10 Things To Know If You're Selling Your Ohio Home Without An Agent
Welcome to the wonderful world of FBSO (For Sale By Owner) in Ohio. We get it, you're determined to save some money selling your home and paying an agent to market your home isn't on the table. We're not going to spend any time trying to convince you that you might actually NET a higher price with a listing agent, but instead provide you 10 pieces of information that may help you avoid trouble and maybe even help you get your home SOLD.
1. You're going to get a lot of calls from agents, all wanting to list your home. For some that's the truth, for others it's a "technique" for hopefully getting you to list your home with them. If they've REALLY got a buyer for your home, they should bring that buyer to your home whether or not you have them list your home.
2. On the other hand, you DO want to cooperate with agents that truly have a buyer. Saying "I won't work with an agent or pay them" takes a LOT of buyers out of the equation. Those buyers WANT to work with their agent, but don't want to pay out of pocket. You've got a bottom line you'll accept for your home, right? So just increase that bottom line by the agent's commission and everyone wins.
3. There are disclosure forms required to be filled out when selling your home in Ohio. Unless you fit a narrow list of exclusions, you need to fill out the Ohio Residential Property Disclosure Form and make it available to your prospective buyers. And if your home was built prior to 1978 add the Lead Based Paint disclosure to your list of MUST DO paperwork.
4. Get familiar with Ohio's Fair Housing requirements. If you're found to be discriminating against a protected class it could get really ugly, really fast.
5. Your home's marketing matters! Fact is if you're going FSBO you're going to be more limited than a home represented by an agent. So maximize your marketing. If buyers (and their agents) can't find your home for sale, it could be a LONG time on the market. And don't forget, buyers love good photos, and plenty of them.
6. Make your home EASY to show. Yes, it's going to be inconvenient, but if buyers can't get in, they can't buy your home. And the 2nd part of that? Most buyers are NOT comfortable having the seller around during a showing. Don't "oversell" your property. What you think is a great selling feature might be a deal breaker for a buyer.
7. "Interested" buyers may seem plentiful, but they're not. If they're face to face with you, most buyers know you're proud of your home. They've not going to want to hurt your feelings so they'll say nice things about your home. And then POOF, you'll never hear from them again.
8. Things will go wrong and anticipating those things are one of the jobs of an agent. Buyers can have financing trouble, their may be a problem during the home inspection (Yes, we know you think your home is close to perfect as you can make it, but a buyer doesn't have your history and their home inspector may find some things you don't expect.)
9. READ the contract closely when you get an offer. There may be things in there that if you miss may cost you big dollars (what stays with the property, that taxes need to be paid through day of closing, etc.). It's not a bad idea to hire a real estate attorney to help you through the process.
10. The buyer's agent's first and only responsibility is to their clients, the buyers. The buyer's agent will do what they need to do to get their clients through the process.Working in real estate we get asked LOTS of questions! It's all part of the business.
Frankly these 10 tips are just scratching the surface of selling a home, but hopefully you've found this information useful. We work with buyers and sellers daily and the above advice is a sampling of what we've learned from our work.
And if you decide that you DO want an agent to help market your home and take some of the stress off of you, we'd appreciate the opportunity to chat further. Just give us a call at 513-520-5305 or Liz@LizSpear.com if your home is in the Cincinnati/Dayton corridor.
Serving Warren County area home buyers and sellers,
Liz and Bill aka BLiz
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