Visit REALTOR.com and search for other homes in your zip code and the price range where you plan to list your home. Compare these homes to yours. If you plan to list your home for $300,000 and you have three bedrooms and one bath, but all the homes between $275,000 and $300,000 on REALTOR.com have four bedrooms and two baths, your price should be lower (most other factors being equal). When you find several homes that are similar to yours in a certain price range, you know that’s the range where your price needs to be.

Take two weekends to go to open houses, with a notepad in hand and compare your home and your price to the one you’re touring. Talk to the agent there. They’ll be happy to share information with you about your local market and may even offer to provide a comparative price analysis, or ‘broker’s price opinion’ at no charge. (But be prepared! You’re likely to hear the agent’s negative perceptions of selling your own home. Read our FSBO Mythbusters and be armed with the facts!)

Stay tuned for more pricing tips next month!

Here are the facts:

Among home sold by real estate agents, it took, on average, six weeks to sell in 2006 and ten weeks to sell in 2009.

Among FSBO home sales (where the homeowner did not know their buyer before the sale), it took an average of four weeks in 2006 and only six weeks in 2009! That’s 40% less time on market for FSBO vs. agent-assisted sales in 2009. And for most sellers, that’s a difference of at least one mortgage payment. Furthermore, nearly 75% of all FSBO home sales were completed within 3 months.

Check out more FSBO Mythbusters here!

Making the seller’s situation even worse is the need to pay real estate agents up to an additional 6% in commission. Using the median home sales price on Zillow of $209,900, the seller working with an agent would lose up to an additional $12,594 in real estate commissions. So by the time the seller is done negotiating with the buyer and paying the agent’s commission, the typical seller would LOSE OVER $18,000 on the sale of their home. That new math isn’t going to make sellers very happy.

So, what’s a seller to do? Make the real estate math work for you! First, eliminate the real estate agent commission.

Next, set a realistic price for your home. With the Home Valuation Report from Electronic Appraisers, included in your listing plan, you’ll get the most reliable tool available to set your price: recent sales figures for properties in your neighborhood. Electronic Appraisers is ranked first in accuracy, value and ease of use in an article by MSN Money Central, comparing Electronic Appraiser with other providers offering similar products. EA has helped thousands of home buyers and sellers save the agent commission.

Here’s something else to consider from the Reuters article: Zillow noted, “More buyer negotiating power tends to put downward pressure on overall home prices and may push more mortgages ‘underwater.’ This negative equity has been one of the biggest banes of homeowners, making many unqualified for home loan refinancing and preventing some from selling.”

If your home has lost a considerable portion of its value in this economy, and you think you can’t afford to sell because you’ll lose what little equity you have left to an agent, think again. You can save the commission by going with a FSBO model. And if you check out our FSBO Mythbusters, you’ll find you’ll be likely to get a better price selling it yourself than with an agent!

Buyers are going to be very motivated to purchase a home before the April 30th incentive expires. So, if you’ve been thinking about selling your home, now’s the time to make the new math work for you.

If you’re looking for more information, see the Reuter’s report.

The home buyer tax credit now in effect provides tax relief of up to $8,000 for first-time buyers and up to $6,500 for repeat purchasers of primary residences. However, the window of opportunity for these benefits is approaching its expiration; buyers must have signed purchase contracts by April 30th, and have closed on their purchase by June 30th (credits were originally set to expire 12/1/09). So whereas the spring season typically kicks off in March and runs hot through May, this year may advance and accelerate the process by as much as two months. According to both the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) and Trulia, a national real estate search engine, the latter half of January and February will be very strong, March even more robust, and April should “really take off.” Many trade-up buyers who in the past would have timed their purchase based on school-year considerations may advance their buying plans.

What does this all mean? If you’re contemplating selling your home, there is the potential for higher than usual traffic between now and the end of April. You may want to consider beginning repairs and home improvements now. Buyers have only thirteen weeks (as of 1/22/10) to sign a contract to buy. For the move-up buyer who has to coordinate closing dates (on both a sale and purchase), the pressure is going to feel even more acute to meet the deadline. And complicating matters, according to NAR, the time it takes to process a home loan is now about eight weeks, two weeks more than it used to take. So, relative to the home buying tax credit, “time’s a’wasting’.’”

The fact is that in 2009, the FSBO segment was 22% of home sales (equal to 2008) and NAR’s data confirm this finding. NAR fails to include the additional 11% of sellers in 2009 that “used an agent to list a home on the MLS and the agent performed few if any additional services” (“MLS Only”).

Sellers that use a flat fee MLS agent and “few, if any, additional services,” should be considered as FSBO’s. Apart from placing the listing in the MLS, the sellers themselves are doing all the marketing, as well as other responsibilities such as negotiating and preparing for closing. NAR has decided unilaterally that since an agent is ‘involved’ (in placing the home on the MLS), the sale is an ‘agent-assisted sale,’ not a FSBO sale. Adding NAR’s reported FSBO sales to these MLS-only sales, the total FSBO segment has been consistently more than 20% since 2006, when NAR began to break out the MLS-only listing data.

