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Anyone in the real estate business knows that potential buyers usually ask a lot of questions. A real estate agent will tell you that you’re going to be asked questions about your home and the shape that it’s in for starters. But there are other questions buyers want to know that a for sale by owner party will need to answer. One of the first questions asked is usually about the neighborhood. Buyers want to know about what kind of neighbors you have and whether it’s a quiet neighborhood. This is a sign that they’re looking for something peaceful as well as safe. Potential buyers ask about the safety of the neighborhood and that’s understandable. But the problem is that every neighborhood can have issues. If a kid in the neighborhood throws a rock and accidentally breaks a window, that’s not the kind of information they’re looking for. They want to know if the sidewalks are safe, if the streets are safe and if there’s a problem such as criminal activity in the neighborhood. You can set their minds at ease by getting a copy of the crime statistics for your area. These are data tools that are free online at various websites. You just have to input your city and zip code. You can also get a copy of the crime statistics from the police department. They can usually tell you if a neighborhood is in what’s called a hot zone or not - which means that they've had to handle calls in that neighborhood repeatedly. It also means that there is a higher rate of crime in a hot zone. But by having the statistics, you can simply give a copy to the potential buyer. If the buyer has children, you can give them statistics to show that there are no sexual offenders living nearby. Buyers want to know about the quality of the school district. If you’ve had children in the local school, you can give them that information. But there are also online tools that you can use to give them information about schools based on the school’s performance and test results. This way, buyers can compare the success rate of the schools. People may also want to know what kind of entertainment is available nearby. It can be helpful for you to have this information already gathered. You can get a list from your city’s official website of activities, holiday events, festivals and things offered all year long. Have this to give buyers and make sure you include free events as well as ones where costs may be involved. Have a list of all the nearby shopping places as well as restaurants. Include quickest routes to these establishments. Being prepared to answer these questions helps to not only sell your home, but it can also help to sell a buyer on the area as well.

A good real estate agent will know how to price your home correctly. If you’re selling your home yourself, you’ll have to understand how vital setting the right price is. Sometimes homeowners have the mindset that they’ll set the price of the home higher than what the market value is so that they’ll have some bargaining room. That’s a very poor strategy because you’ll be creating a situation where you’re listing your home for more than it might be worth. Potential buyers are looking for a deal. They don’t want to make an offer on a $400,000 home that’s only worth $375,000. Most buyers will move on without even looking at your home. What you have to understand about how to price your home is that setting a certain price can determine the length of time your home will have to wait before it sells. Any home that stays on the market for a long time can raise red flags with buyers. It can also lead to a situation where the longer your home is on the market, the more you’ll end up being forced to lower the price to an amount you’re reluctant to set it at. You need to know the actual market value of your home. A three bedroom home in a popular California city will sell at a different price than a comparable three bedroom home in a rural area in Tennessee. A homeowner may want to raise the price of the home beyond what it’s worth because they did some remodeling. You’ll have to be careful here, because while some upgrades can boost the home value, not all of them do. An agent will know how to set the true market value with or without upgrades. Certain features have to be figured in when you’re considering how to price your home. Along with the square footage, things like the number or bedrooms and the number of bathrooms the place has make a difference. While it might be tempting to think that you’re going to set a top tier price for your home, you have to be realistic. This is an area that many homeowners fail at, but real estate agents excel at. Just because you think the home is perfect and has high potential to command more doesn’t mean it’s true. One helpful thing that you can do to help you price your home to sell quickly at an amount that’s fair for you is to look at what the home sold for originally. If the home has changed owners a couple of times over the years, look for the amount that it sold at last time. You can find this information online using housing marketing tools. Look at the price that the home was listed for, then see how much time it was between when it was listed and when it actually sold. This will help you see what a possible fair price could be that would move the home quickly off the market.

