Selling a house?

[TN94z]

I am thinking of selling my house and building a new one. I would really like to sell it myself and not go though an agent. The worries I have about this are exposure and contracts. For anyone that has done this before, how did you get exposure on your listing? Did you use the FSBO sites that are around? Also, did these sites provide contracts or do you just have to hire an attorney to draw these up for you? I have worked with real estate agents in the past with no luck...thye just refuse to meet our requests. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

[grizfan]

We sold our last two houses through our local FSBO office. The first time was after 6 failed months of trying with an agent (during a pretty healthy sellers' market, too). Our local FSBO office even included attorney fees to review the 1st offer, though we never took them up on it. The title company does a LOT of the heavy lifting anyway. Unless you expect the sale to have unusual circumstances, it is a pretty simple contract, there are lots of standard forms to use. Personally, I will never go near a real estate agent ever again. I think 6% is a shameless rip-off of the consumer, and I find how the NAR guards the MLS data to be pretty much a monopoly. In my mind, 6% amounts to price fixing. One person selling a $200,000 house may need $12,000 in help selling that house, while a different person may only need $2,000 worth of help. Or I might be willing to pay more for the agent with years of experience, but not nearly that much for the rookie agent.

But, your circumstances need to be considered. Are you willing to do a lot of work on your own? Can you market your house? Can you emotionally detach yourself from your house in order to set a reasonable price? How patient are you? It’s a brutal market out there, without having someone to “coach” you, it would be easy to panic, get impatient, or otherwise make a bad decision. It takes time, work, patience and steady nerves, but it can be done and it can save you a significant amount of money. I believe you owe it to yourself to do the research.

[TN94z]

  grizfan said:

We sold our last two houses through our local FSBO office. The first time was after 6 failed months of trying with an agent (during a pretty healthy sellers' market, too). Our local FSBO office even included attorney fees to review the 1st offer, though we never took them up on it. The title company does a LOT of the heavy lifting anyway. Unless you expect the sale to have unusual circumstances, it is a pretty simple contract, there are lots of standard forms to use. Personally, I will never go near a real estate agent ever again. I think 6% is a shameless rip-off of the consumer, and I find how the NAR guards the MLS data to be pretty much a monopoly. In my mind, 6% amounts to price fixing. One person selling a $200,000 house may need $12,000 in help selling that house, while a different person may only need $2,000 worth of help. Or I might be willing to pay more for the agent with years of experience, but not nearly that much for the rookie agent.

Good advice. I have worked with two different agents and didn't have any luck and could care less about the first agent. I also found out from inside sources that you get "black listed" (for a lack of better terms). For instance, I live in one city but listed with a much bigger city that I wanted to move to...well, I was told that since I listed it with a non-local realtor, then the local realtors would not show it or suggest it to customers which I think is BS! So, here is my situation to better enlighten you and hopefully help you give me some really good advice. I originally built the house to sell a few years ago. I have a ton of equity built up in the house because we built it so cheap. I do not "have" to sell it...I just want to sell it and build another one. I am pretty patient (although my golf swing changes are really killing my patience!!) and I willing to do the work. Where is the best place to research this? What work are you referring to? How is the best way to market the house as far as advertisement, and getting it the exposure it needs? My neighbor across the street is selling his by himself and there are always cars stopping and checking it out. I haven't had a chance to talke with him yet to see how he has advertised it. The good thing is, I don't have to sell it and I'm not in a financial bind. I would just like to sell it and make the money off of it and build another.

[grizfan]

Zillow.com is a good place to start. The key is to find out what houses in your area are actually selling for. Try to find comparable properties. This will mean a LOT of internet searches. I stumbled across a few realtor websites that had a ton of MLS data exposed, including sale price on recently sold houses. Also, your county's assessor office could be a great resource. I used a combination of these to arrive at what I felt was a reasonable price per square foot measurement for a house in my area with similar features/build quality. I then used that to help set my price.
My FSBO office did a great job of helping us market the houses we sold. They have a magazine that is readily available in our area, a good website and they provided a lot of signs for us to use. We made some nice, very informative flyers, too. Then, there's Craig's List and other online resources. I am a website manager, so I was able to build my own website to market our house the 2nd time, which helped. You never know where that lead will come from.
Next up, getting the house ready for sale, staging it, making it more attractive than the competition (see step one for scouting out the competition). Also, talk to a loan officer at a bank or two; be ready to help the prospective buyer with any financing needs. Have financing information as part of your house flyer.

Houses will always sell, it is just a matter of adjusting your time to sell or the price you get. Having reasonable expectations of what you can/should sell your house for is really important. Make sure you don't let emotions get in the way here.