Now, here’s the really amazing fact. A very conservative and widely reported estimate is that 50% of FSBO home sellers eventually give up and switch to a traditional agent. (Actually, since NAR likes to emphasize the FSBO failure rate, they report it as high as 75%.) These closed transactions are rightly reported by NAR as agent-assisted; yet the size of the FSBO segment, defined as ‘those who try to sell via FSBO” is consequently at least twice as large as NAR reports. The FSBO segment is clearly an important factor in the real estate market, and one that will continue to grow in the next decade.

• First,  Congress recently voted to extend two home buyer tax credits: the $8,000 credit for first-time home buyers under contract by April 30, 2010, and a credit for repeat buyers who have lived in one residence for five consecutive years of the past eight.
• Second, interest rates on thirty-year home mortgages have recently fallen to below 5%, a rate not seen for over fifty years.
• Third,  banks continue to put newly foreclosed homes on the market, and there will be a good supply of foreclosed homes on the market for some time.

If you’re a buyer, use the Private Sale Partners website as your first source for homes that have been well-priced and well-prepared by our well-educated sellers! Use the search tool to define whether or not you’ll search for a foreclosed property. If you are looking at a foreclosed property listing, scan the listing details for the agent’s contact information. You’ll need to contact the agent by email to view the property, as foreclosed property listings don’t have access to the PSP Home Sales Hotline to take buyer calls.

Unfortunately, it is rare for a lending institution to notify Private Sale Partners when the property has been sold, so you may find that a foreclosed property you’re looking at has already sold, but keep at it! A good buy is worth some extra digging.

If you don’t find anything in your desired neighborhood on our site, then you may want to enlist the services of a professional agent in your search, usually at no cost, since sellers normally pay the agent’s commission. We hope you’ll contact one of the thousands of agents in the PSP agent network to help you in the search. They work with the well-regarded national agencies of:

• Better Homes and Gardens® Real Estate
• Century21®
• Coldwell Banker®
• ERA®
• Sotheby’s International Realty®

If it’s a foreclosed property you’re looking for, ask if there’s an agent in your local office who specializes in foreclosed homes. Our experienced mortgage bankers can also help you find the right broker and the right financing.

An FHA mortgage remains the best option for most home buyers. An FHA buyer must live in the home purchased, so you may qualify for a great deal on a foreclosure while an investor would not. Not only do FHA mortgages offer great rates and small down payments, FHA also provides additional loans under the 203K program which provide money for the fixing up that foreclosed homes often require.

Since late fall of 2009, investors have been aggressively bidding for foreclosed homes, driving prices up slightly. In the short term, prices are likely to come down again as more homes are foreclosed and the supply of homes increases.

If you’re a seller, this is also a great time to have your home on the market. Buyers will be out in force scouting for a good deal. You’ve got to price aggressively to compete with foreclosures on the market. But you’ll have an edge over most foreclosed homes, and you’ll be able to command a higher price if your home is well-prepared and it is obvious to a buyer that it will take less time and money to make it move-in ready.

If you are looking to buy or sell a home, the first quarter of 2010 may well be the best time ever to do so. Happy house selling or buying!

Among the results of the survey is the statistic that nearly a third (30.4%) of U.S. households are headed by single women, either with or without children. At Private Sale Partners we wonder how that will impact our business and what particular concerns and issues surround the decision of selling a home “for sale by owner” compared to selling with an agent for the single female head of household. Because if anyone deserves to benefit from the savings inherent in the “for sale by owner” experience, it’s the single woman. (Oh, I’m sorry—is my bias showing?) Anyway, I hope our readers will let us know what might keep a single woman from trying “for sale by owner” or what we can do to make it more compelling. (By the way, in case you’re wondering, the survey shows that 20% (exactly!) of households are either “male only” or “male w/children.”)

Other results to ponder? In 20% of U.S. households, English is not the language spoken at home and 12.5% of the members of the 3,000,000 household surveyed were born in a foreign country. How does this compare to your community? Do you need to develop marketing materials in another language to appeal to a certain ethnicity local to your community? Place a classified ad in local publications or on bulletin boards frequented by that ethnic group? Remember, never discriminate when marketing or making appointments to show your home. Aside from simply being bad form, it’s illegal! (See the Fair Housing Act or the intro to our Home Selling System for proof.)

Finally, if you visualize your buyer coming as the result of a corporate relocation or other long-distance move, think again. According to the survey, your buyer is much more likely to come from around the corner, as 61% of the people who moved in the last year moved within the same county. Make sure your Buyer Information Packet (discussed in detail in Part Two, Marketing Made Easy! of our Home Selling System) tells your potential buyer why your street, neighborhood, or local schools compare favorably with others nearby.

