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From our Buy Owner offices to the dining rooms of your homes throughout the nation, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
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Happy Thanksgiving!
From our Buy Owner offices to the dining rooms of your homes throughout the nation, Happy Thanksgiving!
The Basics of Pricing Your Home
You probably already know how significant the listing price of your home can be. Price too high, and you scare away qualified buyers; price too low, and you get less money than you could have. We’ve written here at the Buy Owner Blog about the perils of poor pricing before, but let’s talk now about the way to do it right:
Determine Your Margin
One of the first factors you need to consider is equity. If you’ve been in your home for several years or if you put down a large down payment, you have a pretty good idea how much money you’d like to get out of the house when you sell. That number may be tainted by your financial situation, if, say, you’re in financial trouble and need to sell quickly, in which case it could be best to lower your price, even if you take a short-term loss. No matter what, you need to make sure you’ll get enough money out of your house to pay off the mortgage and find new living arrangements. In today’s market, in some areas, the upside-down nature of real estate could make this a difficult proposition.
Do Some Research
The local MLS and a quick online search can help you identify properties that are considered to be comparable to yours. If you want to sell your house quickly, price your home as the best deal on the market by setting your price lower than all similar ones in your area. By using Buy Owner, you’re already cutting the cost of commissions, so lowering your price should be possible to do without taking a significant hit to your profit.
A real estate appraiser can also help you price your home. Most buyers will need a recent appraisal in order to qualify for a mortgage on your home anyway, so it may be worth the small investment required to have the home appraised prior to putting it on the market. Any time you can sell your home “below appraisal,” you have a better chance of selling it quickly.
If you price your home and no one comes to see it, you may have priced it too high. Remember that one of the best reasons to sell by owner is the flexibility it allows, and you can always lower the cost of your home if activity is less than you desire or if offers come in significantly lower than your asking price.
Make Repairs BEFORE You Sell
Most sellers discover several minor repairs that need to be made before they can sell their house. Oftentimes it’s things they’ve lived with for years—closet doors that jump the tracks, doorbells that don’t work, window screens that are torn or faucets that drip if the handle isn’t turned just right. But even if you’ve lived with a broken doorbell for years, a potential buyer won’t want to. So now is the time to do something about it.
To get you started, here are some specific things to focus on as you survey your home for repairs:
• Repair anything that has been visibly damaged: Nicks in walls from that time you moved your desk, corners of the carpet that have pulled away from the wall and woodwork that’s scratched or dented all need to be repaired or replaced before you show your home to prospective buyers.
• Repair anything that isn’t working correctly: Replace burned-out light bulbs, repair the lock on the bathroom door and make sure any electrical outlets that don’t have power are repaired. These items will all come up during a home inspection, so fix them now before potential buyers ever show up at your home.
• Repaint your walls: If you’ve been creative with paint colors, you may want to consider neutralizing your color scheme. Prospective home buyers like to visualize themselves in your home, and if bright red walls scare them silly, they won’t look past them to your home’s best features. Remember, you’re trying to appeal to buyers, even if that contradicts your personal style.
• Repair all doors, especially the front door: When potential home buyers come calling, the first thing they’ll see is your front door. Make sure it’s squeaky clean, with a nicely polished doorknob and a fresh coat of paint or stain (if required) to make it look like new. It’s an inexpensive fix that will make a huge difference to prospective buyers. Check all window screens for damage and replace them if they are torn or ill-fitting. You may also want to add flowers or a decorative wreath for a welcoming entry.
Once you’ve got everything working and usable in your home, you’re that much closer to a successful sale! Take heart that a little work now will lead to payoff later!
New Features at Buy Owner!
Buy Owner® has recently added maps to our online advertising, as well as updated our schools sections! These exciting new features give you the ability to enhance your property’s marketing the way you’d like, giving you maximum customization and control.
Here’s how the new features work:
NEW MAPS
Buy Owner advertisements now display custom maps that allow buyers to see where your home is located. Buyers who view your property can click for three different map views: (1) Map: the default option with street names (2) Satellite: a bird’s eye view from above or (3) Hybrid: a combination of the two that shows street names and a satellite view.
