Well, I guess we haven’t actually sold our house by owner yet. That’ll happen at closing in mid December (fingers crossed). But here’s how we got an offer.
We’re hardly real estate experts, so this post is just a roundup of things that happened to work for us. Here’s hoping they help anyone else attempting to DIY their house sale too. The cool thing is that the people buying our house aren’t blog readers (they’d never heard about us or YHL- but we disclosed the blog to them to ensure that they were cool with images of the house with our furniture remaining on the site). Anyway, we thought it would encourage other FSBO peeps to know that you don’t need a blog to sell your house. But it was interesting for us to learn that our blog had nothing to do with attracting the people who are buying our house. Anyway, here are our tips:
Tip #1: Pick the right asking price. This is paramount. And we didn’t do this at first. We priced the house too high and we only had two showings in the first two weeks. Then we finally got real with ourselves, dropped things by about 25K, and priced our house to sell in this less-than-ideal market based on what similar homes in our area were going for. Wouldn’t you know we had fourteen showings within two weeks of the price drop – and an offer within two days of it. Really can’t stress this step enough.
Tip #2: Clean and declutter your house within an inch of its life. Now is not the time to leave a pile of socks in the laundry room or a stack of bills in the kitchen. And dust bunnies have no place in your house when it’s on the market. Oh and make sure the house doesn’t smell funny while you’re at it. Sure you’d hope prospective buyers can look beyond any lapses in cleanliness, but those dirty spots can signal to the buyer that the house isn’t cared for in other areas either. Here are a few posts about what else we did to get things ready for sale-age (here, here, here, and here).
Tip #3: Market the heck out of it. The amazing thing about using a realtor (which we definitely would have done if we couldn’t get this done on our own after a months or two of trying) is the fact that they can draw a ton of potential buyers to your house thanks to clients, connections, and widespread publicity on sites like MLS. To offset this advantage you’ll have to do a heckova lot of legwork yourself. The FSBO route isn’t easy by any means. We paid to put ads in the paper, re-listed our house on craigslist every few days, bought a for-sale sign and made countless fliers for the front yard, and eventually spent $295 to put it on MLS ourselves (using this service – although in the time since we used it we have heard this complaint, so perhaps it’s not as nice as it used to be). All told we spent about $500 marketing our house- but it certainly beats the $12k that we would have spent on a typical 6% realtor fee.
Tip #4: Learn how to show the home in a way that appeals to buyers. We learned that keeping Clara, Burger, and myself out of the house (we went on nice long walks) while potential buyers were led on a quick tour by John was the most professional and crowd-pleasing way to conduct showings. After John’s speedy walk-through he would step outside and let people poke around on their own just to see how they liked the feel of the house without anyone hovering. And if it was raining sometimes Burgs, the bean, and I would hang out in the car since walks were out of the question.
Tip #5: Make a strong argument for why your house is worth buying. Your flier (and the things you mention when you show the home) really can make all the difference. We learned that pointing out that many items would convey with the sale really helped people see added value (we tossed in all of our appliances, window treatments, light fixtures, dining room shelving, and even the master bedroom built-ins & our bed frame). We also pointed out things like the size of our large .75 acre lot and our two-car garage, which are both rarities that most other homes on the market in our price point don’t offer. And of course mentioning perks like the newly remodeled kitchen and baths, the new roof, the refinished hardwood floors, the new windows, and the other upgrades that we put into our home seemed to really set us apart from some of the other un-updated brick ranches on the market.
Tip #6: Figure out what to do if you get an offer. The whole purpose of selling your house is to get an offer, but if you don’t know what to do when you get there, you’re kind of sinking your own battleship. You’ll definitely want to bone up on your negotiation skills and learn how to trust smart people. Sure we were selling our home by owner, but we didn’t do it on our own. Not even close. We even asked the buyers agent that we used to purchase our new house a few questions along the way- and we definitely relied heavily on help from the closing attorney and lending agent that we hired for the transaction (they were both people that we’ve used before, so we really appreciated their opinions). When it came to ratifying the contract and getting through all the finer points like inspection negotiations and closing date determinations they really were our sounding board. Hiring a closing attorney is only a few hundred bucks, and you actually have to pay for a closing attorney whether you FSBO or do things through a realtor, so it was a no-brainer to rely on ours for all the help we could get.