When it’s time to sell a house, many homeowners start thinking about sprucing up the place or doing some renovations to get the most out of the sale. While renovations are a good idea, some are more important than others. Kitchen and bathroom renovations help a homeowner recoup the investment more than something like putting in new sod or replacing the home’s siding. Some renovations are fairly simple, inexpensive, and are worth doing. Over time, the walls and baseboards in a home can look dull and have marks where the paint has been dinged. An instant renovation that can make the home look up to date and fresh is to paint the rooms in your house that need it. If you have an accent wall in an extremely bold color, you might want to paint anyway, because most potential buyers prefer neutral paints. It helps them be able to imagine themselves living there. The kitchen is one room where you’ll really find that making renovations are worth it. If you have old appliances, you’ll want to update those. If you have a faded looking backsplash, you’ll want to replace it. If it’s not as modern as the ones in newer homes, you’ll want to replace it because an older backsplash detracts from a kitchen’s appeal. Things like new tile look fresh and really spruce up a kitchen. Potential buyers also check out the countertops in a kitchen. The most popular of all materials used on countertops is granite. It’s long lasting and will stand up to a lot of wear and tear. If you have old countertops - especially if your home is dated - and you have those old Formica ones, you’ll want to replace them. That doesn’t mean that you have to tear out the cabinets. You don’t want to do that - especially if they’re good ones. You can get granite counter tops from a home improvement store and just have it professionally cut and fitted. It’s a lot less expensive than you might think. If your cabinets are in good shape, then you can just spruce them up with some paint or new hardware. In addition to the kitchen, the bathroom is a strong selling point in a house. One that has a stained tub or an outdated vanity doesn’t have much appeal. This is one renovation that will help you sell your home. Put in a new vanity if it needs it and either refinish a stained tub or put in a surround. Make sure that you renovate your yard, too. You want plenty of curb appeal so that your home makes a good first impression. This is a renovation that doesn’t have to cost much. You can place some new mulch around trees and shrubs and add colorful flowers in planters on the porch.

Selling a house can be a tricky business, but one you can easily do when you have the right information. The amount of money that you can make or lose will depend on how you handle an offer. There are times when you should accept an offer - such as if your home is in an area where homes are harder to sell. Some places, like out of the way rural areas, don’t always move real estate as quickly as more populated cities and towns. So your first offer might be the best one to take if you’re in a hurry to move. As long as it’s close to your asking price, you’ll want to seriously consider it. Obviously, if it’s a ridiculously lowball offer, you’re better off turning it down. You don’t want to practically give your home away. There are times when you should automatically counteroffer. Sometimes a potential buyer will make a first offer that’s much too low. Some homeowners are immediately offended by this and won’t even bothering negotiating. A real estate agent will keep the emotion out of the deal because he knows it’s just business. Buyers want to save money as much as sellers want to make money on the transaction. If you don’t think you can keep the emotion out of it, then you need to let an agent handle the deal. But if you can handle it and you really want to sell the house, then offer a counteroffer to the buyer. In many cases, it can be helpful to come down just a little on the asking price. Not much, but enough to show that you’re open to negotiations. There can often be a back and forth between the buyer and the seller before both parties reach a price they’re happy with. If you have a lot of interested buyers, then you can afford to stand firm on your asking price because you might end up in a bidding war. You can wait until multiple offers come in and decide which one is the best for you. Sometimes the counteroffer won’t have anything to do with money. You can have buyers who want to ask for a lot of concessions and sometimes these can be over the top. They want you to put in a lot of extra work for things they want you to change. These things usually don’t have anything to do with the structural integrity of the house. They might want to include something that’s not in the original offer. Or they have demands that are costly like paying all their closing costs. In cases where a buyer wants a lot of concessions, you’re always better off counteroffering. If your home is priced to sell and it’s a hot market, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t fight for more.

