sales Contract, Residential Disclosure Statement, Lead-Based Paint Disclosure, an EPA Lead-Based Paint info Pamphlet, form explanations, and general information about the real estate transaction.
If you are not familiar with the standard contract for sale, you should have it reviewed by an attorney. An attorney can help ensure a smooth transaction by spelling out all the terms and conditions of the sale and confirming it includes all the proper disclosures.
Follow through on all paperwork and close
Once you’ve signed the sales contract, the legal part begins. You’ll have to select a title company to do a property search, order a survey and collect all the required documents for a closing. During this time, check in with your buyer to ensure that the mortgage process is on schedule. You will also have to:
- Provide the title company with requested documents as soon as possible
- Contact your mortgage company to begin the mortgage payoff
- Make your house available for an appraisal and home inspection
- Arrange for a final water reading
As we mentioned at the beginning, you must devote a lot of work and time to selling a house by owner, but it is something that can be done.
I don’t have the time or patience to sell FSBO nor do I want to pay an expensive real estate commission
Lakeland, Florida If after reading this blog you’ve decided that you don’t want to sell your Lakeland house on your own nor want to go through all the hassles of selling through a real estate agent call Lakeland Home Buyers
We are home buying professionals with years of experience purchasing houses of all types, regardless of their condition or the homeowner’s situation.
Since we are cash home buyers, you’ll side track the need for appraisals, home inspections and mortgage approvals.
And if you’re looking to sell your house quickly, we are the perfect buyers. Sell your house to us in just one day and close in as fast as 7 days. On top of that you’ll eliminate the need to hire an agent, pay a hefty commission and put up with the uncertainty of finding a buyer.
Call Lakeland Home Buyers at 863-372-8937 to get a top-dollar cash offer today. Count on us to understand your needs, provide solutions to your problems and deliver exceptional service.
More Tips and Resources to Help You Sell Your House by Owner in Lakeland, Florida
- Attract home buyers with quality photographs via hgtv.com
- How to host a successful open house via bestpickreports.com
- What do I have to disclose when selling my house? via reallymoving.com
- Do You Need a Real Estate Attorney to Sell Your Home? via homelight.com
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