Oh and thanks to the fact that most buyers will present you with an offer on paper, you just have to tweak that and “respond” to it (instead of drafting anything up from scratch). But you’ll definitely want to have the legally necessary papers on hand (like a lead paint disclosure form and a residential property disclosure form- both things that we googled and found online). Your closing attorney should be able to help you with those if you can’t track them down. I guess the key here is that a good closing attorney can really be an amazing resource- especially so you’re sure that everything you’re doing is 100% legit. Gotta protect yourself!
Tip #7: Rest assured that realtors won’t boycott an FSBO house. At least that wasn’t our experience. AT ALL. Nearly all of the showings that we attracted were to people with a buyers agent at their side (the agents were actually the ones calling us to schedule each showing). In fact, the people buying our house came through a realtor (so of course we owe a small percentage to that realtor since she’s acting as their agent) but we definitely appreciated not having to shell out close to 7K to a sellers agent as well (since we took on the marketing and the showings ourselves and did all the paperwork directly with a closing attorney as opposed to using a sellers agent for those items).
So that’s what we did to get ‘er done. Again – we definitely would have used a realtor if we didn’t have much luck in the first few months, but we’re just such DIYers that it felt fitting to give the whole for-sale-by-owner thing a shot and share our experiences with you guys. Is there anyone else out there who sold their house by owner? Feel free to chime in with more tips and tricks. We’re certain there are at least a few things we forgot to mention and probably a ton of things that we didn’t even think of. It’s amazing what a learning curve the whole experience can be. Now we’ll just be holding our breath for a quick and painless closing in around a month’s time. Is it December yet?
Kayakgirl73 says
Great post. You’all should be proud of yourselves, you did a lot of work to sell your house. It must have been hard to drop the price 25K, but then again that saved you months of sitting on the market. When I sold my condo last year I had to drop the price 15K and pay a substanial part of the buyers closing costs.
Ricky Bobby says
You MUST give NoMoreAgent.com a shot if you want to sell your home by owner too. It’s probably the best service I’ve ever used. Amazing customer service, and very fair pricing. I got the flat-fee mls listing. That worked well!
Cait @ Hernando House says
We aren’t in the market to sell our house, but this post would be super helpful if we were! Thanks guys!
Valerie says
Thanks for the insight. We sold our first home FBSO and had 4 offers in the first week, ending up in a bidding war. Fast forward three years and try to sell the place we are in now seems impossible. I think the local market your house is in is the biggest determining factor today when selling a house. Keeping our fingers crossed that your closing goes off without a hitch!
Lyndsay M says
wow, thanks for all the tips! Hearing your first-hand account is very helpful :) Hubby and I hope to FSBO our house in the next couple of years.
Were most of the scheduled showings on the weekends? Do you think it would be hard to FSBO if both adults worked full-time?
YoungHouseLove says
The vast majority of our showings were on weekends or evenings since house hunters seemed to have office jobs for the most part (although we did get the occasional lunch-time walk through and sometimes a 10am weekday showing if someone had taken one day off of work to see ten houses in a row or something). I would guess that most FSBO peeps have an office job to work around so it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle. You can do it! As long as you’re prepared to take a few hours off here and there to show people the house when they call. You kind of have to have a drop everything mentality to come across as accommodating (nobody wants to see a house if the realtor or the seller is being a diva about how much their request is putting them out). We ran into a few realtors like that along our hunt and we completely lost interest. Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Deb says
You guys are a great example of how to perfect the FSBO. I’m in real estate (on the legal end) and even I didn’t feel like dealing with selling our house ourselves. It takes a lot of time and effort, but you guys were in the perfect position. And definitely having an attorney to help you cover your butt is probably one of the most important things. I’m highly impressed that you guys were able to sell your house and sell it so quickly in this market. Congratulations!
Kari says
Something I picked up from reading Freakonomics (and I don’t remember if this was actually in the book, or a decision I made based on what I had read) was the advantage of listing your property with its physical characteristics, rather than the “charming” or “unique” type words. “Granite countertops” means more than “updated kitchen.”
Jordan says
Are you guys taking any of your beautiful (fixed) things with you (like capiz chandeliers?)?
YoungHouseLove says
Nope, they all stay. Except for Clara’s aqua capiz chandy because we just couldn’t part with it (her nursery is definitely going to be the room we miss the most). Our white capiz chandelier in the bedroom will be sorely missed though. So missed that we might re-buy it from World Market. You never know…
xo,
s
Adam says
Great advice, I will definitely keep that for future use! But on the reverse side, did you find that most homes you toured followed those principles also? Or, as two creative visioneers, were you able to look past some clutter, bad design, and noisy kids to see a house in a “what could be” state? I am just curious as to how many homes you looked at were well staged or poorly represented.