The housing market can be pretty competitive as well as expensive for both a seller and a buyer. Though most real estate transactions are handled by real estate agents and the money for the sale is loaned to the buyer by a financial institution, there are plenty of cases where the owner finances the sale. Whether that’s right or wrong for you will depend on your circumstances. When you do owner financing, you’re acting in place of the lending institution. You’ll get a promissory note from the buyer and, like the bank, you reserve the right to take back your home if the buyer doesn’t pay as promised. You can offer a variety of loans from an assumable mortgage to a lease option or a junior mortgage. You have to have a contract that spells out all the details of the promissory note. The promissory note should have the date when payments are due, the amount of the payment and the interest rate. How you set up that note for payment on your home depends on what you and the buyer agree on. Some of these notes are for a shorter time span than others. Some sellers think that if a buyer is seeking owner financing, it means he can’t get bank approval because he can’t afford it. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes you can have investors who want to buy another property but the bank is too leery about their debt ratio. It doesn’t mean the potential buyer is a risk. There are both pros and cons to offering owner financing. By doing so, you can eliminate expensive closing costs. You can also often find a buyer faster. When you list your home for sale yourself and you have a buyer who needs financing and can’t or doesn’t want it from a financial institution, then you can often get a better price on your home. Another benefit for offering financing is if you want to move yourself or you have to relocate and you need the money that the buyer has to pay as the down payment. If you want to get out from under a mortgage payment, offering owner financing can often make a sale happen faster. This is because part of the hold up in a conventional sale can be when the potential buyer has to try to secure financing. Sometimes people have been through a hard time and they’ve recovered financially, but their credit rating hasn’t - so traditional lenders won’t touch them even though they can afford to buy the home. Other benefits to financing it yourself include receiving the payment every month. There are some drawbacks, however, that you need to know. If the buyer doesn’t pay, then you have to foreclose on the home. Sometimes people walk away from a property and then you have to reassume the mortgage costs as well as fix up any possible damage that was done by the owners.

Selling a house is a big deal and you stand to gain or lose money depending on how the transaction is handled. You can put your home on the market and try to sell it on your own or you can hire an agent. There are pros and cons for doing it either way. If you sell your home yourself, you’re the one who has to handle all the showings. You might be someone who enjoys meeting people and letting them come into your home and sometimes having a good connection with the homeowner can lead to a sale. However, you can miss out on potential buyers if you don’t have an agent because most agents want to show homes to people who are represented by other agents. It’s a professional courtesy and agents know that other agents are aware of the ins and outs of home selling, whereas a homeowner won’t be. When you’re the one handling the sale, you’re close to the situation. Anything that a buyer points out that you don’t like can sound like a personal criticism. Sometimes buyers will point out what they perceive to be as faults with the home and inexperienced homeowners might be tempted to take less money. An agent is your go-between and handles any issues like that which might come up. When selling a home yourself, you might run into a case where the house sits on the market and just isn’t selling. You might not understand why that’s happening, whereas an agent would. However, you know your house better than an agent and you know which selling points to push that an agent may not point out. Selling a home is a lot of hard work. If you handle it like a business transaction and you have the time to be there to show your home or answer questions when perspective buyers reach out, then you can save on the expense of hiring an agent. One problem you might encounter, though is that you might not have the kind of time that it takes to deal with potential buyers. An agent fields the calls, the email inquiries and the showing. He or she can also help a potential buyer know what to do in order to prequalify. Some homeowners have a large social media presence and a large circle of contacts that they can tap to put out the word that they’re selling their homes themselves. In some cases, for sale by owner homes have sold because of word of mouth. But on the other hand, the size of the audience that a real estate agent can reach will be larger. The bigger the potential buying audience, the more chances that your home will sell quickly. Once you have an interested buyer, you’ll have to have a contract drawn up. For this, you’ll need to pay for the services of an experienced real estate attorney. You’ll also have to hire an attorney to handle the closing. Real estate agents include this in the price of doing business with you.

