Selling Your Own Home In A Tough Real Estate Market - Five Tips
If you are in a tough real estate market and are looking to sell your home quickly, you might want to consider doing a For Sale By Owner. My wife and I recently bought a new house and after trying unsuccessfully to sell our existing house through a real estate agent for several months decided to try For Sale by Owner. We found a buyer within four days and closed on the house three weeks later. However, through our experience we discovered a few things. Here are a few tips if you are considering a FSBO in a less than ideal real estate market. 1. Consider paying to have your home placed in the MLS. There are several companies out there that will do this for a few hundred dollars. With sales down, real estate agents are desperate to earn a commission. By putting the house in the MLS you are agreeing that if an agent brings a buyer to you that you will pay the agent their part of the commission (you still save the listing agents commission). If you can sell the house on your own with no agent then you won’t have to pay an agent. However, in a tough market you want as many possible eyes on your property as possible. 2. Get the word out to as many places as possible about your house. One of the best places to do this is on the internet. There are dozens of free websites that will allow you to post your house for free. Consider starting with craigslist since it has so much traffic and then spread out to the other sites on the net. It will probably take you an entire evening to get the house posted on all the sites and you will want to keep a spreadsheet with your usernames and passwords so that you can go back later and remove the listing once the house sells. 3. Design a professional looking flyer and put out for sale by owner signs and a flyer box. If you aren’t the artistic type and don’t know that much about designing things like flyers consider a site like vflyer which will give you templates for designing a flyer. Take some good pictures of the house with your digital camera and put them on the flyer. If you use Vflyer or a program like it you can probably use the same template to post the house to craigslist and ebay (if you decide to pay for a listing). 4. Be creative. When we put our house on the market we ordered an eight foot full color printed banner to put on our fence. Our house backed to a major street and we were able to get some major exposure from the banner. I have heard of people offering free vacations, big screen tvs, cash bonus’ to the listing agent and even a free car. I have also heard of people giving away a cool prize at their open house. These things can help get your house noticed which is the first step to getting it sold. 5. Make sure that your price is competitive. Consider using the money that you are saving on real estate commissions to cut the price of your house so that it is more competitive. In tough markets it is going to be very important that your house isn’t priced too high or people will find another option. In our area there were a ton of houses on the market and most of the houses that were selling were 5% or more undervalued. If that is what it takes you might need to swallow hard and cut the price of your house. Of course all of these things are just suggestions. Still, when things get tough and you need to sell your house these could be an option for you. They worked for us.Jeff McRitchie is the director of marketing for MyBinding.com and lives in Hillsboro, Oregon. He writes extensively on topics related to Binding Machines, Binding Supplies, Report Covers, Binders, Index Tabs, Laminators, Laminating Pouches, Roll Film, Shredders, and Paper Handling Equipment.
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Real Estate Investing and Goal Setting
What is the primary reason for success most people have that seems to elude unsuccessful people? Goal setting is the primary reason for success. Lack of proper planning is the number one reason for failure. Proper goal setting involves setting a business plan in place for your life. Too many people this doesn t sound fun or sounds tedious. In practice though, goal setters have more time freedom, more money, and more success in all areas of their lives than those who don t. Well it s no different with real estate investing. Real Estate Investing must be treated as a business and it requires planning that anyone can do. Much like an airplane pilot who goes through a pre-flight checklist, the real estate investor must go through many steps for every real estate deal. You must market to find the deal, do your research on the property to establish a value, have your contracts ready, make your offer, schedule a closing, have title work done, prepare your financing, get property insurance, etc. The reason the doers make money is because so many people aren t ready to make money. Real estate investing seems like pie in the sky until you put your plan down on paper and it starts to crystallize. The planning process itself should give you renewed energy. Before I daily setup my plan I didn t want to get out of bed each day, but now I get up ready to work on knocking out my plan every day. Set your plan up into baby steps that you can review and knock out every single day. Your daily plan must include marketing to get motivated sellers to contact you. Regardless of the deals you have in the works, if your marketing stops, you will go through long dry spells. Even with consistent marketing you will have periods with few leads and periods where you are just swamped with sellers offering you great deals. Constant daily review of your goals is critical. This is why so many suggest taping your goals on your bathroom mirror so you see it when you wake up and again before you go to bed. You can even buy giant poster sized post it notes that you can write your goals on and stick them on your wall. Reviewing your goals before going to sleep at night causes your brain to dream about your goals and program them into memory. So put your goals down on paper and start putting your real estate investing plan into action.David Neese is a real estate investing author who offers a free course for real estate investors delivered by email, audio and Tele-seminar which you can get for free at:http://www.FreeRealEstateInvestingCourses.com You can find more information about David at http://www.DigitalSuccessCoach.com
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