As a Buy Owner seller, you can make several customizations to these maps, all from within your Seller Tools online. You can move the pinpoint of your home to the exact spot where your residence should be, and you can choose whether or not to display your street address when a buyer clicks the marker. Plus, if you’d rather not show the map, that’s fine, too: Simply click the option to remove the map from your ad, and it will no longer appear!
UPDATED SCHOOLS SECTION
Buy Owner advertisements now benefit from an enhanced schools section! As always, a list of schools is available on your property’s advertisement, but now that list can show (1) public schools (2) private schools and (3) local colleges/universities.
As a Buy Owner seller, you decide to show all, some or none of these listings. From within your Seller Tools online, you can check the types of schools you want to show, and remove the check from any you don’t. It’s that simple! When buyers view your listing, they’ll be able to see the types of schools you’ve made available.
Log in to your Seller Tools to experiment with these new features, and customize them to your liking. Call our customer service department if we can be of any assistance.
We hope you enjoy these new features – one more way we at Buy Owner give you control over your home sale because at Buy Owner, it’s U that makes the difference!
New Series: Top 10s!
Happy February from Buy Owner®!
Sometimes you want to read a lengthy article filled with tips from A to Z. Other times, though, you just want to get to the point and know what the essential info is.
With that in mind, welcome to a new series at the Buy Owner Blog: Top 10s. Over the next month, we will be bringing you a variety of articles all centered on one theme: the best of the best.
Tomorrow, we begin with the Top 10 Home Marketing Tips. Then we’ll continue with the Top 10 Green Purchases for Your Home, the Top 10 Considerations before Buying a Condo and more.
It’s just one more way that we at Buy Owner seek to make your home-ownership experience a better one, giving you more information so you have more control.
After all, at Buy Owner, it’s U that makes the difference!
Buy Owner Feature: Housefly
Have you ever wondered just how many properties are being viewed at BuyOwner.com or wanted to see for yourself which properties were getting the most hits? With BuyOwner’s exciting new feature, Housefly, you can do just that. Like a fly on the wall, you’ll be able to watch the constantly updating list of just-viewed advertisements.
Housefly shows you what properties are currently being viewed on the BuyOwner.com Web site, with the statistics being updated every 30 seconds. As a property is viewed, this page is updated in moments to show you the current information.
Go see for yourself! It’s one more way Buy Owner works to use technology for your advantage!
Buy Owner in the Wall Street Journal
One way Buy Owner helps you maximize your home’s marketability is through technology, from our high-traffic Website and talking yard signs to professionally created virtual tours: 360-degree online showcases of your home, complete with recorded audio descriptions.
A recent article by June Fletcher of The Wall Street Journal draws attention to the importance of technology in home sales and highlights Buy Owner as a FSBO company that can help.
According to Fletcher, the majority of today’s buyers use the Web for home searches. That’s why technology is so important.
She also writes of talking yard signs, “On their face, chatty yard signs are simple, even mysterious. Interested parties can call a toll-free number and plug in the digits for more information, like location, price, size and maybe a description of the built-in backyard grill or the Tara-like staircase. The spiel runs 24 hours a day.”
Buy Owner’s talking yard signs are especially valuable. Unlike other signs that give a short list of features or require you to change batteries all the time, the Buy Owner signs offer a full description of your property and state-of-the-art technology.
Go here to read the rest of the WSJ article.
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Scheduled Maintenance -Update!
Another database update is scheduled for Tuesday, May 7, at 7:30 AM EST. We estimate the service to be down for no more than one hour.
Although you may not see any cosmetic changes, the update will be enhancing the database functionality. We will be moving to a faster, more powerful database server.
New and exciting features are in store for both buyers and sellers.
See How Easily You Can Sell Your Own Home!
Contract to closing, Buy Owner creates a smooth selling process: that’s “The Buy Owner Difference.”
From tips on staging to organizing to cleaning to curb appeal, Buy Owner provides information, right here at the blog, to help you prepare your home for sale.
Buy Owner marketing plans offer options for quality descriptions, professional virtual tours, captions.
The suggested strategies here at the blog provide ways to get the word out about your home, ways to sell while out-of-town, and ideas for preparing for a showing.
Negotiating with a buyer? Ready for Moving Day?
Buy Owner has you covered, whatever your need. Contact customer service to learn more!