Showing a home has the potential for all kinds of danger to both real estate agents and those who are selling their homes by owner. You always want to be safety conscious from the moment that you make the decision to sell. For starters, be careful what you put in your listing. You won’t want to advertise that your home can’t be seen by neighbors or from the street - even if that’s the case. This acts like an invitation to thieves or people intent on doing harm to others. You have to make sure that you lock up all your valuables and never keep any cash lying around. You also have to make sure that you don’t leave any documents within easy access that thieves can use for the purpose of identity theft. Savvy thieves often work homes in pairs. One will distract the owner while the other one will look through personal belongings for anything of value. For your safety’s sake, you have to know how to protect yourself and by following a few safety guidelines, you can stay safe while you’re showing your home. Always schedule the home showings. You don’t want people stopping by your house, saying that they saw the house for sale and asking if they can come in and view the property. Instead, tell them that your home viewings are by prearranged appointments only. You need to have an email or a phone number set up specifically for people to leave their contact number. Have a show buddy. Never show your house if it’s just you alone. Even if you’re a male, you can be robbed or overpowered and put in danger. Someone with malintent will take a chance with one person, but often not with two or three. Don’t arrange to show your home when it’s dark outside. If the person who wants to see the house says that’s all the time that he has, then he’ll have to move on. Someone who’s truly interested in the home will make arrangements to show up during the daytime. When you’re showing your home, you’re showing it to strangers and you don’t want to be caught unprotected - so don’t allow people to crowd you or walk behind you. You stay behind them. Make sure you have a fully charged cell phone in your hand and know ahead of time how you’re going to react if something does happen. Plan to be able to dial the police or know how you’re going to get out of the house. If you don’t have a home alarm that you can set off, use a car alarm key that will sound if you press the button. Ask questions when someone calls you wanting to see the home. Ask what they’re looking for in a house, if they’re working with a real estate agent, and leading questions like what type of financing they’re looking for. People who seem cagey can set off red flags. Remember to always trust your instinct before showing your home. If you get a bad vibe about someone, don’t make the appointment or don’t let them into your home.

A real estate agent understands the importance of an escrow and earnest money. If you’re selling your home by owner, you need to know what these are and how they apply to you. Earnest money is just like it sounds. It means that the potential buyer is earnest in his desire to buy your home. While you don’t necessarily have to have earnest money when you’re selling your home by owner, it’s a good idea. It helps to weed out those who waste your time from those who are truly looking to buy. If you and the potential buyer are able to iron out all the issues during the negotiation, that earnest money is then considered part of the cost of buying the home. It gets counted as part of the down payment if one is required or it goes toward paying the closing costs. Keep in mind that earnest money does not always lock a potential buyer in. If, during the home negotiation, an issue arises with the house, the buyer has a right to get his money back. If you don’t know what to charge for the amount of earnest money, you can look at what the laws are in your state regarding that if there are any. As the usual rule of thumb, at least 1% of the home’s value should be offered. Some real estate deals though have set amounts in place as the earnest money such as $1,000 to $2,000. The supply and demand of the market can also impact the amount of earnest money required. You can’t spend the earnest money that you receive. You have to place that money in an escrow account until the home sale is finalized. Escrow is basically the same thing as earnest money. It just means that it’s where the earnest money is. Escrow funds are kept by the person dictated by the laws of your state. In some cases, it’s going to be the title company representative. It might be the company handling the closing or it could be a real estate attorney. This is known as third party handling. The purpose of this is to make sure that the transaction is completed and that the funds aren’t dispersed until it is. It protects both the seller and the buyer until all the documents are signed and the home changes ownership. It’s a way of making sure that all the agreements or contingencies between the parties were met. If, at the last moment, the buyer just decides he doesn’t want the house even though all his conditions or contingencies were met and breaks the deal, then the seller can be entitled to keep the escrow