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Adam,
Oh yeah we can see past anything! We bought our current house complete with blue trim, floral wallpaper, and a green toilet! So we’re not scared by clutter, bad design, or noisy kids. But that being said, we figure not everyone who’s house hunting is like us. So to have the best response possible it probably would encourage more interest, a faster sale, and maybe even a higher price to take care of those things before putting your house on the market if you can. Especially if they’re cheap or free (like stripping wallpaper and going on a walk with the kids to get them out of the way).
xo,
s
Jessica @ How Sweet says
That is great news! Congrats to you guys! Keeping the fingers crossed!
Beth@Just{Heart}It says
Nice job, guys. But I’m not sure I can say the same thing about the reminder that I really need to clean my windows (even tho we’re not selling – they just really need it)! :-)
shanna says
This is great advice!
Would you mind being a little more specific with advice on pricing? In other words, how did you arrive at your first asking price and what made you decide to drop it by $25k? Did you have help or did you scour the listings for what sold/what was on the market?
I agree that price is *everything* in this market. We will try to sell our house in about a year (after having unsuccesfully attempted this Summer), so any advice you have on pricing is much appreciated!
Thanks and cannot wait to see the first house tour of your new home!
-Shanna
YoungHouseLove says
Yup, we just looked at everything that was even close to comparable to our house in location, size, amenities, etc. Then we priced ours at or below those other homes. We wanted everyone to see what a value our house was- and it definitely scored us a ton of showings and an offer very soon after we got real with ourselves, did the research, and dropped our price. Our first asking price was just sort of a rough guess and a lot of it was ego (for example, us thinking “our house has so many amazing amenities- there’s nothing like it”) so the realization that we needed to take a step back and stop insisting that our house was worth this huge price was the best thing we ever did. Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Erin @ Where Beauty Meets Function says
This is a great post!! I was wondering if your home would end up selling to a reader…interesting to know it didn’t. :)
Can’t wait to see what you do with your new adventure!! So much change in such a short time. How exciting! :)
Kristin says
Congratulations! My fiancé and I sold our house earlier this year. We had a great experience, though it was definitely helped a LOT by the fact that we were renting it and it happened to be our tenants who wanted to buy! No listing, no inspections (they’d lived there for over two years…they knew that it was in good condition), no showings. Just a formal offer and acceptance and let the lawyers hack out the rest. I know it was unique, but we were both thrilled to pay as little as we did to unload our home. FSBO is the way to go!
Carolyn says
Some of these things vary by state, don’t they? I know here in California, we don’t have closing attorneys, and our homes are “in escrow” instead of “under contract” from the time an offer is accepted until it closes. We have bought a home twice here, and sold one, and I really wouldn’t have known how to navigate escrow without our realtor. (Of course, saving all that money would have been awesome!)
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Carolyn,
That’s so funny about closing attorneys! We thought they were par for the course everywhere. We’re definitely not experts so we’re just sharing the process that worked for us here in VA- but maybe although closing attorneys aren’t used all the time in CA, perhaps one can be hired for a few hundred bucks to offset the workload and make FSBO possible?
xo,
s
Chelsey says
We just sold our home FSBO and it seems like everyone we know has done the same thing. In fact, I know four other people who have done FSBO in the last six months. One thing people should be prepared for are the annoying realtor calls once you post on Craigs List and the like. Agents called me daily and some called more than once trying to tell me that we would surely fail selling our house on our own. Our house was on the market less than a month and we didn’t even list it with MLS at all.
Also, I think open houses are a great marketing tool for someone doing FSBO. We opened our house up every Sunday and each time there were other houses in our neighborhood that were having open houses, which helped our traffic.
Nichole@40daysof says
I love this post! We just spent two months talking relatives into hiring a realtor. Of course, they weren’t doing half the stuff you wrote about. And they live in a region where winter and the slow market have already set in. Next time, I can refer back to your site. :) And maybe the FSBO will be successful.
http://40daysof.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/winterize/
Jennifer says
Great advice! I will soon be putting my house on the market, and am scared to death of it. I know I have a great house, but this poor market and trying to sell during the fall/winter just makes me nervous. I admire your willingness to FSBO….I don’t know if I have the time to invest in this route.
Good luck on your new home hunt!
Rachael Ensom says
Wow that was fast! Congrats!
