Get Happy Home.com - buy cheaper, sell better

I believe that you can sell a house (without any prior real estate sales experience or training) using your own Blog faster than with the help of a realtor who uses traditional methods of advertising. When you are selling a home FSBO, a blog will generate more interest in that home. By blogging about your home and increasing traffic to your online listing, you increase the chances of selling your property faster.

I was browsing the internet to find you one more example proving that the Internet is an effective marketing tool and came across Morgan Carey’s Blog . Read about Morgan Carey who believes that he can sell his house faster than his realtor. In a battle SEO vs. Realtor, I’m sure the the seo guy will win!

Enjoy!

Although open house tend to attract a lot of “browsers,” if your home is clean, attractive, well-priced and in good repair, it could turn a “browser” into a buyer. Some purchasers want to get the “feel” of several neighborhoods before they begin working with a Realtor. Open houses will attract these potential buyers.

Most open houses for the public are held on a weekend afternoon when potential buyers often have more time to drive through neighborhoods. If you have pets, we suggest that you should remove them from the home during the open house, since their presence could be distracting.

I also recommend that your family was away from the home during the open house as well. If you remain home, prospective buyers may feel compelled to rush their visit to avoid disturbing you. You want them to feel relaxed and to take the time to really see the features of your property. Potential buyers may also feel uncomfortable commenting on your home in your presence.

Here are some general tips to help you prepare for the big day:

(more…)

What is the likelihood that your home will sell at an open house? Open houses are an integral part of the home sale business. But, do they work?

An effective open house can afford potential buyers the opportunity to get a true sense of a home. Since buying a home is one of the most important, and expensive, decisions an individual or couple can make, an open house can not only provide a physical tour of the property, but also an emotional connection with the potential buyer.

Some open house visitors will be neighbors. This is not all bad. Some neighbors have friends or relatives who may want to relocate into the area.

Most people who visit open houses are directed there by the “Open House” signs. This means they don’t have much information about the house when they walk in the front door. So even when open house visitors are legitimate buyers, they may not be well-qualified for the house in question. They may need a larger house or a smaller house, or something more or less expensive.

As a FSBO seller, give your home as much exposure as possible, as often as you can. By putting your house on the market, you are presenting it to every buyer as their potential next dream home. Therefore you’ll want to prepare and stage your home to convey the very best impression.

Homes do sell at open houses! Do you live in a high demand neighborhood with lots of drive by traffic? Will families be passing by on their way home from church or on their way to restaurants and shops? Is your home priced correctly for the neighborhood?

If you can answer yes to these questions, an open house may be an effective marketing tool for your home. Potential buyers who like specific areas will stop to see what is available. If the home is well priced, I have seen buyers write offers on the spot.

If your home is well off the beaten path or you were the only one in the development to add all of the upgrades, open houses might not be successful. Buyers won’t follow more than 3-4 directional arrows and travel more than ½ a mile out of their way. Likewise buyers are frustrated when they do stop but realize that the price tag is $60K higher than the rest of the neighborhood because there are granite counters, cherry wood flooring and custom birch cabinets. If your home falls in either of these categories, open houses might not be successful.

Timing and Duration of Open Houses

For most homeowners, I suggest one open house per month and not longer than 2 hours. (I will do two per month, if the homeowner’s schedule allows.)You should schedule the open house at least one week in advance. This allows time to place ads in the paper as well as on the internet.

Open houses are a valuable tool in selling your home. To be effective, they must be combined with other tools in a complete marketing plan to sell your home.

Many home sellers think that it’s difficult to create a video tour, and they simply decide not to do it.Video is not hard to do and many just feel that way because they have not personally done it. A good camera can be bought for around $400 and simple editing software is not too pricy either(if you are editing on a Mac, you may use Final Cut Express). Uploading video to YouTube is easy and embedding a YouTube video into your FSBO listing on the website is a simple cut and paste job.

I can say all of these things because I have personally done them, and trust me, it’s not as hard as you might make it out to be. At the end of the day, photos have their place. I truly believe if a FSBO seller today would learn to integrate video into their home marketing plans, they would have more success than similar sellers who chose to not do so. Just my opinion, a video tour gives the buyer more of a feeling for the home. It takes about 1 hour for the shoot, and 2 - 3 hours for editing.

An ideal video tour is almost like a walking tour. How do people usually view a home? They walk in, scan left and right, and tend to head to the kitchen. Then they walk to the master, master bathroom, check the closet, etc. 90% of the people viewing homes follow the exact same path. No panning and zoom over a still shot, but actually walking through each room and focusing on what people want to see.

One more tip: filming the local community is a good idea for a video tour, go and shoot shopping areas, parks, libraries, schools and other points of interest with real people moving around. It will add a lot more interest. If done tastefully and professionally it can be a fantastic FSBO tool for a home seller listing his/her house.