She went on to report that they were getting a great deal on the house, and that their offer had been accepted over several other much higher offers because they were renting and would be able to move into the home within 30 days.

This says a lot about the cost to banks of keeping foreclosed properties on their books and just how willing they are to negotiate price if it means getting out of the real estate business. It also tells me that there are some great opportunities out there for renters looking to become owners!

Are you renting and looking to own your next home?  You, too, could own your home if you’re ready to move quickly! Zero in on foreclosure listings in your area with our search tool! And if you need help knowing what kind of mortgage you’d qualify for, be sure to visit our mortgage partner!

Think there are unique challenges to selling a condo on your own? You’re right, but the key to the sale of any property is recognizing the challenges and opportunities the particular property presents.

With a condo, you have a great opportunity to market to a ‘captive audience’ right in your building or complex! Who is the best candidate to buy your condo? Someone in your building or complex who knows the condo well and may have a family member, friend, or business contact waiting for a unit just like yours.

It starts with a great sales flyer. When you create your listing on the Private Sale Partners website, you can print a fantastic, automatically generated one-page flyer detailing the best attributes of your condo. Be sure to start your property description with an opener that identifies your positive reasons for selling, whatever that may be. State that you’ve been transferred to Chicago, or retiring to Tahiti. The point here is to convey only positives and remove any fear or negative reasons for your move! If your reason for moving is negative, simply start your description with the positive aspects of the unit.

Be sure to identify the unique aspects of your unit. Maybe your living room faces west and the sunset is amazing, or the breakfast nook gets the morning light, or you’re located a short walk from town or the train station. Get the point? Take great photos and make copies to illustrate your unit’s best features. Be sure to add color copies of these to your flyer when you print it.

Include all your contact info, or better yet, let Private Sale Partners take the calls for you with our Home Sales Hotline.

Now your challenge is to get one flyer in the hands of every owner in your complex and the other condos in your neighborhood! The simplest way would be to slip one under the front door of every condo in the neighborhood. Start at the top floor and work your way down. You might consider paying a doorman, property manager or even another resident to deliver your flyer or even pay to mail it to every household in the neighborhood. The cost to get the flyer into the hands of your neighbors will be nominal when you consider the savings you’ll realize in selling without an agent.

You may not be able to display the Private Sale Partners lawn sign on the grounds or outdoors near the condo property, but you can look into displaying your flyer, contact information and the Private Sale Partners eye-catching sign in the clubhouse before or after a social event. Or why not host an event like a wine and cheese social yourself around the pool or clubhouse or an event right in your unit! Invite neighbors to bring friends, display your marketing materials and our eye-catching sign! And don’t forget to post your flyer on bulletin boards in common areas like the mail room, the barbeque pit, the salon or gym.

Consider offering a ‘bounty’ to anyone who brings you an interested buyer! Quietly approach the doormen or the superintendents of area buildings. Make a deal with salon stylists or the neighborhood barber. Most of these people would love to make some money by displaying your sales flyer and telling customers about your unit.

Next, distribute your flyer to every business within walking distance of your condo. Don’t pass by the small business owner with only two employees. She may have to travel 20 miles a day to open the shop. Living a block away from work might be very appealing to her.

If you have any large companies within a few miles, they are also great prospects. Get to the human resources people as they may have bulletin boards for display opportunities as well or a new employee moving into the area. Your unit may be a perfect fit.

If you community has a local newspaper, you must run some advertising.  Be sure to look at our classified ad partner to see how you can get significant savings on an ad in local newspapers.

There is no real estate agent on the planet who can do more to market your property than you. And best of all, if you do it, you’ll save thousands of dollars in commissions.

At lunch a few days before, a REALTOR® friend  (again, an agent with a national brand) stated that their president had just directed all their agents to do a new Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) on all their listings and then go to their sellers and suggest that every seller drop their price by 10%! So, clearly agents are being advised by their higher-ups at the brokerages to advise sellers—across the board—to lower their price.

Just whose interests are being served by this arbitrary approach? Agents’ income depends on the sale. The brokerages’ income depends on their agents’ income. And to the extent that they can each have an impact on overall volume of sales, they can both make up in volume what they may lose on any individual sale when the price is dropped. So it’s in the agent’s best interest to make sure more sales happen, and not in their best interests for an individual seller to hold their ground on a higher price if a lower one will get to a sale quicker.

On a home that sells for $200,000 in a typical co-brokered sale, the two agents each stand to make $6,000. If the seller is persuaded to drop the price 10% to $180,000, then each agent’s commission drops to $5,400. So the agent makes $600 less, while the seller takes a $20,000 hit. Clearly sellers have much more to lose on a price drop than the agents.

But the bigger question is: Are brokerages working for or against the interests of a healthy economy and vibrant real estate market in suggesting across-the-board price cuts?