Real Estate Investing Advice & Information

In the face of several unfavourable conditions, the real estate industry remains steadfast and strong even in the present economy. The ease in which homes are sold in the past years may lead homeowners to think that selling is easy. Most owners think about several options when selling their home. They could either choose a realtor or decide on selling on their own.

While there are advantages in homeowners who market and sell their homes, there are also disadvantages associated especially in the present economy. Here are some important notes as to why a sale by a homeowner does not often work in the today’s economy.

1. A seller trying to sell a home his or her own, may find that most buyers expect a lower selling price to it since the seller does not have to pay a commission in hiring a realtor to do the job.

2. In this type of selling, buyers often assume that the seller will assume all the costs of closing. Buyers are mainly attracted to a FSBO (For sale By Owner) because of the limited marketing options compared to listing with a realtor. This can lead to a longer time the home spends in the market and a lower price that could create a negative impact on the values of homes in the particular area. continue reading…

List your property FSBO (for sale by owner) and your phone may run hot, but not necessarily from who you would expect (or hope) would ring.

Facing a barrage of calls from real estate agents wanting to list your property is something you need to be prepared for. The real estate agents are only doing their job, so do not get too annoyed or upset. Besides, agents are use to knock-backs and in most cases immune to abuse. Just be polite and tell them you do not want them to list your property, because you are going to sell it FSBO yourself.

A helpful real estate agent (yes, there are plenty) may even offer some tips and guidance to help you list your property FSBO.

However, some agents are extremely persistent (annoying) and will not take no for an answer. continue reading…

A lot of home sellers resent paying real estate agent commissions and question whether or not they might be better off selling their own home ‘for sale by owner’ FSBO.

Well, there is no clear-cut answer. It really depends on the seller and how successful he or she is likely to be at selling real estate. It is true that agent commissions can run into thousands, or even tens of thousands, of dollars depending on the value of the property. And, sometimes the sale comes together very quickly with minimum effort on the part of the real estate agent. However, that is not always the case with many property sales become a long drawn-out process.

FSBO home sellers experience mixed results because they either lack the time, people skills, marketing skills, negotiating skills and even the inclination to sell their own home. For others, selling their home comes as an exciting challenge they cannot resist.

Obviously, the big advantage of selling your own property; is that you avoid the agent commission. Make no mistake – if you dream of making a larger down payment on your next home, or want to retire, or simply want to hang onto the equity you have worked so hard for… then you could save thousands by paying yourself NOT an agent.

On the other hand, hiring a real estate agent and paying thousands in commissions, could be money well spent. A case in point would be when a real estate agent gets you a better sale price for your home. continue reading…

What exactly are you paying for when the agent takes his/her commission? Well, you’re paying for the listing service, you’re paying for the agent to deal with all of the legal matters, and you’re paying for their network of buyers, sellers, and professionals in the real estate market. But when you sell your home For Sale By Owner, you can get all of the assistance you need from online FSBO websites, making it easy and convenient to put your home on the market and get a great price for it without paying costly commission.

The first step in selling you home For Sale By Owner is to educate yourself to current housing market conditions, real estate pricing in your property’s location, who is currently in the market, legal contractual matters, etc. The best way to do that is to read the abundance of literature on For Sale By Owner home selling. The web offers a comprehensive list of books and online material catered to the first-time For Sale By Owner home-seller. Once you have read and understand how selling you home For Sale By Owner works, the next step is to prepare your home to be put up on the market. In order to sell your home quickly at a great price, your home must look immaculate. Many times it is a good investment to update aspects of your home, like landscaping or appliances, in order to get a good price. A little goes a long way. When you sell your home For Sale By Owner, the power is entirely in your own hands. Depending on how you present your home, you can get more than your asking price, or less.

One of the biggest mistakes that For Sale By Owner home sellers make is pricing their property too high. That’s why it is important to price your home to sell. This is where educating yourself comes in handy, and understanding current housing market prices and property values can save For Sale By Owners a considerably amount of stress and frustration if their home doesn’t get the price they had in mind. Keep an eye on property values within your own neighborhood, or consult with real estate professionals and home appraisers. There are also plenty of FSBO online pricing resources available through the web, so once you know the conditions of your own home, you can set a reasonably price for both you and your buyer. continue reading…

The web has made selling real estate for sale by owner, better known as a “FSBO” seller, so much easier than it used to be in the old days. That being said, some FSBO sellers shoot themselves in the foot by failing to properly use images to show their home to potential sellers.

Real estate is a visual field. One need look no further than the term curb appeal to understand this. Home owners are told over and over that there home must have curb appeal because buyers often react to their first impression of a home when ultimately making a decision about whether they are interested or not. This is human nature. If you pull up and see a home with paint issues, oil stains all over the driveway and dead grass, how likely are you to make an offer? Take the same exact home, spruce it up and you might feel very different.

Selling your home on the web is a similar proposition. You can describe it till your face turns blue, but it isn’t going to matter until you put up actual images. Every real estate listing site allows them. Browse through the listings, however, and you’ll see the same thing over and over…listing after listing with no images. And sellers are surprised they get no inquiries! continue reading…

Your success in selling your home depends on being able to bring buyers to see it. Drive dozens of buyers to your home using the following strategies, find a place to market, communicate your message, talk to the right people.

