7 FSBO Tips For Selling Your Home Fast

✏️ Editor’s Note: Realtor Associations, agents, and MLS’ have started implementing changes related to the NAR’s $418 million settlement. While home-sellers will likely save thousands in commission, compliance and litigation risks have significantly increased for sellers throughout the nation. Learn how NAR’s settlement affects home sellers.

77% of FSBO homes were sold in less than 2 weeks, according to the National Association of Realtors. Surprisingly, selling your home fast as For Sale By Owner, without a realtor, is easier than you think.

Our tips & tricks below will give you an edge in selling your house fast.

Sneak Peek: 7 FSBO Tips for Selling Your Home Fast

⏰ Find the best time to sell	Know what time of the year brings you the best offers in a minimum time
💰 Price your house competitively	Involves knowledge of the home selling market, local home prices, and competitive pricing of the property while making a good deal
🏡 Declutter & Depersonalize	Make repairs, decorate, and organize to increase the appeal
📷 Upload professional photos	Hire a professional photographer and upload your house photos on MLS, social media, or FSBO websites
💻 List on MLS	Finding sites that offer Flat Fee MLS services to FSBO home sellers for maximum exposure
💸 Offer competitive Buyer Agent Commission	Offering a competitive buyer agent commission ensures the best offers from willing buyers
💻 Market on social media	Using social media tools like Facebook & Instagram to run ads and reach the right audience

7 For Sale By Owner Tips for Selling Your Home Fast

Here’s our list of seller tips for selling a home on your own quickly –

1. The Best Time to Sell is When You’re Ready

Constantly fluctuating market trends are certainly hard to predict for FSBO home sellers with no experience. Several factors like recession, interest rates, social trends, etc. affect the real estate market daily.

To sell your house fast, being aware of national as well as local trends related to selling real estate helps in ensuring a smooth sale.

Then again, data collected by Zillow shows that the best time of year to sell a house in the US is March. In 2019, the majority of homes went off-market in less than a week during the two weeks of March 11 & March 18. Further, Zillow also found that the best time to list a house falls on Thursday! Almost 21% of listings within a week are made on Thursday.

To conclude, this information is calculated based on the national average. Local trends of the home selling market can vary vastly from that of the national one. While the best month to sell your house quickly in Boston is March, in NYC it falls in December.

2. Price Your House Competitively

One of the most crucial steps before getting your house ready to sell is to price it right.

This involves having some knowledge about the local market value of homes, depending on the type of residence you are selling. This price is an initiation of an invitation to offer, but not a fixed amount.

Simply put, it means that buyers offer their price against the listing price amount, and the seller chooses the best one. Normally, this amount is negotiable between the seller and buyer.

📝 Note: Your listing price appears to everyone in most states, but it is not the selling price. REMEMBER! The purpose of the LIST PRICE is to ATTRACT BUYERS to your listing. Your LIST PRICE is not your SALE PRICE!!!

Here’s what would happen if you underprice or over-price your house for sale:

If you price it too low	You get multiple offers. You’ll likely call for “Highest & Best Offer” or counter the best offers, & sell at market price.
If you price it too high	You will get fewer offers. That’ll force you to reduce the price and sell at market price.

Generally, real estate brokers create a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) to finalize the best listing price for any property. But with CMA tools provided by Zillow or Redfin, any FSBO seller can come up with the best listing price for their house.

» How to Price Your Home for Sale: Learn in 6 easy steps to price your home accurately

3. Declutter & Depersonalize

Making your home look its best self works wonders. Complement every room in a way that narrates a story, don’t let furniture consume all the space, and create a visually appealing first look.

Here are some home-selling tips that come under staging your house:

Clean Your House

Scrub, shampoo, wash, and deep clean every nook of your house.

Make Repairs

If there’s anything overtly wrong, take care of it early. For instance, a cracked window will not be overlooked by potential buyers. It is best to get such defects fixed.

Repaint Neutral

Neutral colors appeal to a wider range of buyers.

Add Lights

Natural light helps, ensure you have open curtains and blinds. Make sure every room has ample light, and add bulbs if necessary.

Improve Curb Appeal

Clear landscape or plant fresh flowers. The first impression is everything!

When Do you Need to Stage your Home?

Staging your home means displaying it to the buyers to entice them. It involves depersonalizing the home by setting up furniture and decorations.

Normally considered a costly affair, home staging is advised for luxury properties. Home staging costs can be divided into 2 categories – initial consultation fees and monthly fees. The initial consultation can cost about $300 to $600 on average, and $500 to $600 per room per month.

Generally, home staging companies also require you to sign a 3-month service contract. That means you have to pay for 3 months of staging fees even if you sell your home within a month.

4. Hire a Professional Photographer

The importance of professional photos is not something to be ignored. Homes that were photographed professionally sold 32% faster!

In today’s real estate market, you’re competing for clicks online. Likewise, professional photos help you stand out on online portals like Houzeo and Zillow.

VHT Studio’s survey found that listings with more than 20 images spent 32 days on the market compared to listings with a single photo that spent more than 70 days.

How to Get Your House Ready for Listing Photos on MLS?

In most states, the MLS websites require certain conditions to be fulfilled before you can upload the listing photos. Usually, a real estate professional or photographer will guide you through this, but an FSBO seller may not know these conditions.

