FSBO Tips, Tools, and Free For Sale By Owner Listings

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words - Part 1

2005-02-05T10:29:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed those little photos that sometimes appear when you search online for a home? They generally appear to the left in the search results.

These are called 'thumbnails'.

And they can be a very important selling point when advertising on the Internet because multiple Internet marketing studies have shown that far more people click on any kind of results that have a photo than those that don't.

Of course, you want to make sure that your thumbnail is compelling. While something is better than nothing, you need to keep in mind that you are trying to sell your home with every step you take.

Thumbnails are simply resized versions of images. The fact that they are much smaller - generally no more than 125 pixels wide - they are harder to make clear than larger photos. In addition, some sites automatically resize your original photo, so may turn it into a misshapen mess.

(Click here to see some examples of what we're talking about - the good, the bad, and the ugly.)

If you have the option of making your own thumbnail, then do so. Don't worry about any fancy features like a drop shadow or picture frame. You want the viewer focused on your property and, since the image is so small, the more 'extra' stuff you have, the smaller the image of your house itself is.

If the site automatically resizes photos to a set size, learn what size that is and make your original appropriately. (Click here to see what we mean.)

Obviously, if you use our services at Sell-Your-Home-FSBO.com, we take care of all this for you.
Often people don't realize everything that is involved with selling their home online. This is just one small example. So let us know if we can help you successfully sell your home FSBO on the Internet - we know you'll be more than satisfied with our services.

Overpricing Your FSBO Home - Why Do It?

2005-01-11T20:22:00.000-08:00

Let's say your house is worth $150,000.

If you pay a realtor to sell it and pay them 6% in commission, you get $141,000 after paying them. Or you could sell the home yourself for the $150,000 and make an extra $9,000.

Sounds great, right? $9,000 more just by selling your $150,000 home yourself. Awesome!

Then why decide to ask $165,000 for your $150,000 house? $175,000? $200,000? Or even more!!! Do you truly think that buyers can't find out what comparable homes are selling for? Do you truly think that buyers can't find out what your home is appraised for? (And do you truly think that realtors are not smacking their lips waiting for you to give up because your home doesn't sell?)

Think again.

Now you might be thinking "well, buyers expect to pay 10% less than the asking price so I have to ask more." Says who?

Even if that were true, you can always set your asking price as 'firm'. If you price your home at $150,000 and that's its bank appraised value, people aren't going to expect to buy it at $135,000. That's silly. But that's 10% off.

They might expect you to come to down to, say, $145,000...which is still a $4,000 profit to you over using a realtor. So you negotiate and sell it for $148,500. You sell the home quickly and pocket an additional $7,500. Oh gee darn.

[Or price it at a reasonable $154,900 and come down to $150,000 and make your full additional profit.]

The operative word is "quickly". Sure, you can overprice your home and have it sit on the market for months, if not years. But aren't you trying to sell your home?

If so, just follow these simple steps:

Get your home professionally appraised.
Set your price reasonably around that appraisal.
And don't get greedy! Because that is the number one reason people do not successfully sell FSBO.

So great good luck in selling your home or other real estate FSBO, and don't forget that we're always here to help at Sell-Your-Home-FSBO.com

Top 5 Reasons FSBO Sellers Choose the Wrong Place to Advertise Their Home

2004-12-27T07:02:00.000-08:00

[It's been quite a while since our last post. We will never win a prize for the most dependable bloggers, but at least we offer real meat in our for sale by owner advice postings :-)]

As you probably already know, our FSBO service at Sell-Your-Home-FSBO.com includes getting your home advertised on almost 100 For Sale By Owner sites. Yes, a number of these are minor sites or, as someone referred to them, "mom and pop sites". But some of them are among the top FSBO sites available and, indeed, thanks to partnerships we have developed over the years, our clients' homes are listed on several top for-fee listing sites as part of our basic fee, which saves them significant money over having done the listing themselves.