Blog is an excellent marketing tool. Why not use it when selling property by owner? You can start a blog to promote your house right away after you read my post. I just want to tell you about this particular usage of blogs by very small companies — yourself — for a while now.

So the question is, can a blog sell a house? Here’s the story which proves that FSBO blog is a powerful selling tool:

“When Mesha Provo, an avid gardener, decided to sell her home in El Sobrante, Calif., she wanted to showcase her property — with its arbor blanketed with wisteria — to appeal to other plant lovers. She started a blog detailing her garden’s story through passionate postings and vibrant close-ups of her flowers, and eventually added pictures of the house. A gardener found her blog — through a flyer put together by a real-estate agent — fell in love with the house, and ultimately paid $612,000 for it, $43,000 more than the asking price.

“What the blog did was take a buyer, before he walked through my door, and sold him on my house,” said the 53-year-old Ms. Provo, national sales director of Ballentine Vineyards in Napa Valley.

Cool, isn’t it? This story proves that more and more home sellers turn to blogs to make properties stand out among traditional real-estate listings.

Check out also what Joel Burslem wrote about blogging in real estate Using A Blog to Market a Property on Inman’s blog.

The Virtual Tours you generally see on real estate sites are a static 360 degree distorted view of a room that simulates motion. Photos are stitched together in a 360 degree circle, and you can virtual “tour” around the room. But when was the last time you walked into a room, stood in one place, and spun in a circle? Common virtual tours are distorted, usually blurry, and always unrealistic.

(more…)

Video Tours is a powerful new marketing tool for FSBO sellers and a fantastic time-saving breakthrough for buyers. If people are not seeing your property for what it really is maybe you should consider a video tour. A picture might paint a 1000 words but a video will give you the whole book.

If you are selling your home for sale by owner, video tours allow you to showcase your property to potential buyers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while you get on with you life. If you are looking for a new home, video tours offer a realistic viewing experience from the comfort of your home, workplace, friend’s house, or Internet café. Simple yet powerful!

Current marketing practice utilise photos which vary in quality, virtual tours that offer a slightly skewed view of the world and schedules that offer essential specifications about your property but very little visual information that can inform the buyer.

It can be an amateur video tour, which you can simply upload to YouTube.com or you can find a professional.
The bottom line: If you can, definitely hire a professional!

How to Hire a Local Videographer…I highly recommend using Wellcomematt.com to search for a videographer by zip code.

For years, brokers, agents, and sellers have been torn over the impact the 360 degree virtual tour has on selling property. I admit that I was impressed when it first appeared on the internet but was always puzzled as to why we weren’t using real video images to entice buyers. Most of those whom I have asked about there perspective of the “virtual tour” have indicated that they felt it wasn’t an accurate portrayal of a property. Video just seemed to make more sense to me. It turns out that although I was on track with the concept, I had no concept of the capabilities of the web. Now that streaming video has become a reality, so has the video tour. Thanks to companies like WellcomeMat, the days of spliced fish eye lens pictures are becoming a thing of the past and actual guided video tours are becoming a more accurate way for buyers to preview property.

Bernice Ross seems to share the same opinion about the video tours in the post Cheaper than Cheap? on Inman’s blog. Indeed, how can real estate ignore a service that allows such amazing presence on the web? Hope FSBO sellers will use this powerful marketing tool and sell homes faster. Great video tour gives a good feeling for your whereabouts.

FSBO brochure (flyer) can be a very effective tool in the marketing of your home. Sometimes the smallest things can make the biggest difference between a home that sells quickly for top dollar and one that languishes for months on the market. Find out how to attract buyers and sell your home fast: FSBO brochures that are professionally photographed and written will set your home apart from others, helping you attract more buyers and a quicker sell.

Usually, when people are out home shopping they tend to drive around a lot looking for homes for sale and collecting FSBO flyers and fact sheets about different homes they like. In order to make any further decisions they need some information up front before scheduling an appointment with the seller to view the property. Knowing how many square feet, how many bedrooms and bathrooms are some of the basic questions that must be answered before hand. Providing this information on the FSBO flyer will save you and them time and unnecessary appointments.

Below is a list of what I consider the most essential items that should be included.

● The total amount of heated and cooled living space
● How many Bed Rooms & Bathrooms
● Sizes of the Living Room, Dining, and Bed Rooms
● Right at the top of the brochure should be the address.
● Provide information about nearby schools
● How and when to schedule an appointment to view the property.
● Last but not least some decent photos the show the home for sale. One at a minimum.

A typical prospect may view anywhere from 5 to 25+ homes in a single day! At the end of that day, all the prospect has to remember your home is the brochure. For that very reason, you have to pour loads of energy into the design and production of your FSBO brochures.