Kelly says
I am so excited for you guys! When do we get to see pics of this blue trim, floral wallpaper, and a green toilet??? ;)
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Kelly,
We were actually talking about our current house’s before pics (which you can see in the House Tour tab up by our header). As for photos of the new house, we can’t wait to move in and share those!
xo,
s
Debby says
Super impressive! Congrats and thanks for the advise. Your “go get ‘er done” attitude and creativity is so inspiring. :)
Monica says
Yay! Congrats on getting an offer. You don’t realize just how much work it takes until you actually have to log the man hours to clean and organize and market everything.
You guys have a great home, so it was only a matter of time!
Gretchen says
GREAT post, as we will be going the FSBO route. It just PAINS me to think of paying 5-6% of roughly $400K selling price (Chicago) to a realtor. We cannot afford that! My question for you — in your listing, did you specifically indicate what percentage you would pay to the buyer’s agent? Or did you have to negotiate that at time of sale? Thanks for all the great advice & info!
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Gretchen,
When we listed it through the MLS service that we linked to, we could indicate the percentage we were willing to pay (which was great because we never had to bring it up again, since it was in writing with our listing).
xo,
s
Heidi H. says
Y’all come through every time. Thanks for this post! Not that I am selling (or even have a house to sell, for that matter! Ha!) but now I have all this info stuck in my noggin just in case.
It’s still bittersweet for me that this house is going on to be loved by someone else. I’m sure it’s much more for y’all. I know y’all are excited about December being here, but I’m hoping it drags it feet. ::sniff sniff::
bridget b. says
great advice! how did you factor in the value of the many improvements that you made to the house when picking a selling price?
i would think that a higher initial starting price than the local comps would be justified because of all of the upgrades. was that your experience?
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Bridget,
Yes, we looked at other homes with similar amenities (like new constructions or other updated or expanded houses with new kitchens, bathrooms, roofs, windows, etc). It definitely supported the theory that homes that are updated are worth more- just not worth an obscene amount more. Finding the right price really was really the sweet spot.
xo,
s
Irina@CanDoGal says
Though I’m not selling now (we just bought), I really appreciate that you went this route and posted such a detailed list of tips. It’s not something I would have considered before, but to save thousands, maybe these tradeoffs aren’t so bad after all. I like to see your thinking process with all these DIYs.
Erin says
In terms of price, did you end up making a profit? Seems difficult to do these days.
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Erin,
We’re actually planning a second post about that soon.
xo,
s
LaRae says
This is a great post! FSBO has always scared me, so this really eased my mind about possibly selling our home! Do you still have your listing up on craigslist? I’m interested to see how you worded your listing!
Erin says
Interesting that you had to pay the buyer’s agent (although you offered). Here, if buyers ask their agent to show them a FSBO house and choose to put in an offer, they are on the hook themselves for paying the agent’s comission.
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Erin,
We could have indicated that we weren’t willing to pay a buyer’s agent but here in Richmond it’s standard practice and we didn’t want to turn away a potential sale for those few thousand dollars. To us saving the seller’s agent fees was the goal, and of course it would have been icing on the cake if there was no buyer’s agent, but were confident if we didn’t cater to buyer’s agents we wouldn’t have snagged a sale- at least this quickly and for such a great amount.
xo,
s
rd shugart says
Great post! We really wanted to do the FSBO route again with this house, but my husband travels quite a bit and we were uncomfortable showing the house with him out of town & just 3 kids and me! It’s a lot of work to sell your house, period! But you’re right – pricing & a spotless house is what will ultimately seal the deal. You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t CLEAN their house! Ridiculous! Here’s hoping we get a contract soon!
NancyV908 says
Great & helpful post.
As someone who purchased a FSBO home & looked at a few others, I would stress the importance of staying out off people’s way when they look around. I really hated how the owners would trail us through every room, which made it very awkward to open closets, test faucets, and all that kind of stuff you need to do when you’re examining a place. Realtors know to give you the tour & then let you do your thing–& to get the owners out of the house–but not the homeowners we dealt with.
Courtney says
I agree, this is bittersweet! I’ve loved every square inch of your house so it is sad to see it go, but excited to see the new one!
I have a question though… did all that sweat equity pay off? Compairing the prices from when you bought to when you sold, was it a huge gain? We plan on selling our house in a few years and people keep telling me to not put much into the house because the people before us came out in the negative and we probably will too with the housing market. I want to make it “our” house, but don’t want to dump a bunch of money into it and not get any back out of it.
Congrats!
