Scandinavian Sparks Blog

Is it possible to sell your house without realtor?

With the economy being in a slump and the cost of housing still relatively high, is it wise to pay realtors extraordinary amount of money? The good news is that you don’t have to. There are several steps you can take to sell your house yourself. Of course if you are in a hurry to sell and money is no object, then by all means realtor is a huge help. But, for the rest of you I will lay out a step by step process plan.

First, get your house and yard in good shape, you need to pay special attention to the details that cost cents to be repaired but waste the overall picture of the dwelling. Kitchens and bathrooms are very important and the return on money invested in upgrading them will most likely double or even triple. A good example - freshly painted walls in neutral colors will appeal to the majority of people. Pack up your personal items and do away with clutter.

When the house looks like a candy, take pictures of every room, including the yard, being sure to emphasize the strong points. Upload your photos to your computer and make sure your photos do your house justice. Imagine that you are working for your own site that is to sell the house. Most online property listing services will resize your photos for you, however, your uploading time will drastically be reduced if you optimize or reduce the size of your photos before hand. If you are really ambitious and your camera does video, shoot some video and upload it for free to YouTube.com If you need any help, use the free movie manager for the assistance.

Now you need a website to direct potential buyers to so they can find out all the details about your property and see those wonderful pictures and videos you took. Buyers want to know as much as they can about the property so they can narrow down their search. You can find plenty of free and inexpensive services where you can use your property website. Since not everyone has the expertise and time to build their own website, this free property website service makes it easy to get a professional looking property website up and running in minutes.

And for a limited time you can get your own website for an entire year for free by using the promotion code FreePromo when you register. To build your website, all you have to do is sign up, enter as much information about your house as you want, upload as many photos as you want, enter your YouTube URLs for each of your videos, if you have any, and it immediately generates a great looking website with its own URL, slideshow, photo gallery, embedded videos, printable flyer and ability to track the number of views.

Once you have your website URL, you are ready to give it out and get the ball rolling. You can start by placing your website name on your For Sale sign in your front yard. And by the way you can look for some nice looking For Sale By Owner signs at a very reasonable price that can be customized with your website name and phone number. You can also pick up a smaller arrow sign at a local hardware store, write you website name on it and place it at the beginning of your street and/or subdivision. You may also want to purchase an info tube to attach to your For Sale sign to help distribute your property flyers that you can print out from your website listing.

Next, go to Zillow.com and sign up for a free listing on their site. Your Zillow listing allows you to enter a listing website.

Then go to Craigslist.org. Select your state and city. Click post to classifieds > housing offered > real estate by owner. In your posting description you would add your website name.

You can also out property flyers with website info and place them on bulletin boards at the office and at church. Also hand them out at community events or garage sales. If you have your own garage sale to clean out your clutter, be sure to have your For Sale sign visible and have plenty of flyers to hand out. This is especially important if your subdivision is having a community garage sale. Even those who want to find out how to buy a house after bankruptcy this info might be a trigger.

Don’t forget to advertise in your local newspaper. Be sure to include your website name. Some newspapers also give you the option of having your ad put online.

You can also spread the word to local realtors that you are selling your house yourself, but you are willing to pay 1% to any realtor that finds someone to buy it. Many realtors would rather take the 1% than nothing at all.