You decided to sell your house, but you don’t want to pay realtor commissions, so you take it upon yourself to get your house sold so that you don’t have to pay those annoying commissions! That's great!
Here's a step by step guide you can follow to sell your house without a realtor in Tampa.
First, we need to understand the process for selling a house without a realtor in Tampa and see what it involves. There is a reason real estate agents charge you a hefty commission when they help you sell your home in Tampa. Although not all agents are good, they are not the enemy. There's a lot of work that's involved when selling a house, and it could take you a while to sell your house without a realtor. However, with some guidance and direction, this could be possible and you can eliminate those realtor commissions.
Tips To Sell A House Without A Realtor In Tampa
1. Get Your Home Inspected
I understand that you want to save money and that is the whole point to selling your house yourself. I get it. That said, GET AN INSPECTION! This is non negotiable. The last thing you want, is doing all the work, the painting, the cleaning, the preparing, the repairing, and the marketing to finally get an interested buyer, then the deal suddenly falls through because you didn’t know you had termites in the basement, or that your 3 month-old brand new roof is leaking, or that you hired an unlicensed plumber to do your bathroom three months ago.
Don't go the cheap route. Get the inspection done so you don't have to deal with the unexpected and lose out on a sale.
2. Check Out The Competition
Go to websites such as zillow.com, realtor.com, trulia.com etc. and see how the other houses are staged, what condition they're in, where they're located, and pay attention to the prices. You may not be able to change your home’s layout or location easily, however you can scope the competition to see if the house is staged, if they installed a new deck, or if they enhanced their landscaping. Once you know what your competition is doing, this gives you a chance to do something to your home that they don't have to gain a slight advantage.
3. Make The Necessary Repairs
Fix what absolutely needs to be fixed. Some of the things that you might need to fix are broken light switches and plugs, leaky faucets, or running toilets - just to name a few.
4. Apply Fresh Coat Of Paint
A fresh coat of paint can make a huge difference in how your home looks. It’s fairly inexpensive and this instantly makes your house look newer.
Make sure you pick one color with a neutral palette. We have personally noticed that pastel colors have a very pleasant and soothing effect to the feel of the house and we love these colors, and so do most homeowners.
5. Declutter Your Home
Now that the house has a fresh coat of paint (if it was needed), let’s try to remove those items around the house that may turn off potential buyers. Make it easy for them to picture what the house would look like were they to buy it. Therefore, remove personal pictures, personal items, and art. Make the house look simple and elegant, but still showing off its unique features.
6. Know What Your Home Is Worth
You’ll be surprised how many FSBO (For Sale By Owner) have no idea what their house is worth - accurately! Sentimental value and personal opinion has nothing to do with this. In order to sell your house fast in Tampa without a realtor, you need to know how much you should expect for your house.
Now that your house has gone through an inspection, you cleaned it up, and fixed some things here and there, you know exactly what condition your house is in and now you can price it.
The way to figure out how much your house is currently worth as-is, is to do a Comparative Market Analysis. A real estate agent can help you with this, but it wouldn’t be fair to them to make them do work on your house for you, when you're not going to list it with them. So either do the analysis yourself, or give an agent a little something for their research. We have written a comprehensive step by step on how to get the market value of your house. Read it, learn it, master it, and get your house sold reliably! We highly recommend you do 2 sets of analysis. First do a CMA to determine what the current as is value of your house is, and secondly, do a CMA to determine how much the market value would be of your home as if it was completely updated and fixed up.
You get these numbers the exact same way. To find the current as-is value, you simply pick comparisons that are similar to the current condition of your home and to find the after repaired condition of your home you just chose comparisons that have similar characteristics of your home (same location, same features) but the home is simply fixed, renovated, or upgraded. Now you have a very clear understanding of the potential of the home and why your buyers may like the home and this gives you ammunition for negotiating!
