Selling Your House Without an Agent

It’s one of the top groups of people we all love to hate but is it really viable to cut out estate agents and do the job of selling your home yourself? If you are keen to do the job yourself the first thing to do is first pin point a realistic price for your house. If you live in an area where there are plenty of similar houses to yours selling fairly regularly then the task can be fairly simple. Do make sure you do some research and find out what the actual selling price was of other houses and not just simply the advertised price. This way you’ll have a good idea as to what you can expect to get.

Doing the job yourself means you have got to think like an estate agent. Pitching the house at the right price level will mean you get people through the door and hopefully some offers. Many people who go it alone look to the Internet for their advertising. There are lots of web based options some of which will also provide a board for you to stick in the garden. Firstly check out the popularity of websites and see how well they rank in search engines for your area. Chances are if you can’t easily find houses local to you potential buyer won’t either. Collate some good quality photos of your house and display the ones that sell its best assents. Don’t forget if you do get people through the door they will nearly always want to look over some printed details at a later date so if you can put together a summary handout this will be well appreciated by those with an interest.

Think about the areas you may have looked for property yourself such as local newspapers and find out what rates they charge for a private ad. Putting a ‘for sale’ board in the garden can be a much as it takes especially if you live in a popular area. Agents will be advertising hard to get buyers to your street enabling you to effectively piggyback on this traffic. If you intend using an agent at the same time do make sure they offer you and multi agent agreement or else you could still face paying them commission even if a sale comes through your own hard work.

If and when you do get people call, make sure you have a pen and paper ready to take their details. Some may find it a little off putting dealing directly with the seller so you need to be extra nice to them but still able to sell the good aspects of your house. The only way you’ll sell is to get people through the door so try to be as accommodating as possible be but do careful giving our personal details, times you are out at work or the fact you may be on your own.

It should go without saying but tidy your house before anyone comes to view it. First impressions count and many people will not be able to see past your clutter. Give those that view a good but honest overview and be prepared for questions about anything from damp proofing to the local schools. Don’t skirt round issues or worst still be untruthful as this could come back and bite you further down the line.

Just like an agent try to follow up on your viewings. Give them a call after a few days and see if you can get them to view again. If nothing else try to get a little bit of honest feedback but don’t take it to heart if it’s in anyway negative. If an offer is made be ready to write everything down and listen to any strings the buyer is attaching to the deal. It may be best to politely call people back later in order to give yourself time to consider the offer properly. If you have several offers keep everyone’s details as you may need to go back to others if your best offer falls through.

When offers do come they can catch you of guard especially if you’ve had your house on the market for some time. During the selling period it’s always good to get solicitors, removals companies and an energy performance certificates sorted so that you don’t lose a sale because the process becomes longwinded.

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Paul Coupe is Online Marketing Manager for Quote4Removals.
http://www.quote4removals.com