Don’t be shy. Mention the best features to set your home apart from others for sale. If you have the space, a good tactic is to describe the characteristics of the house that lead you to originally purchase it.

Obviously, marketing is one of the key factors in selling a home. If you are creative with yours, buyers will come.

Just added my FSBO blog to technorati.com, below is the link to my profile there. Hope people searching or browsing through those tag pages will be able to find my blog posts - more exposure, more traffic, hopefully more readers for my FSBO blog.

Technorati Profile

I came across a nice article on RealtyTimes.com written by M. Anthony Carr which covers the aspect of redecorating before selling your home and its cost.
 
So how much is Too Much to fix up your house?
 
As with any resale product, the person trying to sell said product will usually try to make the product look as new as possible to ensure the highest profit available. In reviewing many of the homes on the market today, however, some sellers don’t get that notion.
 
Don’t make the mistake of the seller who, knowing full well that buyers were coming by, not only failed to do a fresh clean up, but also left his underwear on the exercise bike, a pan of crusty macaroni and cheese on the stove and debris throughout the yard.
 
There are some task items any seller should consider when selling a house. Even if you decide to sell “as is,” a little soap and water could put a few more bucks in your pocket. With that in mind, let’s look at what sellers should look at doing with any house they want to put on the market; what to do when you want to get a little more money; and how to compete with the Joneses when looking to prepare your home for sale.
 
Any House
 
1. All homes going on the market should receive a deep cleaning. This is the cleaning that you do when … well, you would never do it unless you’re selling your house (or you’re just an absolute neatnik. This involves scrubbing every cranny of the house. Nothing goes unscrubbed. I would suggest bringing in a professional group to get this done and plan on spending a couple hundred bucks (maybe more) to get the house ready for your new buyer.
 
2. Next, declutter the house. Go ahead and rent a huge storage unit and fill it up. Plan this with a bunch of pre-made boxes that have lids you can tape shut and label. Take extra kid’s toys to charity. Donate all clothes that are even a bit too tight or out of date. Remove excess furniture (or even cover with matching covers).
 
3. Repair and paint where needed. As with most homes that have been lived in, that would be all of them. Walk through a new construction home to see what you’re up against and then go and make yours look as best you can on your budget.
 
4. Landscaping. Thankfully, mulch and flowering plants don’t really cost a lot of money for those who are just sprucing up. Before going out and paying for a designer-created landscaping job, start with the local garden center and get some free advice on how to spruce up on a budget. Fresh, flowering plants (even in fall and winter) can make the house look oh-so much better.
 
Even if you’re selling as-is, the above four tips are a must. Next is where we spend a little more money.
 
Redecorating
 
1. Renewed color. Giving your house a makeover doesn’t have to cost you a second mortgage. The first item to consider for rehab is your color selection. While the traditional advice is “go vanilla,” professionally selected colors (not too bold) can make a “nice” house into a “wow” house.
 
2. Flooring is one of the best moderately priced upgrades a seller can install to make a huge difference. While I like the concept of “choose-your-own-carpet” offers in home listings, think about what else it’s saying: “We’re too cheap to fix up the house now, so we’ll let you walk through our tattered, stained carpeting and let you get it installed the weekend after we leave.” Like I said, make your house a “wow” by making that first great impression with new carpet.
 
3. Replacing dated items. Sometimes replacing certain items in the house is really more like maintaining your home instead of upgrading it. Items like windows, doors, light fixtures, faucets, door hardware, etc., need upgrading and replacing periodically. A walk down the light aisle at your favorite hardware store reveals this could be done on a budget. Nevertheless, there’s nothing more gross looking than a brass light fixture that’s chipping and rusting.
 
Keeping up with the Joneses
 
At some point you have to look at what the neighbors are doing and keep up or you’ll lose out. If everyone in the neighborhood is ripping out the old and installing the new (kitchen, bath, carpet, doors, etc.) then you may be forced to do the same thing long before you’re thinking of putting your home on the market. My wife and I are facing that right now with the kitchen. It’s starting to show its age, which means before we put the house on the market in a few years, if I want the best buyer (or any buyer for that matter) the kitchen cabinets need an upgrade.
 
Redo, Remodel, Relax
 
As you look around the house, making your list of things to change before putting the house on the market, remember to create some time to enjoy your new digs before selling the place. If a sale is on your horizon and you must redo the landscaping before putting the house on the market — do it early so you can drive home to the professionally designed flowerbeds and floral creations a few months or years before selling it to someone else.
 
While you want to repair, paint, remodel and add on to your house because it adds value to your home, every homeowner should especially do it because they want to enjoy the changes as well.
 

by M. Anthony Carr
Resource: from http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20061020_toomuchfix.htm