Infotube.net: Homes for Sale - For Sale By Owner (FSBO) - Real Estate Listings

Unless you were alive when Herbert Hoover was sitting in the oval office, this is probably the worst home selling market you have ever experienced.   

Certainly, things are not horrible everywhere.  Charlotte, NC and Rochester, NY are holding on, but elsewhere, housing sales and prices are still falling, while inventories are growing.    

So, what should you do if life circumstances dictate that you MUST SELL your home in this market?  What actions can you take to beat out your competition??    Yes, the situation is painful.  But, if you have to sell, InfoTube can help.

5 Tips to Help You Sell, When you Have To Sell:

1. Don’t Spend Money.

Your house needs to make a good impression on buyers, but DO NOT spend money on big ticket items or home improvements.   Focus your attention and budget on a new paint job, deep cleaning and a lot of sprucing up.   But, absolutely, make all repairs.  

     2.    Don’t Sit on the Sidelines.

If you have to sell, now is the time.   Don’t make the mistake of hanging on, hoping prices will improve any time soon.   They won’t.   I expect another year to pass before we see any bottom in pricing.  Forget the market timing approach and put your home up for sale today.

     3.    Get Real.

Separate your emotional attachment to your home from your family’s financial best interests.  Selling a home is strictly business and should be treated as such.  

Don’t forget that smart home shoppers read the news.   Buyers expect a bargain, so give them one.  Don’t make the mistake of letting the house languish on the market.  Set a realistic price target for your home from the beginning.  Better yet, crush your competition and price your home 5%-10% below theirs.  Forget about pre-crash appraisals or the sticker price for those custom upgrades, those comparisons won’t fly, so don’t try it.

    4.    Early to Bed.  Early to Rise.  Advertise. Advertise. Advertise… Ray Crock

Whether your home is for sale by owner or by agent, you need to be active in the promotion of your property.   Your home should be advertised in the local classifieds, company newsletters, church bulletins, university or employee bulletin boards, bill boards or anywhere buyers are looking.

While local print advertising is important, don’t forget the power of the internet.   90% of all buyers begin their search for a home on the world wide web.    The internet is also the only means of effectively reaching out of the area shoppers and those from foreign countries.

Whether you are selling by agent or owner, take advantage of websites such as InfoTube.net, which offer a free home listing web page with photo’s.  Infotube.net also uploads its home listings to other websites and search engines, leaving a lot less work for you to do.   Other websites, such as craigslist also offer home listing services and should be utilized in your sales efforts.

Contact Why 6%.  Why 6% will guarantee that your home listing appears on all Realtor owned web sites, even if you are selling your home by owner.   The company also uploads home listing information to the local MLS, Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, Cyberhomes and others, in one easy step. 

     5.   Accept the Offer

If you need to sell now, you would be well advised to accept any reasonable offer from a qualified buyer.   It is easy to determine what “reasonable” is.  Ask your agent for comp’s or just review the asking and selling prices for your neighborhood on a website such as Zillow. 

If the first offer is low, but reasonable, you can negotiate, but remember the buyer has more power now.  Don’t blow a sale arguing over a few dollars.  Your home is only worth what someone will pay for it, which might be far less than what you think your home is worth. 

Best advise:  If the buyer makes an offer that is close, don’t counteroffer.  Sign the contract on the spot and congratulate yourself on nailing down one of the few buyers out there these days.  

   Thank you for visiting InfoTube.net.  Have a great weekend and best of luck on the sale of your property.

An article written by Mark S. Nadel, a government attorney, concludes that “residential real estate brokers and salespersons have long quoted their fees as a straight percentage of a home’s sales price. This traditional forumla, however, ill serves the interests of both home buyers and sellers, and is the primary reason why such fees may be inflated by, on average, more than 100 percent or $30 BILLION a year.”

There is intense competition in the real estate industry, but not in terms of price or fees. In his article, Nadel compares the real estate industry’s “flat fee” “take it or leave it” practices to those of the funeral industry, as exposed in the 1963 book “The American Way of Death,” which found that families were regularly ask to pay a single price for a bundle of funeral services, many of which they did not need or want.
Nadel charges that consumers would be substantially better off if residential brokers used fee structures similar to those used by professionals in other advisory/consulting service fields, such as law and accounting.

Nadel’s Cry…Consumers Take Action:

Traditional brokers revenue could be cut by $30 billion dollars per year with price competition. To level the field and insist upon true price competition, consumers should be armed with the following 5 pieces of information.

1. Buyers should receive an estimate of the dollar amount of the fee that their broker expects to receive in a home-sale transaction.

2. Buyers should be told whether their broker’s agent may refuse to inform them about homes that meet their criteria, if those homes are not listed by traditional brokers.

3. Buyers should be advised that fees paid to a buyer’s broker can be treated as part of the sales price for mortgage purposes.

4. Sellers should be informed that many buyers have no broker, that others have brokers who have agreed to receive less than the customary 3 percent buyer broker co-op fee, and that both groups of buyers expect to be able to translate that savings into a price reduction.

5. Sellers should be told whether their listing broker will attempt to limit the distribution of their listing by competing brokers.

In conclusion, the traditional 6 percent rate structure in the real estate industry has serious drawbacks and the structure is not defensible. 6 percent fee’s provide an incentive for a broker to sell quickly because their fee is based on the sales price, rather than on the time, effort and marketing dollars required to sell the home. Buyers and Sellers owe it to themselves to learn all the information before they hire a real estate broker.