Give up the questions folks!

[Dan Auito]

If your selling a home and have a question regarding the best price or preparing it for sale etc... feel free to ask away! :SM003:

[REIaddicted]

I have been watching the " sell this house" show. I have gotten some great ideas ( not had the chance to put them to use).
Does anyone bother to stage their place before showing it?

I have an aquantance and she is very interested in loaning the furniture to stage the home for a small fee. She also writes applications up for a local morgage company that has lots lender programs.
Just wondering if this is something I should bother with ?

Lisa

[Dan Auito]

I have been watching the " sell this house" show. I have gotten some great ideas ( not had the chance to put them to use).
Does anyone bother to stage their place before showing it?

I have an aquantance and she is very interested in loaning the furniture to stage the home for a small fee. She also writes applications up for a local morgage company that has lots lender programs.
Just wondering if this is something I should bother with ?

Lisa

Lisa, if there is an owner who has furniture in the home already, I just maximize its appearence and arrangement as best can be done, often thinning the furnishings out to create the more roomy feel.

If the place is vacant then it gets a spic and span run and spotless windows to boot, but nothing brought in that otherwise wouldn't be there naturally. I just have never needed to go to that extreme.

Here's my brief for open houses:
Have no less than two people present and all valuables put in a secure place, this includes house keys, purses, firearms, daily planners, laptops, ipods, Game boys, etc….Keep people honest. All breakables are put away, while Candles, cookies and cider with soft music tuned low is throughout the house.

They should smell new carpet, paint, cookies, candles, soaps and perfumes not fido or fifi. Greet your guests at the door, hand them the facts and features sheets and invite them in. Don’t hover over or follow them around! You may show them a special feature or two and show them the documentation table, otherwise! Let them look on there own. If they have questions, they will ask!

[leseiber]

If your selling a home and have a question regarding the best price or preparing it for sale etc... feel free to ask away! :SM003:
Hi Dan,
We are selling our house by owner. You can check out our web page at http://seiber.members.atlantic.net. The house is very unusual, in that it is off grid (all power comes from photovoltaic panels) and is on 60 acres with about 1/2 mile of lakefront. It has been hard to appraise, but we tried to evaluate the land, then worked how much we paid to build the house and paid ourselves some for labor. It will probably sell to someone who is not currently in our location, in other words, we are trying to advertise nationally. We would like to know what the advantages are (if any) for us to join a multiple listing service? We have read your Sacred Cows booklet, but because of the unusual nature of our house, we feel some of the ideas don't apply to us. We have our house listed on 6 FSBO sites. Thanks for your time! Liz

[Dan Auito]

Hi Dan,
We are selling our house by owner. You can check out our web page at http://seiber.members.atlantic.net. The house is very unusual, in that it is off grid (all power comes from photovoltaic panels) and is on 60 acres with about 1/2 mile of lakefront. It has been hard to appraise, but we tried to evaluate the land, then worked how much we paid to build the house and paid ourselves some for labor. It will probably sell to someone who is not currently in our location, in other words, we are trying to advertise nationally. We would like to know what the advantages are (if any) for us to join a multiple listing service? We have read your Sacred Cows booklet, but because of the unusual nature of our house, we feel some of the ideas don't apply to us. We have our house listed on 6 FSBO sites. Thanks for your time! Liz

Hi Liz, glad you read the little e book! Advantages to MLS = ONE WORD "EXPOSURE" but that exposure is to the cadre of real estate agents that primarily access it and bring a prospective buyer for most often a 3% fee. On your sale price of $759,000 that's $22,770 you would be giving to the lucky agent who brings a buyer.
In cases such as yours Liz it often takes brochures and color ads in outdoor magazines, hunting mags and survivalist mags and so forth! In otherwords expensive homes that are something other than what is most often desired by most are more expensive to advertise than the average 3bd 2ba 2 car home on a postage stamp lot.

I think with what you have Liz I would add about $23,000 to the sale price and go for the exposure of the MLS, now a realtor/sales agent/Broker may not bring a buyer, but the MLS is being accessed more and more by non realtor type folks through various new models of real estate sales operations on the net.

The bottom line is you will get the exposure this type of property needs and if an (non agent type)individual finds it and contacts you then you have room to lower the price back down to what a no commission deal would yield!

Raise the price to offset the commission to get the exposure on the MLS!

There are so many questions I would like to ask to find alternatives but I don't think you want to answer twenty questions here today, I hope this helps Liz. Dan

P.S. Liz feel free to post up your pics on our site as well if you would like.

[Holly]

I'm possibly going to sell some property, and I did have an agent call, just to let me know they would be interested in handling it if I did want their help in the future. She said she was a realtor, and was with NAR. What is NAR, and are there advantages over other agents that aren't with NAR? I didn't want to ask too many questions, as so far I'm on my own.

[REIaddicted]

I'm possibly going to sell some property, and I did have an agent call, just to let me know they would be interested in handling it if I did want their help in the future. She said she was a realtor, and was with NAR. What is NAR, and are there advantages over other agents that aren't with NAR? I didn't want to ask too many questions, as so far I'm on my own.
Holly,
NAR is National association of realtors. here is their link www.realtor.org

If you want to do FSBO, the download this 15 page post to decide if you want to do FSBO.

http://www.magicbullets.com/forum/showthread.php?t=395

Lisa

[Dan Auito]

I'm possibly going to sell some property, and I did have an agent call, just to let me know they would be interested in handling it if I did want their help in the future. She said she was a realtor, and was with NAR. What is NAR, and are there advantages over other agents that aren't with NAR? I didn't want to ask too many questions, as so far I'm on my own.

Hello Holly NAR stands for the National Association of Realtors I am also a member of this organization, in theory NAR members are supposed to act according to a higher code of ethics than non-members but I wouldn't say their much different than regular agents who don't pay a fee to have the designation. So concentrate on finding what we call a TOP PRODUCER these are the movers and shakers who hussle to get the business and they usually are the best in breed! (WHEN YOU CALL A REAL ESTATE OFFICE ASK WHO IS THEIR TOP PRODUCER!)

Don't count yourself out in trying to sell by owner for the first few weeks, you might be surprised, just contact a local real estate attorney to do the paperwork and read my free FSBO tutorial (Magic Bullets Kill Sacred Cows) You can download it free from the bottom of our homepage here!

Also feel free to ask questions as you go along on this board, I would like to hold your hand here and see if you can't just do it yourself!

Read the tutorial http://www.magicbullets.com/gifts/final%20cows%20from%20kendall-1-s.pdf :SM017: and then think about it! :smiley: