We just sold our third home, all of them for sale by owner (FSBO). I’ve been asked several times: “Did you list with a real estate agent? Why not? Was it hard to sell your home yourself?”
What most people really want to know is, “Should I use a realtor or try to do it myself? Is for sale by owner something I should do as a military family?”
My answer is, “It depends.”
Each of our three for sale by owner experiences has been completely different. Our most recent home selling experience was the most challenging. You can read more about it here, here and here.
Real Estate Agent or For Sale By Owner?
Our very first house was the one that made me question why we were using an agent in the first place. Hubs bought the home about a month after we started dating. He was like, “hey, I just bought a house!” And I thought to myself, “Oh, I don’t care for that house. I hope I don’t marry this guy.” Oops.
Anyways, long story short – we get married. We make updates to the house. Err, I make updates to the house while he is deployed…new countertops, paint and backsplash in the kitchen, new door and drawer hardware throughout the house, new flooring in the guest bathroom…you get the idea. We think these things will improve the value and salability of our home.
Hubs gets orders for a new assignment. We hire a realtor and she lists our home…and does a terrible job of it. The photos are bad. The description is bad. And the house sits there. Two months later the local housing market crashes. Our house is now worth less than what we bought it for.
We pivot and decide to rent out the house. But it makes me stop and think, What if I had just tried to sell the house myself? I have a degree in marketing, after all. Could I have done a better job?
Sometimes For Sale By Owner Is Easy
Three years later it’s time to move again. This time we decide to try and sell our current house our self. I prep the house, take the photos and list the house for sale. Within a week I have accepted an offer. No big deal.
In the meantime, I also negotiate with our renters in house #1 and end up selling the house to them. Boom. Two houses sold.
Sometimes For Sale By Owner Is Not
We decide to rent for a while, but eventually that gets old and we decide we are ready to own a home again. We buy house #3. Two years later, it’s time to move. We decide to sell the home without a real estate agent again.
And then COVID hits. And the market goes wonky. It takes us just over two months of having the house on the market to get an offer we want to accept. It ultimately ends up being almost four months between when we list the house and when we close on the house.
Five Questions To Ask Before You List Your Home For Sale By Owner
All that to say, every home selling experience is different. There is no one right answer to whether you should use a realtor or sell a home yourself. It depends on the location, the current market and your current situation. Here are five questions to help you figure out which home selling situation is right for you:
1. How tight is your timeframe?
If you’re on a really tight time frame, it’s definitely worth considering an agent, if nothing else but for their connections. You’re more likely to get offers quickly if you list with an agent. They can also help you navigate home staging options and coordinate showings if you have to move out quickly. If you’re not in a hurry and you can afford to wait, listing your home yourself could save you some money.
2. Are you willing to do the work?
There is definitely a lot of work to listing your home yourself. You should feel pretty comfortable with how to clean and stage your home, and feel like you have a good handle on marketing, pricing and fielding calls from buyer’s agents. You’ll need to coordinate all the showings yourself, and I would recommend keeping a detailed log of home showings. It can be stressful, but if you’re detail-oriented and organized, it’s not too bad.
3. Do you know how to market your home (or are you willing to learn)?
Selling a home is about convincing a potential buyer that this is a place they want to call home. Your home staging, photos, home description and even the showing itself all contribute to what a potential buyer thinks and feels about your home. If this is an area that you feel confident in, go for it! Worst case, you can always bring on an agent down the road.
4. How comfortable are you with negotiating?
At the end of the day, selling a home is a business transaction. It’s better to not let your personal feelings get involved. This can be hard, especially when it comes to something as personal as a home. If you struggle with negotiating, it might be better to have an agent on your side.
5. Are you willing to work with a buyer’s agent?
The cheapest option is to not work with a buyer’s agent and handle the whole process directly with the buyer. Most home buyers are not familiar with or comfortable with this situation. Instead, it’s more customary to work with a buyer’s agent.
Most agents won’t show their clients your home, unless you are willing to work with them (aka pay them a commission). Some agents have set commissions, while others are more flexible. I’m sure the percentage depends on the area of the country that you are in, but I’ve found that somewhere between 2.5-3.5% commission is generally acceptable. Sure, you’re still paying a percentage to an agent, but it also means they will handle a lot of the details for you. You’ll still save roughly 3% over hiring a real estate agent to list your house. Depending on the list price of your house and how complicated the negotiations for the property are, this may or may not be worth it to you.
How To Sell Your House ‘For Sale By Owner’
Okay, let’s say you do choose the for sale by owner option. Here are 10 steps to for sale by owner success:
1. Make a Plan
So you want to move? My first recommendation is to list out everything that you will need to do to list your home and assign a specific timeline to go with it. Start with when you think you want to move and then work backwards. The more time you give yourself, the less stressed you will be to make it all happen.
2. Prep Your Home For Sale
I talk more about how to declutter and stage a home here. But the basic process looks like this:
Remove clutter & organize – The goal here is to make the home look as spacious and uncluttered as possible. Get rid of all piles of clutter. If you don’t need it for the next few months, donate it, sell it or box it up for a while. Remember, both empty rooms and cluttered rooms appear smaller. Think this doesn’t apply to you? According to the National Association of Realtors 2019 Survey, 95% of real estate agents say sellers need to declutter their home before putting it on the market.
Paint & repair any known issues – So many people don’t bother to do this, but paint is relatively inexpensive and can make a huge difference in the look and feel of a home. Choose a neutral color and see the difference it can make in your home. This is also a good time to repair any issues that are clearly visible or that you know will pop up in the home inspection. Especially with inspection issues, you can either do it now, or wait until the inspection comes back and still do it, but with a lot less time and more on your plate!
Decorate and stage – You want the home to appeal to a large percentage of buyers and create a canvas that people want to see themselves living in. 44% of buyer’s agents say home staging increases the dollar value of an offer and 53% say that staging decreases the amount of time a home is on the market. Pay attention specifically to your living room, kitchen and master bedroom. These are the spaces that matter most to potential buyers.
Deep clean – Before you actually list your home, you want it to look as clean as possible. I ended up hiring a cleaning service to come in my home, but you can also do this yourself. Make sure you wipe down all cabinets, walls, baseboards, ceiling fans, window blinds, mirrors and bathroom surfaces. If you have dirty carpets, consider using a carpet cleaner or hiring a company to steam clean your carpets.
Pay attention to curb appeal – You only get one chance at a first impression, so make it a good one. What is the first thing someone sees when they pull up to your house? Make sure your lawn, if you have one, is well kept and that your front porch and front door look inviting.
3. Get Good Photos
Getting good photos of your house is very, very important. I can’t tell you how many bad photos of houses that I’ve seen! And unfortunately, messy, cluttered or poorly-lit photos can be a huge turn off.
Potential buyers want to get a feel for your home, especially if they are house hunting long distance! Remember that you don’t get a second chance at a first impression… and for many modern buyers, their first impression will be the photos they see.
If you feel comfortable with your photographic skills, you can do this part yourself. But if not, definitely consider hiring a professional to take the photos for you. Real estate photographers are generally skilled at understanding how to compose images that make your rooms look as large and spacious as possible.
If you do the photos yourself, keep these suggestions in mind:
Use good lighting – Shoot during the day and take advantage of natural light. It looks way better in images than artificial light that gives weird color hues to your images.
Shoot horizontally – This can be challenging in small spaces, but it provides a more consistent viewing experience when someone is scrolling through images of your home. It tends to view better on screens and it encompasses more of the room.
Make sure there is no clutter in the photo – I mentioned this above, but I’ll say it again. Even if you have to move the clutter from room to room to take your shots (I did this), make sure the space in the viewing area looks clean and organized.
4. Determine List Price
The next step in the process is to figure out what price to list your home at. I went online and found all the homes in our local area that had sold within the last year (you can find most of this information on Zillow).
I then made a comparative chart in Excel that listed the age of the house, how many bedrooms/bathrooms/garage spaces, square footage, list price, sales price, price per square footage, time on market and any other notes on the property. From there, I was able to come up with what our home was probably worth. I compared this with the Z-estimate on Zillow (which was pretty accurate for our local area). You’ll also need to consider adding wiggle room for negotiation and to drop the price of the home if it sits on the market too long.
You may also want to consider getting an appraisal done on the home or going ahead and doing a home inspection so you know in advance if there are any issues with the property.
5. Write Your Description
Now that you know your asking price, it’s time to start crafting the description of your home. Don’t just list facts!
I recommend reading several different descriptions of homes to see which words stand out to you. You’ll want to use specific, descriptive words and point out the desirable features of your home, especially if there are intangibles that may not jump out at someone. Things like good local schools, community parks, or recent home upgrades can all be points of interest to highlight.
Make the reader curious and excited to see the property. Use language that invites the prospective buyer into a story. Think about the descriptors that get used on Fixer Upper or House Hunters. They never refer to a home with the name of the street or the number of bedrooms.
For example, which of these sounds more interesting:
- 4 bedroom, two-story house on Oak Street
- Cul-de-sac retreat in sought-after Windsor Creek subdivision
Consider having a few friends read over the description after you’ve written it (preferably that have been to your house) to get feedback. Once you’re set on the description, it’s go time!
6. List Your Home For Sale
It’s finally the moment you’ve been preparing for! It’s time to actually put your house on the market. But where should you list your home? My recommendation is to start with Zillow. Note: if you’re listing as the property owner, you won’t be able to use the “coming soon” feature (it’s only available to registered agents).
Zillow allows you to claim your home and then add or adjust the features, images and description of the home. Once you upload your images and description and click submit, it takes Zillow a few days to review your listing. My recommendation is that if you want your house to be available for showings on a particular weekend, submit your request on a Monday. The house should be live by Thursday, which gives prospective buyers time to see your home and add it to their list of homes they want to see over the weekend.
If you’re military, I also recommend using Military by Owner. I have found this site to only be effective in certain areas of the country, but I think it’s still worth pursuing. It does cost to list your home on the MilitaryByOwner site, but it is a minimal investment.
The biggest downside to listing a home yourself versus with an agent is that your home wont be seen on the local Multiple Listing Service (MLS), which is what most agents rely on. There are a few sites that offer this as a service to those trying to do for sale by owner (pay a flat fee to have your home listed on the local MLS), but having not tried this, I can’t speak to how well it works.
Side note: The main difference in listing for sale by owner now versus six years ago is the amount of spam I get. Six years ago text spam was not so much a thing. While we had our last house listed, I got multiple texts a week from people and organizations trying to get me to list my house with them.
7. Market Your Home
It’s time to promote, promote, promote. Marketing is key to get your home to move quickly. Once your home is listed or sale, you can consider hosting an open house, uploading a virtual tour, or creating a home flyer.
Post a for sale sign in your yard so neighbors will know that the property is for sale. Word of mouth is still the best form of advertising.
When we listed our second house for sale by owner, I hosted an open house for real estate agents and physically went to agent offices in the local area with flyers to invite them. While there, I also let them know that we were open to working with a buyer’s agent. It put our home on their radar.
Between COVID and having three small children at home this time, I opted not to go that route. Instead, I took advantage of the power of social media. Actually for the first month it was on the market, I did no actual marketing, other than creating a flyer for everyone that viewed our home.
Once we were more confident in our actual moving timeline, I started sharing our home on Facebook and asking friends to share the listing as well. I took a screen shot, so you can see the difference in number of views to our Zillow listing before and after we shared our listing on Facebook.
8. Show Your Home
I covered the process of keeping the house clean for home showings (with three young kids at home) in much more detail in my last post.
In a nutshell, do a quick check of your home before each showing:
- Make sure the house is cleaned and do a quick vacuum of carpets,
if possible - Make sure all clutter is put away or hidden
- Get rid of any strong smells
- Make sure the room temperature is comfortable
- Give the potential buyer space to view the home
We got a lock box for the front door and would just give the code to the buyer’s agent when they contacted us about a showing. We didn’t want any potential buyers to feel awkward during their viewing of our home.
9. Prepare For An Offer
Don’t take anything personally. This can be easier said than done. After all, studies have shown that we tend to value things that we already own much more than other people do. You must be able to remove yourself from your attachment to the home to be able to evaluate a potential offer.
At the end of the day, it is a business negotiation. You either accept, reject or counter an offer. But whichever action you choose, try not to get frustrated or appear desperate. If you do receive an offer, be sure to ask about any contingencies and closing dates and make sure to review the agreement closely.
Once you accept an offer, you will need to make sure you take care of any state-specific documents. For example, in Illinois we had to get a new certificate of occupancy for the home, since we had been in the home for over a year. You’ll also need to work with the buyer’s agent to hammer out any issues that pop up on the property inspection.
10. Reevaluate: Know When It’s Time to Hold ‘Em and When It’s Time To Fold ‘Em
You probably won’t find this section in most “how-to” checklists, but I think it’s worth mentioning. If your home isn’t selling quickly, take some time to examine why. Is it the price? Your photos? Something about the home? The local housing market?
I followed up with each buyer’s agent to get a sense for what both the agent and the family thought of our home. You’ll be able to find trends that emerge through this research.
Once you know what the problem areas are, you’ll know whether it is something worth addressing. In our case, the biggest sticking point for people was our backyard. It had a fairly significant downward slope to it and bottomed out with a tree line and a creek running through the back of the property.
While I loved this aspect of our home (sitting on our balcony and staring into a grove of trees vs. staring at another house), the majority of potential buyers were more focused on the slope of the hill. Of course we couldn’t do anything about the slope of our backyard, however, hubs did spend time getting the grass on the hill to look as full and healthy as possible.
If you’ve done all you can to address concerns and your house still isn’t selling, it might be time to consider talking to some real estate agents. Ask for recommendations and see if any agents are willing to give you a free home consult. Sometimes it is beneficial to have someone else provide an unbiased perspective of your home. Local agents may also have connections that you aren’t able to tap into.
Close and Celebrate!
Whether you choose to work with an agent or go at it alone, hopefully you will eventually reach the day you’ve been waiting for – closing day! Take some time to celebrate your hard work and then prepare for whatever adventure is next for you.
Have you done for sale by owner? Drop me a comment and let me know how it went for you!
Note: This is the last of a four-part series documenting the process of selling our home, in preparation for our latest PCS (military move). Part one covers what NOT to do. In part two I provide practical tips for decluttering and staging your home. Part three discusses how to keep your home “show-ready” (even with young kids at home).