But for every client we help, there are hundreds who not only prefer to do it themselves, but pay good money to post on sites that have minimal traffic, little if any search engine presence, and even limit the ads to minimal information about the home...or choose sites with more traffic, but only from other sellers. Then - when they aren’t successful selling - they give up and go with a realtor, when all they had to do was use the Internet correctly in the first place.

In talking to home sellers about this, we have decided that there are 5 main reasons for this.

1. They think like sellers when choosing a site to advertise their home

This is our mantra: “Think like a buyer, not a seller”. This is why we advertise properties on almost 100 FSBO sites plus get it listed in all the top search engines...to get homes in front of buyers, not just other sellers, no matter where they look. Totally different techniques are needed to accomplish this, techniques that most FSBO ad sites don’t bother with because they make their money from the sellers.

Most buyers don’t even think ‘for sale by owner’...they are simply using the Internet to find homes for sale...or information about homes they’ve found. (Oh, and if you are a FSBO seller who is also looking on those FSBO sites for possible homes to buy, keep in mind that most sellers already have a home in mind and don’t search that way.)

2. They believe that simply posting their home on the Internet will bring in big traffic to their property ad.

Nothing could be further from the truth. If you type in the search term “for sale by owner” on Google, there are 11 million results. Obviously buyers aren’t going to search all 11,000,000 results...assuming they used that search term in the first place. That’s a seller’s term...not a buyer’s term. If your home isn’t listed on the first page or two of search results, it’s not going to be found. And homes listed on many of the most ‘famous’ FSBO sites do not show up at all! How does that help you?

3. They believe the advertising hype on the websites

There are numerous sites that advertise things like “we are the premier for sale by owner site on the Internet” or “we get 1,000,000 hits per month”. Well, since it’s the Christmas season, we say “Bah, humbug” to that.

It is not enough that sellers find a listing website...buyers have to find it, too. We are always amazed that anyone would pay to list on a site that claims it’s been around for years and has only 3-4 homes listed for huge states like California. If other sellers aren’t listing there, that should tell you something.

(Now, if it’s free, go ahead and list because it only costs you time and you want the exposure...and we have a great FSBO Form Filler tool, by the way, that saves 95% of the time it takes to list...available at Sell-Your-Home-Yourself.com)

Also keep in mind that anyone can claim anything on the web...and the number of hits doesn’t mean anything. You want to know the number of unique visitors. (Hits refers to the number of files returned, so a web page with 30 images on it will count as 31 ‘hits’ for each visitor to that page. So you could look at 5 pages on that website just to check it out, and that would count for 155 ‘hits’.)

A couple of other things to be aware of here:

~~~ Some sites will claim dollar amounts in sales. All that means is that those homes have been marked as ‘sold’ by the sellers, not that the FSBO site had anything whatsoever to do with the sale.

~~~ Others will keep homes listed in their database forever to make their site look larger than it actually is. Check the dates posted for other ads.

4. They believe that, since they found the website, everyone else will.

Again, keep in mind our mantra. You are going to search quite differently from a buyer...and buyers are who you are after!

Sellers often believe that, since they found the website where they place their ad, everyone else will. But look at it this way, how many buyers do you think are going to search for a home by typing in, say, “free for sale by owner ads”? Yeah, that’s what we think, too :-)

5. They think that Internet advertising is all they need to do.

Well over 90% of homes are sold to people already living in the vicinity of the home. Local advertising is essential. Using the Internet primarily allows you to provide all the information about your home, not just a couple of lines in a newspaper ad. Part of our service is to provide sellers with a professional FSBO website to create “Internet curb appeal”. But we constantly remind sellers that they need to advertise that website in the local newspaper. People being people, they will check out a property website before they will make a phone call. We recommend ads like those our clients successfully use:

3 BR, 2.5 BA, corner lot
$198,000, (785)123-4567
BuyThisFSBO.com/YourURL

Or

3 BR, 2.5 BA, $198,000
BuyThisFSBO.com/YourURL

~~~~~~~

In conclusion, when you are doing your research, keep these points in mind. And remember something else: You can contact other sellers to see if their ad has helped them!

Yup - check the sites’ references! People check our references all the time with people using our services. We think it’s a great idea. They find our clients’ properties advertised on the web or via our regularly-updated Examples page and ask. So should you! You’re trying to sell FSBO to save money, aren’t you?

Yard signs - a different point of view

2004-09-23T17:14:00.000-07:00

Many apologies for taking so long for a new suggestion to help you successfully sell your home FSBO. We had been very busy on a once-in-a-lifetime event (our town's 150th birthday celebration) so most things had to wait.

Anyway...we have clients ask us if we sell yard signs. (We don't.) But it's a good question as having a yard sign is an important part of selling your home by yourself. Studies continue to show that an enormous number of homes are sold to people who saw a for sale sign in the yard.

Well, selling FSBO means doing things yourself. To us, that means going to your local Ace Hardware or somewhere similar and buying a For Sale By Owner sign for under $10 and using a magic marker to briefly write in the important information.

Now some folks might ask "but don't we want it to look more professional?" Well, think about it. Actually, look around at For Sale signs in your area. What do you see? You see advertising. Not for the home...but for the real estate agency or For Sale By Owner service that provided the sign. Is that truly what you want people seeing?

If you're taking our advice about having a property website, here's what your sign should say...and make sure you buy a sign that already says For Sale By Owner:

# of bedrooms/# of baths
Asking price
Your property URL

Therefore an example would be:

3 bedroom/2 bath
$179,900
BuyThisFSBO.com/Wellsville

If you want, you can add your phone number, but do you want to? Don't you want people checking out your website to see if your home is right for them before calling you to get the information they could have gotten off the website?

The argument could be made that not everyone has a computer, and that's quite true. But they have friends or family who do...and who know how to use it. A good percentage of people who use our Sell-Your-Home-FSBO.com services do just that. And it doesn't keep them from successfully selling their home FSBO.

So...you need a yard sign, but you don't need a fancy yard sign that advertises someone else's business. And make sure you include your website address on your yard sign. People will stop, look at the outside of your home, write down the URL, and then go home to check out your website. Just like you want them to do.

Good luck with selling your home FSBO. And if you have any questions, just send us an email at blog@sell-your-home-fsbo.com

Site Review - HomePortfolioJunction

2004-07-24T17:59:00.000-07:00

Home Portfolio Junction is one of the most established for sale by owner sites on the web today, having been founded in 1997. They offer a variety of packages, including a free listing.

The free listings option offers you the opportunity to have a 50 word description with no photos. This is one of only two no-photo listings we recommend because even their no-photo listing will get you more exposure than many free photo sites, plus the listing stays active for 90 days. (Many sites limit a listing to 30 days.)

Should you wish to upgrade to a photo listing, you can do so for as little as $15.95. That not only allows you to post one photo, but you can add up to 250 words of text. Paid listings do not expire until your home is sold. In addition, your home ad is submitted to 6,000 search engines and classified ad sites. Not bad for sixteen bucks!

Go to the listing page now: http://www.homeportfoliojunction.com/home/selling.htm

Is Listing on one Site Enough?

2004-07-16T17:17:00.000-07:00

We often receive questions from people wondering if listing their home on one FSBO site is sufficient.

Out answer is a resounding "NO"!!

There are numerous FSBO listing sites out there. Some have numerous property listings while some have only a few. Some delete outdated listings while some keep them forever...not necessarily to make themselves look bigger, but because this is a service they have offered or people forget to remove homes one they have sold as they were supposed to. Some are local to an area while others are nationwide or evern international.

But they all have one thing in common. Potential buyers have to find them before they find you.