7. List Your Home With The Right Price
Now that you know what your house is worth, now we can price it competitively. Is your roof leaking? Is the driveway is full of potholes? Does the kitchen need to be upgraded? That’s fine, just price it accordingly. Give the buyers a credit to fix these issues if you do not have the money to fix it yourself. The biggest mistake homeowners make when selling their house is thinking that their house is somehow special and worth more than the current market value of their house. Price it to sell!
8. Stage Your Home
Your home is now inspected, you know what condition your home is in, and you fixed what needed to be fixed. Your home looks great, and it is now in either sellable condition (good enough for people actually to be interested) or in great condition (if you went that extra mile to get as much as possible for your house… now what!? Learn how to stage your home for a quick sale! That’s what!
Now you dress up your house and present it to buyers! You’d be surprised how easy staging can be.
If you're living in the home you're trying to sell, then you most likely have plenty of furniture. Try not to use old, ripped, or faded furniture as staging material. If you're very serious about getting your home sold as quickly as possible, consider renting a storage unit and put your old furniture away temporarily and hire a stager to give your home’s interior a facelift. A good stager will know how to use your home's interior features and bring out the best possible feel of your home to get it sold fast.
9. Take Awesome Pictures
You might be tempted to take the pictures yourself to save money, but you should strongly consider hiring a professional real estate photographer.
This can make a huge difference in showcasing your home to potential buyers.
10. Keep The House Clean
Keep your house presentable at all times. This may actually be the most difficult task to do, especially if you have kids or pets. You may need to show off your house at a moment’s notice, when a buyer just drives by your house and sees the “For Sale” sign and decides to stop by right then or there. Of course, you can always say “only by appointment” but you risk the interested buyer to drive off and then see another for sale sign down the street and they let him in and they fall in love with the house and you lost your opportunity to get an offer. Remember, always try to do something extra that your competition is not doing. This can help you sell your home faster.
11. Know Your Local Regulations
Check with your town to make sure you know the local regulations when selling a home. This is especially important when you're not hiring a local real estate agent to list your home for sale.
12. Know Your Contracts
Your buyer, and heck not even you probably know much about contracts and contract lingo. If you can’t explain that jargon to a motivated buyer, they may lose faith in the legitimacy of the entire transaction and a deal could easily fall through. You obviously need to know contracts to protect yourself legally, and make it abundantly clear to the buyer what your expectations are and what theirs are. Buying or selling a house is not a small thing. It is a huge transaction where many things can go wrong. You need to make sure all the paperwork is filled out correctly so that nothing can go wrong. Make sure you have a legal representative look over what ever contracts you use to make sure they would legally stand up in a court of law, and that you are fully protected and abide to all the laws in Florida.
13. Learn How To Negotiate
You did your market research. You know the status and condition of your house and you know what the houses in your area go for.
There's a good reason to learn how to find the market value of your house. There's also a good reason why you had to check out your competition and look at the houses that have recently sold and for how much.
Negotiations are all about logic and data. It's hard to fight a buyers offer of $100K for your house when you have no clue what is a realistic number, what you can expect to get for your house, and how much houses in your area are actually worth. But if you knew that your neighbors house that is half the size as yours in way worse condition than yours sold last week for $150K it is easy to tell that buyer he is out of his mind and to up his offer and not waste your time. Knowledge is power and with this comes success in negotiating. Use market data to justify your choices and responses and counter offers. As long as you have numbers to back you up, no one can deny you! Ultimately, what matters is how fast you want to sell your house and how much profit you want to make. You accept offers and negotiate numbers based on your goals.
Consider Selling Directly To Local Home Buyer
If you want to avoid paying commissions, fees, and closing costs, you can sell your house directly to a local home buyer like us.
We pay fair prices for properties in Tampa and we can close in as little as 7 days. If you need to sell your house fast, for any reason, we can help. Get in touch with us today!
You can call us at (813) 461-5999 or click here and fill-out our form to get a FREE, no-obligation offer!