When selling your home, you might think that you need a real estate agent to do it for you. If you’re not the type of person who is willing to market your home, then that’s probably true - because you will need to advertise that it’s for sale. But if you’re okay with handling this side of selling a home, then you can do it on your own. There’s a lot of power in using the Internet for marketing and by tapping into that, you can get a lot of exposure for your home. It allows you to reach hundreds of buyers rather than just a handful. You can list your home on sites that allow home selling ads and the cost is very minimal. But you don’t want to just create a few ads and let it go at that. It’s a competitive marketplace and you need to make sure your home gets noticed. You want to market on several platforms - including ones that real estate agents use. For example, you can use sites that specifically allow listings from FSBO. Some search engines also have their own real estate listing pages. You can use online classifieds on various selling sites as well as in the online versions of newspapers. Something that can be helpful is to set up a page online specifically dedicated to selling your house. You can use WordPress to create a page or buy a vanity URL. You want to use certain keywords to make your home stand out. For example, if you’re in a desirable neighborhood, then you would use keywords associated with that as well as other words people use when they search - such as FSBO, house for sale, good schools, low property tax and other words linked with selling a home. If you create a website for selling your home, you’ll want to make sure that you showcase all your home’s features. Use quality photography to get good pictures of the front of your home. Pictures are instrumental in helping potential buyers want to schedule a showing. Take close up photos of the house and the yard in good lighting. Use photos of the inside of the home as well. Make sure the windows let in good lighting so that everything looks clean, bright and welcoming. Stage the interior of the home before you take these photographs. Create a slideshow for the website or use a virtual tour. Some established home selling sites will allow you to add these tools. You may already have some social media platforms and while you can market your home on those, you can create social media sites specifically designed to sell your house. You can use Pinterest to pin interior pictures of your home as well as points of interest in the surrounding area. You can use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube and dedicate all of them to selling your home. On these platforms, you can interact with buyers, list all the home’s features and have a section dedicated to answering questions. You can have a list of FAQs for possible buyers. Create a blog for the home and blog about what’s great about living in that house and neighborhood. What this does is helps the buyer see that your home isn’t just one of several hundred on the market, but a place that’s loved and that they’ll love, too.

A real estate closing is when the home officially transfers from the seller to the new buyer. It’s also the event where all the money is settled up - including what the real estate agent earns on commission from the sale if you hired one to sell your house. This process is usually a fairly smooth one if you’ve made sure that everything you need for that day is in order. While a real estate agent does make sure that you have all the documents that are needed, you can do the same thing if you’re selling your home yourself. When you schedule a closing, always allow for extra time than you think it might take. Sometimes these things do run over. Most people think it takes an hour or two, but it can take three to four hours in some cases. It’s tempting to schedule the closing on the very last day of the month because then the buyer saves money on interest. But if you do that and you don’t have everything you need or the buyer doesn’t, you can end up going into the beginning of the next month and that changes the amount of interest on the deal. If you’re selling your home yourself, you’ll want to let the buyer go through the house the day before the closing to make sure that everything agreed upon was accomplished. You don’t want the buyer moving in, discovering something he didn’t like or feels wasn’t taken care of as agreed and then he gets upset and starts legal action. For the closing, you’ll need to bring all the important paperwork. You’ll need the contract the buyer signed, and the appraisal report. You’ll need proof of a clear title, which doesn’t mean that the home is paid off - it means proof that you don’t owe back taxes. Present at the meeting should be yourself and any real estate agents if either of you hired one and the attorney handling the closing. It’s in your best interest not to try to handle a closing by yourself unless you are a lawyer. You can accidentally leave something out that can come back to haunt you in the future. You want to protect yourself from this. The attorney should be someone who specializes in real estate law. If you choose not to use an attorney, then you should have a settlement agent. This agent checks over the documents to make sure that everything is signed and all the information is correct. If you’re doing everything yourself, then you have to have something showing the sale price of the home and everything that’s involved in that. A “for sale by owner” deal usually means that you’ll have to pay or split escrow charges and the transaction fee if there is one and it’s charged separately from other fees. After you and the buyer sign all the paperwork, you’ll receive a check minus all the agreed up on costs you’re paying - if any. You’ll pass the new owner any keys for the house and then the lawyer or title agent will file the deed with the deeds office.

