Real Estate 101 – Selling Your Home without an Agent
If real estate in your area is sizzling hot, you might be able to sell your home yourself without the help of an agent. Granted, there are many advantages to having an agent at your side to help with open houses, and to list your home on specific listing services that other realtors look at, but why not give it a shot yourself?
1. Make sure your home is ready to sell. This could include a paint job, a serious top to bottom cleaning job, and packaging up of any clutter that you may have accumulated. Additionally, you might want to take photographs down, and make your home look and feel like a hotel room: nice but somewhat generic. The prospective buyer wants to be able to imagine himself in your home.
2. Set an asking price that is in keeping with the selling prices of homes in your area. To find out what homes are selling for, simply go to your assessor’s website and take a look.
3. Get the word out. Put a sign in the yard, an ad in the local paper, and hang up flyers at the store.
4. When you receive your offers, be sure to read them in detail, and perhaps get some advice from a friend or lawyer to pick the best one.
5. Have closing documents looked over by a lawyer to protect yourself.
As you can see, with a bit of elbow grease, and just a bit of legal advice that will still not cost you thousand of dollars, you will be able to save a lot of money by selling your home yourself.