Some of these MLS requirements are:

• Your first photo must always be of the exterior front side of your home.
• No listing photo must contain human figures or their reflection.
• No listing photo can have text that contains contact information like names, web addresses, phone numbers, or email addresses.
• One cannot use embedded or collage images to include multiple pictures in one photo.

5. List on MLS Using an Advanced FSBO Website

For Sale by Owner, Sell your home yourself or Do it yourself MLS listing refers to the process of selling your home without a REALTOR or broker. This also involves taking the help of Flat Fee MLS websites, a means to advertise your listing on the MLS for a small fee.

Most FSBO websites syndicate your listing to websites like Zillow, Redfin & Trulia, plus advertise it on their website as well. Typically, buyers who are hunting properties without an agent visit such FSBO websites.

According to Realtor.com, 18% of FSBO home sellers used FSBO websites to market their homes. Here’s what you should be looking for in FSBO websites when selling your own house:

» For Sale By Owner Websites: Check out America’s top FSBO websites

6. Offer Competitive Buyer’s Agent Commission

According to NAR’s home buyer statistics, 87% of buyers hired the services of an agent to purchase new properties. Once your property is on MLS, it’s a buyer’s agent who sees it first. Naturally, a substantial buyer commission ensures that your listing gets picked up by the agent and reaches the prospective buyer.

Typically, this commission is set to 2.5 to 3% throughout the US, but it majorly depends on the location of the property. Most often, having a very desirable property can also save you from paying any commission.

📝 Note: You can save the 3% buyer agent commission if you are approached by a buyer who is looking for properties without an agent.

7. Market Your Home on Social Media

Social media has become one of the strongest marketing tools in the 21st century. Platforms like Facebook marketplace, Instagram, Twitter, & LinkedIn let you run paid ads to reach a large audience.

Various groups on Facebook especially hunt for property listings made on the platform and convey them to interested buyers and investors. Facebook Marketplace is one of the biggest social media platforms to market your property professionally.

🎯 Pro Tip: Reply to any questions that buyers have on your property as soon as possible. For that, you need to provide an email address or a phone number so that the prospective buyers are able to reach you.

What Turns Off Potential Home Buyers?

Home selling tips go hand in hand with not-to-dos when selling your house. Keep in mind that your target is to attract buyers, not turn them away.

Here’s some home-selling advice about the most common real estate sale mistakes:

Uploading Ugly Photos

A 2020 survey found that more than 87% of buyers relied on photos, which also ranked on top as the ‘very useful’ feature when looking for homes online.

It just proves that good quality, if not professional photos are an absolute must in your property listing.

Jacked Up Listing Price

Immediately after photos, a buyer naturally looks at the listing price. Overpricing will definitely make a prospective buyer exit your listing even before putting in an offer.

The above survey by NAR also mentions that the final selling price of homes on average was 99% of the listing price. Overpricing your property will only increase its days on the market, and eventually, you will sell it for less than 99% listing price.

Property Not Maintained

Prospective buyers walking in for showings or open houses need not see rusty taps, cracked walls, or any defect of such sort.

Conduct basic maintenance and repairs regularly to avoid piling maintenance costs, if the home is not inhabited.

Unresponsiveness to Queries

Responding to prospective buyers’ requests is the most crucial job when preparing to sell your home, especially without an agent.

55% of buyers realized that the most difficult task was finding the right home. Unresponsiveness will demotivate the buyers quickly when they don’t get timely replies and look for better homes.

Unwillingness to negotiate offers

NAR’s Economic Pulse Flash Survey found that more than 64% of buyers are looking for discounts on home prices. Negotiating wisely to benefit not just the seller but also the buyer is equally important too.

» Highest and Best Offer: Check out how you can handle multiple offers and whether choosing the highest and best offer is the best move

Final Word: What’s the Best Way to Sell Your House Fast as FSBO?

The past few years have seen a steep fall in real estate commissions. This has happened mainly due to the introduction of the Flat Fee model in the real estate market. To summarize, one of the most helpful tips for selling your home fast is to list yourself on the MLS for a flat fee.

Houzeo offers the most advanced technology to FSBO home sellers, plus access to hundreds of hundreds of MLS websites covering the entire USA!

» How to Sell My House Fast: Check out the quickest ways to sell your house in the US

What Does Houzeo Offer? – A Quick Glimpse

💻 Cutting-edge Technology: Houzeo’s tech-centric broker partners charge just the upfront flat fee, and no commission for all DIY plans (except in minimum service states)

👩🏻‍💻 Control Over Sale: Offers typically are routed to the brokers. Houzeo’s Offers Platform allows your broker to present the offer to you instantly

💰 Houzeo Offers Platform allows sellers to Counter an Offer and Request the Highest & Best Offers Online

📱 Houzeo Showings is available both on Houzeo’s website and on the Houzeo mobile app (learn more)

🕛 5-Star Customer Support is available only on weekdays up to 1 pm and only in select MLSs’. After you’ve purchased the Gold or Platinum plans, email support@houzeo.com with the subject line “Expedited Listing Request: “. Service is free for Gold and Platinum plan customers

Eager to Know How Houzeo Works?

We’ve got you covered. Check out the following video to understand how Houzeo works and why it is the best FSBO and Flat Fee MLS platform in America.

» NEED MORE CLARITY? Read these exclusive Houzeo reviews and learn why the platform is the best in America’s competitive housing market.

Frequently Answered Questions (FAQs)

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