[ks8829]

I am a realtor in San Francisco, California and not too familar with the process in the east. Do you use attorneys to review the paper work?

I would research the advantage of using a realtor or not and the advantage of selling yourself?

Do you really save on the commission? A realtor in your area would spend the time to explain the difference along with a reduced fee base real estate company like "Help U Sell". The one area that I would be very carefull with is the disclosure and paper work, if you are planning to sell yourself make sure that an experience attorney will review all your paper work so your liability is reduced through the attorney.

Remember to disclosure, disclosure and disclosure. good luck and feel free to ask any questions that I can try to answer.

I have been selling real estate for 20+ years and with Coldwell Banker.

[TN94z]

  ks8829 said:

I am a realtor in San Francisco, California and not too familar with the process in the east. Do you use attorneys to review the paper work?

I have worked with 2 different agents here from 2 different companies and neither were worth the 6% they would have made had the house sold. All they wanted to do was hold open houses which do not work...in this area they don't anyway. It seems like my agents never showed the house. It was always another agent from a different realtor. Now I know that other realtors show your house as well, but my realtor never showed it. An experienced attorney is for sure the way I would go if I were to sell it on my own. I would want to take as much legal responsibility off my shoulders as I could.

[leezer99]

  grizfan said:

Zillow.com is a good place to start. The key is to find out what houses in your area are actually selling for.

Never use zillow.com to try and find an estimate of what your house is worth. The only person that can appraise your home is a licensed real estate appraiser. You will undoubtedly be upset if they come in lower than what you found on zillow but guess what... the banks don't care what zillow says and they rely solely on what the appraiser reports.

[TN94z]

  leezer99 said:

Never use zillow.com to try and find an estimate of what your house is worth. The only person that can appraise your home is a licensed real estate appraiser. You will undoubtedly be upset if they come in lower than what you found on zillow but guess what... the banks don't care what zillow says and they rely solely on what the appraiser reports.

Having had it on the market twice, I know what it is worth. I don't need another appraisal anyway. Everyone told me I had it priced just right the last time, so I will go with the same price. Thanks for the heads up though

[ks8829]

What I have been doing for the last 10 years is this method of selling:

1) Price
2) offer date
3) disclosure package

1) Price your home slightly lower than the average home 2) Offer date, have two Sunday open houses along with two week day open house for maximum exposure. Have a pre-set date to consider offers. 3) Disclosure package, have all the disclosures including inspection available in a disclosure package for anybody interested in making an offer.

What you are creating is a multiple offer situation, so that you end up with 2 or more offers. If you are not happy with the offers that come in you can counter any or all your offers, but what will happen is you will have offers bidding against each other and finish with an offer and price that is acceptable for you plus a back-up offer.

[TN94z]

  ks8829 said:

What I have been doing for the last 10 years is this method of selling:

Can you get a little deeper into the disclosure package? What all is included, what kind of inspection, etc....? These are the things that I am trying to research. The paperwork side of things. Anyone can just list a house for sale, but I want to make sure it is right so nothing comes back on me.

[mc0388]

  ks8829 said:

I am a realtor in San Francisco, California and not too familar with the process in the east. Do you use attorneys to review the paper work?

  TN94z said:

I have worked with 2 different agents here from 2 different companies and neither were worth the 6% they would have made had the house sold. All they wanted to do was hold open houses which do not work...in this area they don't anyway. It seems like my agents never showed the house. It was always another agent from a different realtor. Now I know that other realtors show your house as well, but my realtor never showed it.

I am also considering selling my house (we are considering a move to Hilton Head). I would like to sell it on my own. Mainly because I had a Friend (so-called) real estate agent sell my first house and we also bought a house he was listing. He made $26,000 in one day because of my wife and I, and he not as so much called us since (July '07'). We also were forced to look at houses during his schedule not ours. PLUS, our house is in a VE flood zone, our Rrealtors' estimate for flood insurance $1,500/ year Actual cost is $3,800/yr.

Enough ranting: Is there a checklist of sorts that will help in 'for sale by owner' situations, to make sure all areas of the sale are covered? I have a current appraisal and I did like the attorney used, so I can mark those 2 things off. Thanks for the help

[ks8829]

In San Francisco,

We have the usual property inspections, Termite, home inspection, natural hazard, along with the seller transfer disclosure statement and supplemental transfer disclosure, agent disclosure, 3-R report, Underground storage tank inspection, Energy inspection, and other disclosures that are part of San Francisco requirements.

The benefit of having the three work together to maximize the best price and terms in the least amount of time with results.

1) Price
2) Date to consider offers
3) Disclosure package

[ks8829]

If you would like a copy of the disclosure package we use in San Francisco, CA e-mail me and I will send you a copy to review.