FlashHouse Checklist

Checklist for Selling Your Home Without an Agent

Selling your home can be one of the most overwhelming, stressful, and emotionally draining processes a person can go through. There’s a reason most sellers work with agents to handle the back and forth communication, legal fees, financial documents, and closing procedures.

In addition to the complexity of the process, it’s important to consider that this involves a transaction of most people’s largest asset and investment: their home. It’s not the kind of thing you want to set out on your own without the proper training and understanding.

However, if you’re looking to sell your home without an agent, we’ve put together a checklist of some of the things you’ll need to consider and how to tackle each of them. We’ve bucketed them into five main categories:

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Getting your house market-ready Navigating through the legalese Pricing your home Taking your home to market Closing the sale

In this document, you’ll find to-dos, best practices, tips and tricks, and places where you will likely need some help. If you have any questions, we’d be happy to answer them for you!

info@flashhouse.com

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866-793-0051

Getting Your House Market-Ready First things first, right? Getting your house market-ready is a process that looks very different for everyone, depending on the state of your property and what needs to be done before the sale.

☐☐ Get a Home Inspection Done

The inspectors will identify any repairs that need to be made, whether it’s cosmetic improvements or something structural, in order to improve the value of your house and get the most out of your sale.

☐☐ Decide Which Repairs You Can Do

After the inspection’s done, you’ll have list of action items and you can decide whether or not you want to act on them. Hopefully, nothing major came up during the inspection and you can do the projects yourself or hire a local handyman to get things done.

☐☐ Prepare the Yard

When it comes to attracting potential buyers, the yard is just as important as the inside of the home. If you’ve maintained your property well there shouldn’t be a ton of things that are needed here, but this would be a good opportunity to lay down some fresh mulch, trim the hedges, remove dead trees, mow the lawn, and plant some flowers.

Navigating Through the Legalese This is one of the areas that can be a bit of a minefield if you’re not 100% confident in what needs to be done. At this point, you’re making repairs and improvements to the house and you’re starting to think about what needs to be done from a legal standpoint.

☐☐ Are you Using an Attorney?

One of the first things you’ll need to do is decide whether or not you’ll be using an attorney to facilitate the deal.

You’ve already decided not to use an agent for the real estate-related items. Are you going to do the same with the legal documents?

☐☐ Title and Escrow

You’ll also have to decide whether or not you’re going to be using a title and escrow company to facilitate the deal.

☐☐ Understand Your State’s Requirements

Fill out your state’s disclosure forms and figure out what your state’s requirements are – many states have different addendums, disclosures, and other mandatory items

☐☐ Get Familiar with Purchase Agreements

These are legal documents which you’ll need to know how to read.

One thing that people often overlook is what they’re legally liable for. Just like when filing your taxes, putting incorrect information – intentionally or not – can open yourself up to litigation and serious fees. Don’t let this happen to you!

Pricing Your Home One common mistake inexperienced sellers make when not using an agent is overpricing their home. Sure, the property’s selling price is set by the seller, however, contrary to the home selling myth, the actual selling price will be subject to market conditions, the property’s location, and its size!

Overpricing your home will only result in it getting stale and sitting on the market for way too long. Here’s how you can avoid that.

☐☐ Know What’s Happening in Your Local Market

How fast are home prices appreciating in your neighborhood, and how does that price growth compare to where you want to buy? It’s an important question to ask yourself because this can often lead to disappointment from an inexperienced seller who doesn’t have a firm grasp on local market trends.

☐☐ Run a Comparative Market Analysis

Otherwise known as a CMA, this report will help you understand what other properties are being sold for and how your home could compare.

Taking Your Home to Market Once you’ve identified where you’re comfortable pricing your home and have finished the repairs, now you’re ready to actually go to market.

This is the point when you need to ask yourself: •

How am I going to market my house?

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How am I going to get buyers in here?

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When do I get buyers in here?

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How am I going to actually show them the value in what I’m selling?

Here are a few tips to get you started.

☐☐ Take Photographs of the Home

You’re going to want to have really nice photos that show how beautiful your home is – inside and out. Do you have a professional camera? If not, you should consider working with a professional photographer who knows how to maximize lightning, space, angles, and more.

☐☐ Marketing Materials

Ask yourself, what other avenues of content creation am you going to do? Are you going to make brochures? Are you going to make an ad? Which listing sites are you going to post the property to?

☐☐ How Much Do You Value Virtual Tours?

Virtual tours and 3-D showings have never been more popular than they are now. If you don’t have the means to get this done for your home, are you going to be able to compete with the houses in that market that do?

One thing that people often overlook is what they’re legally liable for. Just like when filing your taxes, putting incorrect information – intentionally or not – can open yourself up to litigation and serious fees. Don’t let this happen to you!

Closing the Sale Now you’ve been showing the house and hopefully have a few interested buyers. How do offers work? Have you negotiated the sale of a home before? Do you know which terms you need to negotiate?

There’s a lot more that goes into the negotiation than just price! This includes:

☐☐ Closing Date

When is the seller going to be ready to hand over the keys? When is the buyer going to be ready to move in?

What other factors are involved?

☐☐ Title Work

Who’s going to be doing the title work?

☐☐ Inspections

What inspections should the buyers have to do, and how long should they have to do them? And, how long do the buyers have to respond back?

☐☐ Cash Down

How much money is the buyer putting down up front?

This is obviously a hot topic for negotiation and can make or break a deal. And what if the buyer needs to get financing?

Talk to the Experts The truth is that as robust and complex this list is, each one of these checklists could have a dozen checklists branch off of them. There is just so much information that needs to be processed and steps that need to be taken. You can see why this can become such a stressful process.

We’ve done this hundreds of times so we’ve picked up a thing or two, but real estate is an ever-evolving landscape so we’re constantly learning new things. We always recommend talking with a licensed professional who can help you understand market trends and avoid pitfalls along the way.

If you have any questions about selling your home, we’d love to answer them for you. Give us a shout at info@flashhouse.com or 866-793-005.

We’re here to help!

After hearing for years that people identify selling their home as one of the most stressful experiences in their life, we knew the market needed a solution that made the process easier and stress-free. With our online selling platform, we intend to deliver comfort, convenience, and certainty to every client with a concierge-like experience from offer to closing.