So it's time to sell your home. You are thinking of the best way to do it. Your friend of a friend told you that they know a good local real estate agent that can help you get your house sold.
You consider, you ask for there phone number.
Then you think about it.
You think that your going to have to give up 7% in commissions.
You think, what is this agent really going to do for me.
You think, is there a way for me to sell my house FSBO and keep those commissions.
Selling For Sale By Owner Successfully
Everyone that is selling their property would love to save that 7%, but there are several factors that you need to take into consideration.
Here are some stats about FSBO that display how difficult it can be if you do not know what your doing.
5% of all property sales were sold FSBO to someone they didn't know.
FSBO take about 25 more days to sell, if they sell at all
Realtor properties sell for $41,000 more than FSBO
In the last decade FSBO sales have dropped from 20% to 9%
70% of FSBO said that have difficulty selling
(*References: http://brandongaille.com/fsbo-vs-realtor-average-price-and-time-on-market-statistics/)
Realtor's are professional's and they know the market much better than the average person. Most likely that have been in the game locally for a while and understand the market conditions.
That being said, the average realtor is 57 years old & in 2016 we have tremendous mediums to market our properties through the internet. Digital marketing is a powerful tool and if used right can give your property the necessary exposure to sell your home.
The old tactics of putting a sign in your yard, passing out fliers or brochures or putting you ad in the newspaper are long gone. Now we access to websites, social media, blogs and a whole assortment of inbound marketing techniques to drive target home buyers/realtors to our properties.
The main advantage realtors have over FSBO's is that they know other real estate agents/brokers. This means that they may be able to connect your property to a buyer. But as we know by them making that connection, you will cough up that 7%. Now if they can make that connection quick, in my opinion it is worth giving up that 7%, its a no brainer. But if your property is going to sit on the market for months, while your agents put a sign in your yard and an ad in the paper, then we should not be giving them 7% of our home sale... not a chance.
5 Tools To Sell Without A Real Estate Agent
1) Website/Landing Page/ Main Hub - The first step we need to make in this process is to create a dedicated website/landing page specifically for your property. This webpage is going to be the main hub that we will push all of our marketing to. On this page we will have video, high quality pictures, property descriptions and all other important details of your property (location, amenities, property size, beds, baths etc). The most important item on your website is going to be your CTA (call to action's) or your opt in forms. These forms are going to allow qualified, interested leads to sign up for a personal tour of your home. On these opt in forms we ask there names, address, phone number, email, if their pre-qualified and their level of interest. Remember all of the digital marketing we discuss next will be pushed to your main website and landing page with the main goal of converting these qualified leads.
2) Facebook Paid Advertising - This is the most powerful digital marketing tool on the internet to date. Facebook paid advertising gives you the ability to put your ad (pictures,video footage of your property) in front of a very targeted set of people. You can target people based on their behaviors, interests, life events, demographics, income level, age, gender and much more. Now the secret with this is targeting the right people. If you are selling a home, in the price range of 100 - 150k, I would say new home buyers would be a great market to target. Personally, I would put the ad in front of females, ages 28-40, income levels 50-75k, 75-100k, with behaviors just married, engaged, moving. This would be a good initial group to target. When these folks click on your ad they will be directed back to your main website so they can sign up for their personal tour and show their interest.
3) Facebook Organic Advertising - Another powerful advertising tool which allows you to target a specific market. You will want to do this marketing from your personal Facebook page. This will allow you to put up specific ads and connect with friends you may have who may know people interested in a house in your area. You can put photos or a video up of your home to direct them to your web page. You can even offer a couple hundred dollars to anyone who brings you a lead that you close on. Now is the time to get creative and try and drive as much traffic to your main hub as possible.
4) Instagram- 70% of Instagram users are from the ages of 21 - 45. This is a good medium to find new home buyers or people interested in buying homes. You need to create an Instagram account with the address of your property. The first step you are going to take is to search local landmarks in your area (destiny usa, carrier dome, heids, any local landmarks where your buyers may have visited). You want to friend request every single person that has checked into these land marks. About 50% of them will follow you back. Now every video or picture you post will be in front of them. On every single one of your posts direct them back to your website link in your bio.
5) Craigslist - Now many people selling FSBO use this medium but they don'
t use it right and it amazes me. Constantly I see people posting all of the things that are wrong with their property. Why would someone go to your home when they know there are a million things wrong with the house. This goes back to the photos you take. Take great photos of the highlights of your home. Don't put pictures of your homes on these ads they wouldn't bring interest from a buyer. Now creating a great craigslist post takes time (another blog post later about this topic) but you are able to use some html code to make your craigslist ads stand out. You can bold, italicize, underline, increase font size, change font color, put videos in your ads and much more. I want you to maximize the limit of pictures (24) you can put in your ad. Make sure you highlight your website link in these ads. I also want you to post no less than 5 times a day to craigslist with all caps, attention grabbing headlines. There are hundreds of homes on craigslist, we need these folks to click your ad.
Wrapping Up | Tips To Sell For Sale By Owner
These are just a few tools that you need to be using to get your FSBO in front of the necessary amount of people to increase your chances of selling. Some other tools that you can use are YouTube, twitter, fizber, google maps, my maps and some more. (email me to find out). Ill tell you what, about.05% of real estate agents are using these tactics and about .01% know how to use them. I would suggest before you decide to sell your home FSBO, you start researching all of these topics, especially Facebook paid advertising. Do some research on how to use this tool. It is the most cost efficient way to target a specific market and can be very powerful if you have any clue how to use it.
If you have any other digital marketing tools that you have used in the past and found some success, please let us know. We are always looking to hear new ideas.