8 Tips for Selling Your House on Your Own

People frequently cringe when a modest gain from the sale of a house is severely reduced by real estate sales fees. The amount paid to the real estate agents and brokers is usually less than ten percent of the sale. However, this can be a much larger percent of the profit from the sale.

If a home sells for $100,000, the profit before commissions may be $15,000.

If the real estate fees are seven and a half percent, the owner will end up with $7,500 and the agent or agents will get an equal amount. This makes the sales commission half of the gain on the property. Because of this, many homeowners choose to try to sell their houses without the help of a real estate professional. If you choose to go this route for a home sale, you need to keep some things in mind.

Plan a budget for the sale.

While it may sound good to just put up a sign in the yard, that sign will only be seen by people who happen to drive down your street. Within a couple of weeks, all of your neighbors will no longer notice the sign. So, if you really plan to sell the property within a reasonable time frame, you will need to do more advertising. Advertising costs money. Check on advertising costs in your area so that you can establish a realistic budget before making a final decision to forego using an agent to list your property.

You do not have the multi-listing service available that is used heavily by real estate agents.

This means that you will need to employ the local newspapers. Go beyond the one that is delivered to your community. Place ads in as many papers in nearby communities as your budget will allow you to maintain for two or three weeks. You may want to run the ads for three weeks and remove them for a week or two and repeat the cycle. Another option is to run the ad in a different set of papers each week. The idea is to keep the ad from becoming part of the real estate section background noise. Make the ad stand out with a box or special print or a picture of the property.

Make up flyers that feature your house.

Put these flyers up on any bulletin boards that will allow it. If you have friends who own businesses, you might want to ask them to post the flyer in their shop window or leave a stack near the check out area. Keep some of the flyers with you at all times to share with people you meet when you are out and about.

Use the internet to advertise your house.

You have several options online to help sell your house. There are various websites that can be located with a simple web search. Some offer this service for free but most charge a fee that will vary from site to site. If you are on any of the social networking websites, make sure to mention the house is for sale a few times per week. Put a tag about the house as part of your signature on your outgoing emails.

Make sure that you have some type of contract available.

Most office supply stores sell generic copies of many different types of contracts and documents. Locate one that applies to real estate sales. Read through it and make certain that it contains language that you can live with. If you are intimidated by this type of document, employ an attorney to either read this contract or to compose one for you. It may cost you a couple of hundred dollars, but the protection that it will give you during after the sale is important. You will need to locate a notary in most states to witness the final signatures on the contract to make the document legal.

Check with the local title company before entering into a final contract.

Unless you are real estate savvy in your state and locality, you will need some guidance from the local title company regarding what is needed to complete the sales transaction. The title company will either do a title search or issue title insurance to protect the buyer. It is the title company that also files the deed to the property and makes sure that the parties that need a copy receive one.

Speak with your bank before listing the property for sale.

Even if you are in good shape on your payments, you need to know exactly how much you owe on the property. This knowledge will help you determine if the asking price will be enough to cover the cost of the sale and retire the mortgage. The bank will probably be able to help you to know what a reasonable asking price for you house would be. Since they execute mortgages on other properties in the neighborhood, the bank should be in a good position to know current local market values for houses.