Sell and List Your Home With These 5 Simple Steps

People in all different seasons of life will eventually want to move out of the home they've purchased.

Many times it’s to relocate for a job or family, an opportunity to move to a preferred location, to move into more square footage, or simply because you want a change of scenery!

No matter your reason, a move at some point in your life is inevitable.

But selling your home doesn’t need to be a burden. Many sellers who have purchased their first home, have not ever had to experience selling a home. While it’s not as easy as putting a sign up in your yard (unless you get lucky), it’s not something that you should be intimidated by either!

Here are a few details to work out Before you list your home...

1. Decide if you want to work with a realtor

A real estate agent can help take care of a lot of the pricing, listing and marketing to sell your property. Before you begin to start to do these tasks yourself, evaluate if it makes sense to go with a realtor. A lot of people believe that a realtor takes too much of the sale. In perspective, the maximum a realtor can make is 6% of the sale. Majority of the time they only end up making 3% of the sale.

Key benefits of listing your home without a realtor:

• You will save on the listing agent fees

• You have complete control over the process, and having the potential to get a higher selling price without the MLS exposure.

• You will have the flexibility to expedite the selling process at your own pace and won’t be dependent on anyone else.

You should also be aware that you won’t have access to MLS exposure, help if you need it, or pricing assistance. If you decide to sell your house as is, you can offer it to cash buyers who can offer 50%-70% of the fair market value. If a family member wants to buy the inherited property, you can sell them the house and skip the hassle of listing, staging, and finding a buyer. However, you may want to hire a real estate agent to broker the deal to avoid any tricky situations that could damage family relationships.

If you would like to skip working with a realtor, then continue reading for tips to successfully sell your home on your own.

2. Determine how quickly you want to sell

If you want to sell fast we highly recommend looking for a local investor to purchase the property. This is usually the route we recommend if you have any repairs, updates or structural issues to the house. Most home purchasers are picky when it comes to the home being turn key. Rightfully so as they are taking out a personal loan, and many times buyers are paying towards the top end of their budget when purchasing a house.

3. Calculate your properties true value before listing

If you have skipped the real estate agent, and want to continue listing your home for the general public to find a buyer then you need to know your properties true value. Too often a homeowner wants to sell their home and ball parks their listing number. Do not do this unless you want random offers or low ball offers. It never looks good to have to continue to decrease the listing price of your house either.

To do this you need to determine the Comparable aka “Comps” for your house. Comps are essentially sales records of recently sold homes. Appraisers and real estate agents use them to get the most accurate estimate possible of a home’s value, and you can, too. This means that you need to start by looking at the most recent sales in your neighborhood or within 1 mile from your home (See Example Below...).

Once you have gathered the necessary comparable's, the next step is to calculate your home's ARV (After Repair Value) before listing it on the housing market (See Example Below...)

Additionally, you can hire a real estate appraiser to provide you with an accurate ARV of your property. Finally, you should consider getting a home inspection done to make sure that the property meets all local and state seller disclosure laws. Once you have all of this information, you will be able to calculate your home's ARV and list it on the housing market.

How To Calculate Your Homes Value:

• Head to Zillow or Redfin and pull up your location in the search bar. You are going to stay within your neighborhood (if possible).

• Set your search filters for houses that have sold within the past 1-3 months. If that’s not possible then you can extend the time span to 6 months or even a year. The most recent is preferred.

• Filter your search results with details like date sold, price, bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage.

• If your home has any additional things such as a swimming pool, deck, acreage, etc - then you are going to want to try and find similar properties. The key here is to try and compare your home apples for apples.

Once you have compiled at least 6-10 properties you now need to calculate the average square foot cost. You will need to calculate the Cost Per Square Foot for each property, once you’ve completed you need to add those calculations together and divide by however many properties.

Let's look at this example...

Let’s say you pull six comparable houses within 1 mile from your house.

Your House = 1500 Square Feet, 2 bathrooms and 3 bedrooms

Comparable Houses in the Neighborhood:

House 1 = Sold last 20 days for $250,000, 1400 square feet = 178.57

House 2 = Sold last 10 days for $200,000, 1000 square feet = 200

House 3 = Sold last 15 days for $300,000, 2000 square feet = 150

House 4 = Sold last 60 days for $320,000, 1480 square feet = 216.21

House 5 = Sold last 40 days for $190,000, 1700 square feet = 111.76

House 6 = Sold last 75 days for $330,000, 1900 square feet = 173.68

*please note these numbers are for example only

How To Calculate Your Homes After Repair Value (ARV):

• Add the Square Footage Amounts together.

• Next, Divide by the amount of comps (in this case 6)

• TOTAL Cost of your square footage is 171.70

• Now, Multiply that 171.70 x amount of square feet (this example is 1500)

The ARV for the home in this example is $257,550.00

Now, let's move onto how to deduct repair costs...

4. Deduct Repair Costs Properly (without overpricing)

You don’t have to deduct minor repairs, but if you know the house needs a big repair like the roof, water heater, furnace etc you need to account for these, and list at a price that is fair and reflects the repairs needed.

Many times home owners will skip over this, and they feel as if they are perfectly fine moving forward and asking for the price they want to receive. The key to having success selling on your house on your own is to be fair and to reflect those repairs. Don't fall into the trap that "it's not that big of a deal..." because home inspections will reveal it all.

In order to accurately get your ARV to top dollar. Make a list of the repairs needed and begin shopping for quotes. Next, you will take those quotes for the home repairs and deduct them from the original ARV amount.

This will become your listing price.

If you don't have the time, then this would be a good opportunity to start looking for a local cash buyer in your area to purchase the house as-is.

5. List a Price That's Irresistible for Buyers

Once you have calculated your listing price, it’s time to start sharing and advertising the house you are listing. You can list your house on Zillow, Redfin, Craigslist under the FSBO (For Sale By Owner) section. You can also place a sign in your yard, and list on other places like Next Door (or another neighborhood/community app). You can also list on Facebook (only possible if you are the home owner) or you can seek out a private local investor in your area.

These are the basic steps of action to take if you would like to list your house for sale on your own. If you are in need of any assistance don’t hesitate to reach out to one of our team members.

At 513 Home Investments we specialize in investing into local homes in Cincinnati Ohio and Northern Kentucky. We do offer services out of these areas as well through credible partnerships that we have built.

If you are determined to skip the realtor fees, closing costs and sell your home "As-is" without having the hassle to repair or fix certain items before selling then please reach out to one of our team members.

We strive to make the selling process for our clients as hassle free and smooth as possible.