Sometimes the market is so slow that homes don’t move as quickly. But if your home has what buyers are looking for, it will sell. If you have a home that’s not moving, your agent can tell you what’s going on. But if you’re selling your home on your own, then you’ll have to figure out why it didn’t sell. You should do a market analysis before you try to sell your home. If you did that and you’ve seen that the market is good, then you have to look deeper into why you didn’t get an offer. There are usually some common reasons that a “for sale by owner” home didn’t sell. The number one reason is that it just wasn’t ready to be put on the market. What looks okay to you around the home doesn’t always pass the critical eye of a possible buyer. Your home may not have sold because there were things that needed to be repaired that weren’t taken care of. Homeowners tend to get house blind and don’t see the little things - but strangers do. They see the dust on the ceiling fan and the grime on the baseboards. Your house should look clean and it should also be inviting. If your home looks like it was inhabited by a group of party animals or there’s a noticeable odor, buyers are out the door without making an offer. You have to put your home’s best impression on for buyers to see. That means you need to go through all the rooms and make them look clean and spacious. You might have to replace window blinds or paint some of the rooms. You may also need to move furniture out of the house and into storage so that it doesn’t look cluttered. Another reason you may not have received any offers could be that you didn’t do your homework and set the price according to what it should be marketed at. If you’re asking more for your home than a similar home in your area and that one sells but yours doesn’t, that could be an indicator. It could mean that if you just lower your asking price a little then you will get an offer. That could mean a reduction of $5,000 or more. If you’re in a hurry to sell, then think about dropping it even lower. Sometimes though, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the market. Homes are selling left and right and there’s nothing wrong with your home. It’s primed to sell and the asking price is a good one. The problem with some for sale by owner homes is that the house doesn’t get the exposure it should because it’s marketed incorrectly. If people don’t know your home is for sale, then it’s like it’s not even on the market.

When you sell a home, your real estate agent will let you know what you have a duty to disclose. If you’re selling your home without the assistance of an agent, then you still have to disclose certain issues. Failing to disclose these issues can lead to a lawsuit and sometimes even find you guilty of violating a federal law. You basically have to let any potential buyers know the problems with the house. Not problems like a door squeaking when you open it. You have to point out all the major problems that exist or have existed in the past. One big thing is that if you have lead based paint in your home, you are required to notify possible buyers. That’s a federal law. What you have to disclose for other issues is going to depend on the state where the home is located because these disclosure laws do vary. If your home is near a fault line, you have to mention that. If it’s in what’s considered a hazard zone for flooding, then you have to note that. If there’s anything coming in the future - like the city is going to take some of the front yard to widen the road in front of the house - you have to share that information. The issues that you have to disclose pertain to anything that can harm the buyer or can be destructive to the house. If a home has a checkered past, then you have to give the potential buyer that information in some states. This would be something like a ghost has been rumored to be on the property or there are unexplained happenings. While not all states require this, if someone died in the home, you have to disclose that information. Many buyers don’t want to buy a home where someone was killed or committed suicide in the home. Any big issues - such as the heating and cooling unit leaking - have to be disclosed. The same thing with the roof. If it leaks in spots, you have to tell the potential buyer that - even if it passed inspection, you still have to share that. If you’ve had problems with the electrical wiring, you have to share this information. Damage to the house from termites has to be shared as well. Structural problems like joint cracks, ceiling cracks or foundation cracks have to be shared. Foundation cracks can be extremely expensive to repair as well as be hazardous to the safety of anyone living there. If you’ve had a black mold problem in the house in the past or a problem with pests, then you have to share that information. If there is asbestos, you have to disclose that. If you had a leaky pipe in the walls or a leaky appliance that’s staying with the home, you have to tell potential buyers about that. If you ever had a room flood due to a broken pipe, you have to share that. If you have awful neighbors, a lot of neighborhood noise, or you have sex offenders living near you, then in some states you have to disclose this information. A real estate agent can walk you through the legal maze so that you don’t fail to disclose something important.