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  Preparing Your Home For Sale Several questions will be need to answered prior to selling your home.
Let's address questions 1-4 first. When selling your home via FSBO, think of the last time you bought your last car. Let's say for example you were looking for a used 2006 Toyota Camry. You preferred the color black, with leather interior and a 6 cyclinder engine, and less than 20,000 miles. You go to a vehicle website that searches out a car with the above characteristics. Let's say you find three different cars that match your search. You make appointments with each seller to view their vehicles. The first car is immaculate, and looks like it had just been washed and waxed and the wheels had a nice sheen. The second car needed to be washed but otherwise looked fine. The third car had bird droppings on the paint, food wrappers inside, and cookie crumbs in the backseat. The vehicles test drove fine, have no body damage and all bluebook at the same price. All three are being offered within $500.00 of each other. Which would you pick? Perception is key. Has the first car been really taken care of that much more than the other two or was it just professionally detailed? You may never know, but the perception is that it is a better maintained car and therefore will probably be the car you consider buying. When a home buyer is looking for a home, it is no different than buying a car. Your home is competing against other homes and image and perception is very important. The buyer is visually putting pictures in their head on how they would make your house, their home. Giving them a warm fuzzy feeling will help create a better picture in their head. Fixing problems that you know that exist in your home should be fixed prior to selling. These problems will all show up on the property inspection, which is done by a licensed property inspector or contractor. You can sell your home in "as-is" condition, but that is a red flag that says "my home has a problem and I'm not going to fix it". The home will than become the target of a lowballing buyer who is looking for a good deal. You can also obtain a sellers home inspection which will give you an unbiased point of view of what really needs fixing. The inspection can cost $250.00-$450.00. The "fix it" list will be made by the inspector and will give you a good idea on what the buyers home inspector will find. Your inspector can point out a majority of the "fix-its" the buyers inspector will find. It is California cutom that the seller pays for the buyers home inspection, so getting one of your own will be an additional cost. You don't have to get your own inspection done, it's just an idea. It's also worth mentioning that paying for the buyers inspection, which is ordered after you have agreed on a purchase price and the borrower has loan approval, is not required to be paid by you, it's just a custom. You can negotiate, split, or not pay at all. But be careful not to scare away a good buyer! Will I recoup the costs in the form of a higher sales price? The days of putting in granite countertops, and wood floors to increase a higher sales price are over. Foreclosures are diluting home values to the point that homes with upgrades can sell for the same price as a home without upgrades. Hire a professional cleaning crew or roll up your sleeves and do it yourself. Leave no doubts to cleanliness. Lenders are dumping properties off their books regardless of what upgrades are in the home. New paint and carpet may help give the buyer that warm fuzzy feeling, since it's less work that they have to do. Make your home in "move-in" shape. Most first time buyers want the home ready to go. There are two different trains of thought going through a buyers mind.
There's not much in between. If it's shining, your property will sell faster and for a price closer to your asking price. If it's not shining, prepare to receive a lower asking price. What is staging and should I have it done professionally done to my home? Staging is a term used to describe strageic positioning of furniture, various pieces of decor inside and outside your home that will evoke a positive emotion. It essentially gives the WOW! factor to a home. Licensed and/or certified staging individuals, will use a combination of your already existing decor and their own decor to create a homey feel to the buyer by brightening and warming up each room which can give them an idea that this could be their home instead of being your home. Staging also eliminates clutter and attempts to modernize and maximize the size of the room as well as point out the strengths of each room. Typically a homeowner may have a hard time staging their own home. It is difficult to look at your home objectively. You have to depersonalize your own home. That could mean family pictures may be replaced with other vanilla type of photos or paintings. This may be necessary for the buyer to not feel they are intruding on your home. They may spend less time in some rooms, if they can't emotionally detach themselves from a room that has personal memories and events pictured on the wall. Put yourself in their shoes! You may feel that you are snooping, instead of imagining what kind of decor you would bring to the room. There aren't any actual figures that I could find, that suggest higher sales prices and quicker sales with staging. Let's face it there may be parts of your home that you've grown to just put up with, and have grown immune to and don't notice because you live there day after day. But to a homebuyer, it may stick out like a sore thumb and cause them to think "this house needs work". But many Realtors swear that staging helps move properties and when you think about it, it makes sense, especially in this buyers market. Everything has to be just right to secure a buyer. The cost of staging varies. Click here to get more information on how you can find a licensed staging professional. If you do intend to stage your home, you would need to do this prior to listing.
