Why Are More People Today Selling Their Homes Themselves?
Years ago it was not too common to see For Sale By Owner Signs along the sidewalk. Today it is very common. I believe the reason it has become much more popular to sell a home by owner is because most people who really need to sell their homes for financial reasons also do not have the money to pay a real estate commission on the sale of their home. In other words, they desperately need to sell a home, but at the same time they cannot afford to sell it.
Does this make sense? Because I am a real estate investor and I buy and sell homes regularly as my business, I am familiar with pretty much every situation that can occur in the process of buying and selling homes. Over the years I’ve seen times when it was easy to sell a home and other times when it was very difficult. Most people are aware of the fact that in our present economy when so many homes are on the market and prices have fallen considerably over the last few years it has become somewhat fashionable to sell a home by owner.
That might sound funny, but what I mean is that formerly sellers who wouldn’t consider taking on the responsibility of marketing and selling their own home are doing so as a matter of necessity. Many people are posting a sign in the yard, hosting open houses and of course, placing ads in the newspaper as well as online when trying to sell a house.
One thing is for certain, you cannot rely on the real estate market responding the way it used to respond at all. By that I mean you have to be very proactive and think as far ahead as possible. You actually have to think about what kind of person is already looking for your home and where that person (or those persons, because of course there might be several people looking for a home just like yours) is shopping. I can guarantee you that no matter what else your buyer is doing, he or she is also surfing around online looking at homes for sale. Everyone does that now.
Whether it’s on a computer, a smart phone or some kind of tablet that works as a phone and a computer, people are shopping for homes all the time. They are shopping while they are at work, at school and at home in the middle of the night when they cannot sleep. When you want to sell a home by owner you just have to make sure your buyers can find it whenever and wherever they are surfing the web. That’s my best advice to sell a home by owner today.