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Who?Who is going to prepare your home to look and show at it's best? Who is going to determine your selling price? Who is going to market your home? Who is going to set appointments and show your home? Who is going to negotiate with your potential buyers?
YOU are the focus of the selling process. Anything and everything involving the sale of your home revolves around YOU. You have elected to save the costs of a real estate agent, therefore along with all of the normal preparations and showing duties of Home Selling, you must now accept all of the responsibilities that customarily come with agent representation. Specifically the pricing, marketing, and contract negotiations, duties that professional agents are constantly attending schools and seminars for. How well you perform these duties now become paramount to your success. How much you are focused on selling your home will determine your performance.
Education
Since your success depends on YOU, perhaps you should consider investing a little time to giving yourself some basic knowledge.
One of the most absurd things that could happen to you as a "For Sale by Owner" is to have a buyer make an offer to purchase your home and you don’t know how to write a contract, and the buyer is also clueless. It happens many, many times.
"For Sale by Owners" need to have some basic real estate knowledge since you don’t have a real estate agent representing you. You will need to know and understand the basic’s of real estate contracts. If you have thought ahead and engaged the services of a real estate attorney you are in good shape, but, as a "For Sale by Owner" you still need to understand the basic real estate contract. Your lawyer will make sure the contract is proper and legal, but does it meet all your desires? There are some "For Sale by Owner" books available and real estate contract packages you can buy on the internet or at your local bookstore. And they can help with your education, but they are aimed at a national audience and as a result are too general in nature to be right for you. You need to know local regulations. My best advice: Take a “Real Estate Contracts” class. In every community in the USA, real estate schools, real estate associations, universities, and community colleges offer courses on real estate. Your best bet is a real estate school or community college. They will offer classes on every aspect of real estate licensing. You don't need to take the whole course. What concerns you here is: a real estate contracts class. They are short in duration, usually about 8 hours over two nights. And the costs are mimimal, probably less than $100. Money well spent. The classes will focus on your immediate locale. (city, county, state). You will learn basic real estate terms, proceedures and pitfalls. You will also recieve a course manual or outline geared to your specific locale. This could come in handy later. Think about it! At least make a call to check availability, times and costs. It can only help and it might even be fun.
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