Selling FSBO doesn't mean you don't disclose defects! Even more important, you must disclose any major problems up front and in your purchase contract to all prospective buyers. In some states, buyers have up to 8 years to sue the prior seller for not disclosing property defects. For example, let's say a home had some mold issues. The seller and Realtor knew it, and instead of disclosing it, they painted over the living room ceiling to hide it. The house sold, and a year later, the new homeowner was having some insulation installed and the installer noticed the mold while in the attic, and notified the homeowner. The mold was tested and determined that it had been pre-existing for several years. The new homeowner sued the prior homeowner, and the sellers Realtor for damages. The home had to be completely torn down and rebuilt.......................at the prior sellers and Realtors expense. Three words with known defects: Disclose, disclose, disclose. If you don't have the funds to fix the items, you still have to disclose them. Be honest, and tell the homebuyers, that you don't have the funds to fix the items, and you are willing to offer the home at a lower than market price for the inconvenience. Keep in mind, the homebuyers lender may not allow a loan on the property if there is a health and safety issue such as mold, or termite infestation, cracks in the foundation, leaky roof etc... So even though the buyer is o.k. with the defect(s), the lender may not be. There are specific loans out there that will allow escrow to close with the defects, but the loans are difficult to obtain, and often come at a higher interest rate to the buyer. Curb Appeal Curb appeal is the very first impression the buyer will get of your home. Does it shine from the curb? If not, there are a few things you can do to help it shine: Homebuyers senses are alive and excited when looking for a home to buy. Seeing grass, flowers and shrubs that are half alive, or dead altogether can deaden their senses and their homebuying attitude before they enter your home. It can also put them in "lowball" offer approach right away. Don't give them that opportunity! New shrubs and flowers brighten scenery and the senses. If you don't have the funds to put in new sod, there are several ways to brighten the lawn. Fertilizer and/or fertilizing green paint, can do wonders. Potted flowers and trees can give an immediate lift to any yard and entryway. Solar powered lights, which you can use to line the driveway, or lawn can give the yard some "lines". Add a few ceramic animals to the entryway and can create a smile on the buyers face before they enter your home.
How Much Should I List My House For? You can do this a few different ways as well: You can always have a few Realtors give you a BPO or CMA, a Brokers Priced Opinion or Competitve Market Analysis.. This doesn't mean you have to use the Relator, and the BPO's are free. The BPO will come complete with comparable home sales in your area, which is the basis that all Realtors and appraisers use to come up with a sales price and value for your home. You can also get your own comparable sales, and determine your own sales price based on that information. Are some home overpriced? Absolutely. In fact, the number one reason homes don't sell is that the sales price is too high for their area. Right now, in the summer of 2008, we are in a "buyers market". This means that homes are in a depreciating state, and buyers are asking for seller concessions, and lower sales prices. Keep this in mind when pricing your home. There should be at least a 5% variance in price when determining your starting asking price. That means if you asking $400,000, expect offers to come in at $380,000, it's common. You can obtain your comparable sales from loan agents, title companies as well as going to websites like, Zillow.com and Realtor.com. Do your homework. Drive by the comparable homes and make notes. Why did this home sell more than another home? Is there curb appeal? There are ways you can find out who the selling Realtor was, and you can call them to see if there were any upgrades, or recent remodeling that increased the value. You can also get an appraisal on your own home. The appraiser will come to your own, walk through the inside and outside, measure, gather comps and give you a complete report in a week or less. The cost is $300.00 - $400.00. If you use the appraised value as your listing price, you have something you can show propective buyers that you have an independant third party document that shows the value of your home. How Long Is It Going To Take To Sell My Home? This depends on your asking price and buyers confidence in the market. All in all, it may take 6 months or more to sell your home. Buyers are waiting for home values to fall even further. If prices keep going down, than they will wait to buy. This dilutes the pool of buyers. But there are still buyers who have to buy or don't want to wait. These are your buyers! This is where effectively pricing your home to sell is critical. Listing your home $3,000.00 lower than the last comparable, or below market rate, is a good idea. Expecting top dollar for your home will keep it on the market for a longer period of time. Also remember buyers will be asking for seller concessions such as you paying for a portion of their closing costs. Buyers seller concession requests can be up to 6% of the sales price of your home. That doesn't mean you have to agree to it, you can pay zero of their costs, but if you want to keep a buyer on the hook, 2-3% seller contributions are becoming the norm today. Keep this in mind when pricing your home, and calculating your expected profit.One last thing to keep in mind, is that by not allowing any Realtor commission to be paid, this may lengthen the time it will take to sell your home as well since Realtors may not include your home in their list of homes for sale since they fear they will not receive any income. In the end, you can tailor the sale of your home any way you like. Little or no Realtor compensation, little or no seller concession to the buyer. Getting an idea of what the competition is doing is key, and will help give you expectation on buyer demands.
:: View Properties For Sale :: Homebuyer Education :: Prequalification Form :: Buyer's Resources :: Set Appointment To See Property :: Free Marketing Kit Details :: FSBO-Is It For Me? :: Create A Plan :: Escrow Procedure :: Required Seller Forms :: Preparing Your Home :: Marketing Your Home :: Open House Tips :: Close of Escrow Day :: California Purchase Agreement :: FSBO Checklist :: Troubleshooting Problems :: Calculators :: Solutions :: Loan Modification :: Loan Modification FAQs :: Library :: Glossary :: Schools :: Weather :: Clarion Mortgage- 15 Yrs. Experience :: NIS Insurance Solutions :: Home Staging :: An Equal Opportunity Company. Equal Housing Opportunity. All rights reserved. 
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