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Courtney,
We actually have a post all about that coming up soon!
xo,
s
Jenn L @ Peas and Crayons says
Great tips, peeps! Thank you! This is going to come in handy within the next few years for my husband and I!
xoXOxo
Jenn the “property virgin” haha
love you guys
Cherish says
Great advice! My husband and I are hoping to list our condo FSBO in the spring. Any chance you’ll share the flier you made with readers to use as a guide? Obviously removing any personal info (address, price, etc.).
Bethie says
You guys have inspired us to list our suburban DC house FSBO! We are moving to London in March and would love to have some extra cash for life in our new city! Like you, we will hire an agent if things move too slowly, but it is sure worth a try.
Would you be willing to share tips on the flier you made for the house? Perhaps even a picture of it (price and address blotted out of course!). :)
Angela says
would you be willing to post the flyer you used? love to see what pics and points you highlighted about the house.
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Angela, Bethie, and Cherish,
Here’s an old blurred out flier (although we did make some tweaks to it later, like adding the sunroom square footage once we got that heated). But you get the idea. Check it out here (click it to enlarge it): https://www.younghouselove.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Brick-Ranch-FSBO.jpg
Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Tracy says
We did not sell our house, but we actually bought our house without the Realtor, and the person who sold to us did not have a Realtor. Well, our circumstances were so that a friend introduced us to a friend that was thinking about selling her house. Although we started with a realtor to walk through many houses in the area, she did not want to have to pay any realtor fees. We knew almost immediately that it was the right house for us and fortunately for us, the realtor that we had been working with gave us a basic contract and allowed us to go on our own. I think her kindness and help actually will pay off, because I would recommend her to anyone, and when we are looking for our next house (we plan to move out of town and buy some land to build a house one day) she is definitely going to be the one we seek out.
From the buyers perspective, I can say that it was pretty painless. I need to send some pictures off to you all, but we have done quite a bit of renovations on our house. In fact, I just did a post about all the renovations we completed in our first year of living here ( traveling-tracy.blogspot.com ), not to mention we just had our first child in September. So I feel like your ideas are so perfect for our family!
lauraC says
Oh, that is so sad, to leave Clara’s nursery. Because you just did it, and it fits the new, “pops of color” you, won’t you just paint her room the same colors? I guess that’s what I assumed you’d do. I painted Sophia’s room the same color as her first nursery when we bought our house. You have all those coordinating, super cute and beautiful things: mirror, mobile, shelves . . . You’re not planning to start her room from scratch, are you?
YoungHouseLove says
Hey LauraC,
We’re definitely not going to start from scratch, but we might play around with new wall colors because that’s actually exciting for us!
xo,
s
Sally says
Great post!
I’ll second the comment about things being different in different states. I’ve bought houses in NC and MD. The process in NC was much more transparent and required much more leg work on my part. So, I feel like I’d know what to do to FSBO in NC, but I’d have to learn a lot to FSBO in MD.
I think your success speaks to your practical approach to selling. My bad experiences with FSBO’s came when the seller didn’t take a realistic approach to pricing their house including understanding the value added (or not added) by their upgrades. Also when the owner wasn’t flexible with showings we thought “do you really want to sell?”
Val says
Did anyone balk at the very unique sun room floor? When you painted it and then soon after announced that you were selling, I wondered if you knew you were selling when you chose that stencil. As an HGTV addict, I know people fixate on really silly things, so I’ve been dying to know. The rest of your house just seems more neutral and pleasing to all so I was curious.
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Val,
Nope, not a one. Here in Richmond, Sunny’s stencils (like the one we use) are popular (even showing up on the floor of a few hip downtown shops) so we saw it as a selling feature. We figured we would happily repaint if any buyers requested that after making an offer – but happily, it didn’t seem to work against us at all.
xo,
s
OwningSingle says
Nice work. This will definitely come in handy. I alway hear nightmares about FSBO it’s great to hear a success story.
ginger says
I’m wondering how you got good feedback without a seller realtor to ask. Were the buyers agents willing to tell you what was liked and what was not?
YoungHouseLove says
Oh yes, they’d call us and say “well they needed one more full bath” or “they need a larger master bedroom to accommodate a king sized bed” or “they decided to buy out in the Powhattan area.” But across the board nearly every agent said our house showed beautifully (which was soooo nice to hear) and a few even bought other clients to see it because they liked it so much. We were like two proud parents beaming every time we heard such nice things. It was a lot of work to keep things clean and showing-ready, but it really was worth the effort!
xo,
s
A.C. says
Very interesting post. I’m still patiently waiting for new house details (pictures, floor plans… hint hint?) :) As a former military family we’ve bought and sold a ton of houses, but we’ve never tried FSBO, either due to having no time to devote to the endeavor, or just being chicken about the whole idea. As always, you two make it look so easy.
