When selling your Loveland, Colorado home, you have two general options: 1. You can hire a real estate agent to sell it for you, or 2. You can sell it yourself. While most homeowners opt for the first option, there are actually quite a few benefits in opting for the second option.
Interested in selling your home on your own? Wondering how it’s done? Then you’re in the right place.
Below, we’re going to show you how to sell your house yourself.
Here’s How to Sell Your House Yourself
First and foremost, you should know that selling your house yourself can be challenging. Because you won’t be utilizing the services of a real estate agent, you will need to perform all of a real estate agent’s duties. Not only will this be time-consuming, but physically and mentally draining as well.
That being said, selling your house yourself could potentially save you a lot of money. For this reason, it might be worth a go. If you still want to go through with it, these are the steps you need to follow.
Step 1: Determine Your Home’s Value
The very first thing you need to do when putting your house up for sale is to determine its value. By determining its value, you’ll be able to establish a reasonable listing price. By establishing a reasonable listing price, you’ll attract the optimal number of buyers and sell your home as efficiently as possible.
There are a number of different ways to determine the value of a house. However, the most common methods include the following.
1. Compare Your Home to Neighboring Homes
The simplest way to determine the value of your home is to compare it to other homes in your neighborhood. Generally, homes in the same neighborhood will exist on the same value scale.
So, if a 3-bedroom, 2-bath, 2,000-square-foot home sold for $350,000 in your neighborhood, and your home is also a 3-bedroom, 2-bath, 2,000-square-footer, you could logically expect your home to sell for around the same price.
Of course, there are intricacies that will need to be accounted for as well. After all, the state of the home’s interior and foundation can have a large effect on its resale value.
For this reason, you need to compare your home to as many similar homes as possible. Doing so should give you a feel for an appropriate price, helping you to establish a good starting point.
Wondering how to find the values of homes in your neighborhood? All you have to do is plug their addresses into Google. You’ll find tons of information on their sale prices.
2. Utilize a Valuation Tool
If you’re not comfortable with the comparison method, you can try utilizing a valuation tool instead. Valuation tools are — generally speaking — available for free online.
Some of the most popular valuation tools include Zillow and Trulia. However, there are a variety of others out there.
Note, while generally fairly accurate, these tools are not perfect. In fact, in some cases, they can be hugely inaccurate. For this reason, if you’re going to use them, you should use them in tandem with the comparison method.
3. Hire an Appraiser
If you don’t mind shelling out some money, you can utilize the services of an appraiser. Appraisers assess homes to determine their specific value, taking into account everything from their geography, to their age, to their renovations, and more.
Generally, appraisers will provide the most accurate valuations. This is why they’re sometimes worth paying.
If you can obtain an accurate valuation of your home, you can sell it at the perfect price point. If you sell it at the perfect price point, you can get it off the market quickly without sacrificing valuable money.
Step 2: Ready Your Home for Buyers
Once you’ve established a listing price, you’re going to need to start showing your home to interested buyers. However, before you start letting everyone and their brother take a look at your house, you need to make sure that it’s looking as good as possible. The better your home looks, the more interested buyers will be, and the quicker you’ll receive a suitable offer.
There are a number of things you should do to ready your home for prospective buyers. The most important of these things include the following.
1. Carry Out Repairs
First and foremost, you’ll want to repair anything that’s broken in your home. Remember: home buyers aren’t only buying your house, they’re buying your appliances as well. If your appliances are broken, buyers are not going to want to buy them.
In the kitchen, you’ll need to inspect the refrigerator, the oven range, and the dishwasher, primarily. However, if you have any other permanent appliances in your kitchen, you should inspect them as well.
In the bathroom, make sure that the faucets are running properly and that the tub and sink are cleanly caulked. You’ll also want to make sure that vanities are opening properly.
Your washer, your dryer, and your HVAC system are vital as well. Make sure that your furnace and air conditioner are running as intended.
Throughout the rest of your home, you’ll want to check the lights, the flooring, and the drywall, ensuring that they’re clean and operational. You’ll also want to make sure that there’s no water damage present.
2. Organize It
Once you have everything repaired, you’ll want to organize it so that it’s simple to navigate and easy on the eyes. The more you can eliminate clutter in your home, the more appealing your home will be to prospective buyers.
Keep passageways wide and clear, giving visitors plenty of room in which to move. Eliminate all unnecessary items, including but not limited to posters, toys, dirty clothing, and the like. Position your furniture and other possessions with symmetry in mind, avoiding clutter as much as possible.
