How to Sell Your Home Yourself: FSBO Guide

6 Steps to Selling a Home by Owner

If you’ve weighed the pros and cons and want to sell your home yourself, it’s time to think about the steps in the process. With this roadmap in mind, you’ll be ready to navigate the home selling process from start to finish – no agent needed!

1. Determine market value

Before you can get the right price for your home, you need to know the market price. Improperly pricing your home can negatively impact its ability to sell. Your home may be worth more or less than you think, so it’s best to look at the data to find out what your home is really worth. market value. You can do this in several ways:

• Request a competitive market analysis from an agent. This report uses data from comparable properties and known market trends to produce an estimate. This service is usually free and gives a fairly accurate quote. Also, you may like the agent and decide not to go through FSBO.

• Get an assessment. As for a competitive market analysis, an evaluation creates a report from a licensed professional that reviews comparable properties. According to the law, the evaluations are carried out by neutral third parties. This means that your estimate will not be affected by bias and will be the true value of your home.

• Make an educated guess. The process of determining a home’s market value is generally the same no matter who does it: look up comparable properties online, consider the home’s unique features, and produce an estimate. You can do this process yourself if you feel comfortable.

2. Prepare your house for sale

Once you know the basic market value of your home, you can start preparing your home for sale. In this part of the process, you will decide what modifications, updates, or cosmetic fixes you will make to make your home ready for the market.

Preparing your home for the market can be as big or as small an undertaking as you wish. Just make sure that whatever changes you make increase the value of your home. Renovating the basement might seem like a good investment, for example, but on average it only recoups about 70% of its cost.²

On the other hand, something as small as mowing the lawn or trimming bushes can increase curb appeal. Having curb appeal can increase your home’s value by up to 7%, so make sure your home’s exterior makes a good first impression on buyers!

3. Market your property ad

Now that your home is ready for the market, it’s time to spread the word. Marketing your home is one of the most important steps in the process of selling a home. After all, the more potential buyers who know about your home, the more likely you are to get the deal you’re looking for.

More than half of buyers find their home through the Internet, so creating online listings is a great first step. Advertise your home in as many online spaces as possible, such as:

• The MLS Database
• Social media platforms
• Online classifieds
• FSBO websites (jump link to FSBO website section below)

Although only real estate professionals can create MLS listings, there is a solution. You can pay participating brokers a flat fee to create an MLS listing for you. It’s probably worth it — many agents find homes to show buyers through the MLS service, and about a third of buyers find homes through an agent. Not creating an MLS listing for your home means you’ll likely miss out on a big chunk of the market.

When listing your home online, be sure to get great photos of your home. It may take extra time or money, but staging your home can lead to major benefits:

• 80% of real estate agents said staging helped buyers imagine themselves in the home.⁴
• 23% of agents said that scripted homes received 1-5% higher offers than unscripted homes.⁴
• Split-level homes sell 33% to 50% faster than single-story homes.⁵