Find A Place To Market

1. Let the world know your home is for sale using the world’s fastest communication medium, the internet.

The tools you have available online alone can be overwhelming. Depending on your market, some of these mediums will be highly competitive while others won’t be. Your listing should be placed in the various free classified sites such as Craigslist, Backpage, Kijiji, and others.

You should also upload your listing to sites like Trulia and Zillow. Like these sites there are many that offer RSS (real simple syndication) to post your listing in different websites all over the internet.

Last, you should also consider writing a blog about your listing to drive traffic to it.

2. Newspapers are not out of print yet, and may be the source of your next buyer.

As hard as it is to believe, there are still many home buyers who search the newspaper classifieds to look for homes. You should not ignore this medium if you want to increase the number of buyers going to see your home. continue reading…

By having a home inspection done before you have an offer on your home, you can potentially save a lot of money. This is a lesson we learned the hard way. We received an offer on a home we were selling. Since we didn’t have the home pre-inspected, the buyer paid to have an inspection company go through the property and check everything out. Shortly after that, we received an addendum to the offer with a request to lower the price or fix a “laundry list” of things the buyer wanted done to the house. This is a common strategy that buyers and their agents use to re-negotiate the price or have things repaired. Sometimes it can get very expensive.

In an agent listed real estate transaction, it’s usually the buyer that pays for a home inspection after they have made an offer. When you are selling by owner, you must use different strategies than a real estate agent would. A home inspection done by the seller before receiving an offer benefits the seller in two important ways. First, it provides a report via a neutral third party as to the condition of the property and second, it removes potential negotiating opportunities for the buyer.

When you have the inspection done ahead of time by a professional home inspection company, it allows you time to decide how you want to handle any surprises that come up in the inspection without the pressure of a buyer and the deadlines in their offer. You can fix minor things and adjust your price accordingly for any major repairs you don’t want to tackle. If you share your complete inspection report with the buyer, most of the time they won’t pay to have another one done. You can explain that you’ve already repaired or adjusted the price for anything found in the report. continue reading…

Chances are you are only selling one home, so your marketing strategy must reflect that. Instinctively, most people duplicate real estate agent marketing strategies when they put their own home up for sale; but think about it. Agents have three areas of focus for their marketing; first, selling their own listings, second, they show buyers other listings on the MLS, and third, they market themselves, so they can get more listings or buyers. Their marketing is designed to work these three areas. If you have only one home to sell, your marketing must be designed specifically for that goal.

Internet Marketing

This is the tool that levels the playing field. Agents no longer are the only source for information and marketing exposure! Anyone can put up a website with photos of your home; but the key is traffic. It’s important to use a well established website with high traffic for advertising your home. Because there are literally thousands of online resources, you need to plan your marketing around one central location that will track your visitors and then point all of your other online and offline marketing to that page. Think of it as an online brochure packed full of photos and details about your property. You want to have a website that gives you a short and simple url to direct people to your specific page. Without a website address that goes right to your page, the buyer has to hunt for your ad when they get there. They will likely get distracted by someone else’s home before they find yours.

From there, advertise your “page” everywhere online and offline. Point all your marketing back to your central online website. Once people have seen your photos and read all the details, they will have a very good idea if it is what they are looking for. It pre-screens buyers for you. continue reading…

For Sale By Owner homes are on the rise as people seek to save money while they are selling their homes. While FSBO’s are very attractive from the seller’s perspective, they may not always be for the buyer. The following are some considerations that you may want to take in account when you see a For Sale By Owner property in your desired neighborhoods.

Generally speaking buying a FSBO property is a risky move. Although the seller thinks they are saving themselves, and you, money by leaving real estate agents out of the mix, sellers actually end up with less money compared to what they would net by using a real estate agent. From the buyer’s perspective, you could be facing some real risks by purchasing a FSBO home.

The first major issue is disclosure. Although FSBO sellers are bound by the same legal guidelines as real estate agents, they may not always tell the truth about a property. Once you buy the property, you may be stuck with structural issues you didn’t anticipate and have to go through a legal battle in order to prove that the seller knew about these issues before hand and didn’t disclose them. One way to avoid this is to have a contingency that you will not buy the property unless there is a complete inspection. continue reading…

I see it everywhere – there are trainers teaching the same old stuff that they’ve been teaching for decades. The problem is that the market isn’t the same now as it was then. Sure, people are the same and the houses are the same, but other than that, it’s a whole new ball game and they just don’t get it! So what’s an agent to do?

Grow Or Die
You’ve heard this from me before – if you’re not growing, you’re dying. Step by step, moment by moment a little bit of you (and your business) dies when you’re not creating something new. Especially in today’s fast-paced market of technology-driven bargain-hunters. Everybody already knows everything (or at least they think they do). So how do you create value?

The Quality of the Questions You Ask
Most agents don’t have time to figure out where they are going to get their next deal from much less how they can come up with that next innovative idea to launch them into the next strata. The problem is, if you ask small questions, you get small answers. If you’re asking where your next deal will come from, you’ve already missed the boat to bigger success. It’s those who ask the bigger questions – the questions that take them into uncharted waters who find the treasure. continue reading…