So here’s a maybe dumb question, but when you mentioned all the things that were included with the house it got me thinking- what about the bookcase in the office/playroom? If i remember correctly I thought it was semi-built in? And with a painted wall behind it? Is it staying or getting torn down and wall repainted?
YoungHouseLove says
Hey A.C.
We actually debated leaving that but will be taking it with us for the new office. So we will repaint the wall behind it when we leave (it was just secured to the wall with one anchor like many tall bookcases are, so it shouldn’t be too hard to remove and reinstall at the new place).
xo,
s
Christine says
Is it freaking you out at all that your closing and moving are so close to the holidays – Clara’s first Christmas?
Great info that I will definitely refer back to if I decide to sell my place in the next couple years. I’m really looking forward to seeing all the new projects in the new house!
heather s. says
Where I live you HAVE to include the window treatments, light fixtures, and any shelving attached to the walls when you sell the house. Its not a ‘bonus’ to leave them for the new owners, you are required to leave those things so I found it interesting that you used that as part of your selling points. Every state must be different!
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Heather S,
Here the curtain rods and things like blinds usually convey, but curtain panels themselves along with things like the not-hardwired sconces in the bedroom (they’re plug-ins) wouldn’t usually stay. We just wanted to point out those things so there weren’t any questions later on.
xo,
s
Sara @ House Bella says
I was flabbergasted to find that not all states require closing attorney’s! After hearing horror stories from my friends in New Hampshire about their closing attorneys, I was pleasantly surprised to find that here in Idaho you don’t need one. The title agent does all the work a closing attorney would do. Crazy, right?
Faith says
The picture on this post of John cleaning the windows of the sunroom reminded me of a question that was lingering. It seemed you guys decided to redo the sunroom close to the same time you decided you were going to try to sell the house. It turned out beautifully, but it was definitely more “neutral” before, where as now, there is a specific color scheme that wouldn’t be all that easy to change for non-DIYers. Painting a floor in my opinion is a nerve racking task!! Did you think about this before you decided to change and it and would you do it again knowing you’d be selling the house soon?
YoungHouseLove says
Hey Faith,
We were batting around the idea of selling the house when we redid the sunroom (although we weren’t 100% sure until a few weeks after the reveal) but here in Richmond, Sunny’s stencils (like the one we used on the floor) are popular (even showing up on the floor of a few hip downtown shops). So we saw that, albeit not-neutral, use as a selling feature. We figured we would happily repaint if any buyers requested that after making an offer – but happily, it didn’t seem to work against us at all. Nobody mentioned anything at all!
xo,
s
Sarah W. says
Phew. Thanks for this post! We are on the cusp of deciding whether to purse a little dream home and were excited to see some tips on the FSBO process.
Tanja @ Postmodern Hostess says
Thanks so much for sharing these tips! Especially MLSMyHome.com. We are definitely thinking of going the FSBO route when we sell our current condo in favor of a “real” house, but have been feeling a little anxious about exactly the details you guys covered. We had heard that you could pay a local realtor $500 or so to list your home for you on the MLS, but I love that the option you shared is cheaper and much more direct.
Thanks again!
Tanja
Elizabeth says
Good job guys getting that house sold!!
My aunt put hers on the market and made a website outlining all of the necessary details and improvements, put a sign up, and listed it on craigslist. Scary story there. Someone in an African country (maybe Nigeria) took her pictures and made their own listing saying her house was for rent. One couple contacted that for rent posting and the “landlord” told them to climb in the window if one was open to check it out. My aunt was out of town and her manfriend was watering the plants when the same couple came to look at the “for rent” house again. He told the couple the real story about the house. And quickly took down the posting and reported the scammers! She has vowed to never use craigslist again!
YoungHouseLove says
Yikes! That’s crazy!!! So glad we didn’t have anything like that happen. So scary!
xo,
s
Mandy says
Thanks for this post, you have sealed the deal that when the hubs and I do decide to sell, we are going to do it by ourselves, and probably buy on our own too! This was our first house, and we ended up going through 4 realtors before we found one that clicked for us, and she is awesome! So, depending on how things go for us once we sell, she would be the only option as an agent for us.