3. Touch Up the Exterior
It’s not just the inside of your house that you have to worry about. In fact, when trying to sell a home, its exterior is arguably more important. After all, the nicer the exterior of the house, the greater its curb appeal.
For this reason, you need to do everything in your power to optimize your home’s surrounding property and external entities. Keep the bushes trimmed, maintain the lawn, make sure that the roof looks nice, replace siding panels as necessary, clean patios and sidewalks, and do everything else necessary to transform your property into a picture of perfection.
Step 3: Market Your Home
If you want to sell your home quickly and for as much money as possible, you’ll need to reach as many prospective buyers as possible. This can only be achieved through marketing.
There are all sorts of marketing techniques that you can use to reach potential buyers. The most effective of the bunch include the following.
1. Use Online Listing Sites
One of the easiest ways for prospective buyers to find potential homes is to check listing sites. As such, as a home seller, you need to post your home on as many listing sites as possible.
One such site is ours, Blue Match. For a small, one-time fee, we’ll post your house to our listings as well as to Trulia, Realtor, and Zillow. We’ll also assist you through the rest of the selling process, offering expert, commission-free guidance.
2. Place a Yard Sign
While listing sites now reign supreme, yard signs are still effective. Placing a “for sale” sign in your yard is a surefire way to attract passersby, some of whom will be looking to buy a house.
Yard signs are particularly useful for those who live in high-traffic areas, as they can expose their home sales to thousands of individuals each and every day. They might be simple, and they might be low-technology, but, at the end of the day, they work.
3. Post Flyers
Another low-technology, but effective method for marketing a home is to post flyers. Posting a flyer in a high-traffic area is a surefire way to get eyes on your home, some of which will be looking to buy a house.
Ask around town to see if local organizations and business owners will allow you to post flyers on their properties. A good many of them will likely allow you to do so.
4. Hold Open House Events
The odds of someone buying a house without checking it out first are slim to none. As such, if you’re selling your home on your own, you need to hold open house events on a frequent basis.
Open houses will allow prospective buyers to get up close and personal with your home, helping them to decide whether it’s a viable option or something that should be written off.
Note, holding open houses will take up a good deal of your time. In fact, if you’re trying to sell fast, your open house events could swallow up all of your free time. Nonetheless, it’s a vital part of the home selling process.
If you doubt your ability to pull off open house events on your own, you might want to think about hiring a real estate agent. Agents are well-versed in putting on open houses and will be able to hold them on a frequent basis.
Step 4: Engage in Negotiation
Step 4 can be challenging for those who are not experienced in business or real estate. Why? Because it involves negotiation, the process wherein the seller and potential buyers haggle over the home’s sale price.
This is where a real estate agent can truly come in handy. However, by being organized and keeping the lines of communication open, you can come through it with flying colors.
To facilitate the negotiation process, there are a few things you’ll need to do. They will be reviewed below.
1. Establish a Line of Contact
In order to engage in negotiation with potential buyers, you must establish a line of contact. This is a phone number or email address at which potential buyers can reach you.
You should have contact information listed on all of your house listings, including everything from flyers to yard signs and otherwise. Make sure that your information is prominent and easy to read. If it’s difficult to find, some buyers might give up before they’ve even started.
2. Have Contracts Ready
While you’ll probably establish a verbal agreement during negotiations, a verbal agreement itself is not enough. You’ll need a written agreement in order to move on with the transaction.
For this purpose, you’ll want to have some contracts handy. You can find state-specific real estate contracts online by specifically searching for them in a search engine. So, for the state of Colorado, you would type something to the effect of “Colorado real estate contract”.
Print off a few of these contracts and have them available at your open house. Make sure that they cover everything from the purchase price to concessions to the closing date and the like.
Step 5: Close the Sale
Once you and a buyer have come to an agreement, you can begin closing the sale. Sale closings are generally handled by attorneys. However, as a seller without a real estate agent, you’ll need to handle a number of responsibilities as well.
In all likelihood, you will need to submit documentation at some point throughout the process. In addition, the buyer could have complaints or contentions which will need to be brought to your attention.
Keep in contact with everyone involved in the sale and react promptly to requests. The faster you act, the faster your home will sell.
Looking to List Your Loveland, Colorado House Online?
Now that you know how to sell your house yourself, you might be looking to list your Loveland, Colorado house online. If so, you’re in the right place. Bluematch.com is one of the premier listing sites for houses that are being sold by the owner.
Read more about our website now!