Buyers do not search for homes the same way that sellers look for listing sites. Why would they? They aren't interested in how much it costs to list a home or how long the ad stays up. They don't give a hoot whether you get a yard sign with your ad or a free guide.

Ultimately, they aren't searching for 'for sale by owner' - they are searching for '3 bedroom 2 bath home in Sometown, Some State".

That being the case, you want your home listed in as many places as possible, not as few. No matter which site you might find first or like the most, the truth of the matter is, you need your home to be found by buyers, not just other sellers.

(That's why we started our specialized service - Sell-Your-Home-FSBO.com - to help people get their homes listed on over 100 FSBO sites for only $49.95.)

If you have any FSBO questions you'd like answered, don't forget to email us at questions@sell-your-home-fsbo.com

Property Photos - advice for newbies

2004-07-09T22:23:00.000-07:00

If you are thinking about putting up photos on the web about your property, remember the following things when doing so:

1) Show interior as well as exterior photos. People can drive by your home and see the outside. They want to see the inside as well. Including interior photos will satisfy the curiosity seeker and keep them from bothering you, while they will serve to further attract the true potential buyer.

2) Make them as light and sharp as possible. Computer monitors affect the way photos look. Dark photos will lose their detail.

3) Do NOT make them too big. They will download extremely slowly, and most people won't hang around to see them. By the way, just because a photo shows up quickly on your computer doesn't mean it will download quickly to someone else's computer. That's because the photo is actually *ON* your computer, but must travel across the Internet to everyone else's.

By the way, one of the many services we offer at Sell-Your-Home-FSBO.com is optimizing property photos so that they look good and download quickly.

Don't forget...if you have any questions you'd like to see answered here, just send us an email at questions@sell-your-home-fsbo.com. We'll be glad to answer them for you.

Finding your website address - advice for newbies

2004-07-05T14:20:00.000-07:00

We will regularly have clients who are not really familar with the Internet say "You gave me my website address [URL] and I tried to find it, but I can't."

The same thing can happen when someone sees your newspaper ad and tries to go to the website address there.

Almost always, this is due to one common mistake...people typing the website address in the Search box on their home page, not the Address box.

Here's an example. If you use Yahoo.com, there's a big box that says Search the Web. That is NOT where you want to type the address.

Look up higher, almost to the top of the screen, to where it says Address: followed by a box where it says http://www.yahoo.com/

THAT'S where your website address goes.

On MSN, do NOT put it in the New MSN Search box. Put it in the Address box where it says http://www.msn.com

On Earthlink, do NOT put it in the Powered by Google box. Put it in the Address box where it says http://www.earthlink.com

On AOL, do NOT put it in the Search box. Put it in the Address box where it says http://www.aol.com

You get the idea. The web address goes in the Address box!

So, when you get someone calling and saying they can't find your website, ask them if they typed the address into the Search box. Chances are they did.

[We can do all the work on the web for you...a professionally designed property website plus listings on over 100 FSBO sites for only $49.95. Check out our services at http://Sell-Your-Home-FSBO.com!]

Welcome to FSBO Tips, Tools, and Free Listings

2004-07-05T13:36:00.000-07:00

Howdy!

If you're looking for help on selling your home FSBO using the Internet from people who actually do it, you've come to the right place. We have been helping FSBO home sellers since 1996 successfully sell their homes using the resource of the Internet to make the job easier, quicker, and far more effective.

Among the help we'll be providing here are newbie tips and FAQs based on our experience and the questions of our clients over the years. If you have a question, please don't hesitate to ask! This won't be the same old-same old you find everywhere else...you know..."Make sure your home smells of cookies when showing it" or "Turn all the lights on to make your home seem brighter".

We'll also be discussing various tools you can use, such as FSBO form fillers and tips on making your photos stand out

Plus...we will regularly review various FSBO listings site - both free and for-fee - so you can get an idea of which sites and services would work best for you. (Of course, we believe that *our* services at Sell-Your-Home-FSBO.com are the best!)

So check us out, ask us questions, and let us help you successfully sell your home on the Internet!

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