HOW TO SELL YOUR OWN HOME PRIVATELY

Congrats on deciding to sell your own home privately! Whether you are still in the process of listing or already on the market, my goal is to help you sell your own home for the top price possible. In this article, I will give you all the resources, tips, and strategies to help you market your own home and prepare to sell it.

My name is Manoj Kukreja. I am a Real Estate Agent with Re/Max, and I believe everyone should have the right to save money wherever they can for themselves and their family. Because of this, I give away most of my techniques for free to help you. There are other resources I use to market homes as a Professional Realtor that you don’t have access to, but at the end of the article, I will include a link for you to access that information.

If you’re looking to buy a new home while you’re in the process of selling your old one, I have a link at the end of the presentation that will guide you step by step on how to buy a home and avoid some pitfalls most successfully.

Things to Know When Selling Your Own Home

• 90% of all buyers begin their search online.
• More exposure can mean selling your home quickly and at a higher price.
• People purchase homes based on emotional factors—the look and smell of the home needs to be welcoming and warm. Cooking fish or other fragrant foods, or using incense sticks or other aroma-heavy items, can be a significant turnoff.
• Staged homes sell for 3-5% more.
• Staged homes spend half as much time on the market compared to other homes.
• Buyers that have viewed a staged home online are 46% more willing to do a walkthrough in person.
• 81% of buyers find it easy to visualize the property as a future home when it’s staged.
• I don’t believe every home should be staged or that every home needs to use the absolute best photography and virtual tours in the market. Every home is unique, and it requires a unique strategy. For example, fixer-uppers and older homes shouldn’t necessarily be staged.
• You will need a photographer and a virtual tour company.

There are tons of companies you can use for photography or to create a virtual tour—I recommend Real Media. You can get in touch with them at their company website: http://www.realmedia.ca/

They provide fantastic photography & virtual tours, from essential up to luxury tours, and all for a very reasonable price. All their tours include:

• Stunning HDR Photography
• HD Web Gallery & Local Amenities
• YouTube & Social Media Integration (so you can easily share the tour)
• Detailed Traffic Analytics
• Built-in Lead Generation

For a minimal extra cost, which I’d recommend you invest in unless you’re a web designer or graphic designer, you can get:

• Feature Sheets starting at $25-$75 – Here is a sample feature sheet that I had my designers create for me, and I am sure if you send this to them, they will be able to create one for you just like this. ( Sell-Your-Own-Home-Feature-Sheet)
• Custom Domain – This is very important for anyone trying to sell their own home, since you will need a place to drive traffic. I will show you some ways to get the word out to the highest number of people possible for you as a non-realtor.

Sample Domain: https://mediatours.ca/property/7-morris-trail-welland/

Postcards – Here is a sample of a postcard I made for an open house—you can use Canada Post to distribute these postcards for you: Sample Postcard

https://www.canadapost.ca/cpc/en/home.page

I generally send anywhere between 1,000 to 2,500 around the area, but you can choose to send out as many as you like.

If you want to create your marketing materials like postcards, a website, or feature sheets, here are some free resources that will help you:

www.canva.com – (for creating free flyers and postcards)

www.wix.com – (for easy-to-create websites)

www.walkscore.com – (app makes it easy to get info on any area)

2. You will need signs and a lockbox

If your listing company provides a lockbox, a For Sale sign, an Open House sign, or a newly renovated/income property/any other sign, then great. If not, here are some resources:

1. Real media (as mentioned before, also offers this service)
2. Signs in the Making – http://www.signsinthemaking.com/ – Offers custom signs, postcards, flyers, etc.

***Use Precaution when handing out the lockbox code*****

3. You may want to get professional staging or do it yourself

As mentioned before, staging can severely impact the timeline of your listing and final sale price. You can find some additional benefits of this in my blog, here: Benefits of Staging your Home

Here are some professional staging resources:

Black Diamond Home Staging – By Carol D’Avolio

www.blackdiamondhomestaging.com

Milo Vision – By Sasha Milo

www.milovision.ca

If you want to stage your own home but need furniture you don’t currently have, here is a list of places that you can rent it from to save on staging costs:

www.easyhome.ca

www.aarons.com

www.rentnow.ca

www.stagerschoice.ca

4. Marketing your home

Now that your home is staged has impressive photography, a lockbox, and signs, and you’ve mailed out postcards, it’s time to get the word out. Of course, the home is already listed with one of the discount brokerages that list homes for free or a nominal fee, so your home is likely on MLS, Realtor.ca, and a few other sites. This may be enough when you are in a seller’s market, but in a buyer’s market, you need to be more aggressive to get top dollar. I don’t personally use all these methods because I have access to better ones as a realtor, but for you, these are the best strategies. If you come across more, please leave a comment below and help others sell their own home!

Let’s begin to market your home. Here are my tips for using various sites:

• Kijiji – I recommend posting an ad three times a day: in the morning (before 9:00 a.m.), at lunch (around noon), and then again around 5:00 p.m. Delete the old one create a new one each time. If you just create a single ad, in a few hours, you will end up on page 10, and let’s be realistic, barely anyone who’s browsing makes it to page 10. Unless you want to pay for top/urgent ads here, just repost your ad regularly throughout the day.
• Craigslist – Once a day is fine.
• Your personal Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, or any other social media platform – It’s a great idea to advertise your home on these platforms. Go on YouTube, and you can find many different videos showing you how to get set up on any of the platforms.
• Facebook Marketplace
• Facebook Groups: If you don’t have or make a business page, you technically cannot create ads for Facebook and Instagram. If you want to create a whole business page for your home, hats off to you, because that’s a lot of work, what I would do instead, if I were you, is simply join different groups and promote my listing organically. For example, I might post it to these groups:
• Mississauga Residents
• Vaughan Residents
• Brampton Residents

You can post it to a residents’ group for your particular community, and there are also buy-and-sell groups in various cities that are a great option as well.

Please follow group advertising rules, and most importantly, don’t start posting your home listing on a different realtor’s business page. That’s just not polite.

Now let’s get into some paid advertising options.

• https://www.blogto.com/real-estate-toronto/
• https://www.insauga.com/
• https://www.inbrampton.com/
• https://www.inhalton.com/
• https://www.yorkregion.com/
• bramptonguardian.com
• etobicokeguardian.com
• rew.ca
• homefinder.ca
• point2homes.com
• realestatefreeguide.com
• realestatecircle.ca
• synergyrealestate.ca
• realestateselect.ca
• realestatebook.com
• homesandland.com
• trovit.com
• dupontregistry.com
• locanto.ca
• nexthome.yp.ca
• uniquehomes.com
• robreport.com
• juwai.com
• ovlix.com
• lakehouse.com

Look for local print media that serves your target market, such as community or neighbourhood newspapers or magazines.

5. Checklist of items before a showing.

For a standard showing with a realtor involved, please use caution when handing out a lockbox code to anyone, and follow precautionary measures as outlined by your listing brokerage. I always tell my clients this: don’t leave any money or jewelry lying around at home. It’s still better to be safe than sorry. Keep your valuables in a safety deposit box or a family or friend’s house while the property is on the market. Here are some additional tips:

A) Keep the place neat and tidy.

B) Make sure the house temperature is comfortable—warm in the winters and cold in the summers. It’s the best to walk into a nice, cold home on a hot summer day or a nice, warm house on a cold winter day.

C) Open all the blinds in the house (let the natural sunlight in).

D) Turn on all the lights in the house and leave them on.

E) Ensure the home smells nice and fresh (don’t cook foods with strong odours for the duration of the listing).

F) Leave the house 5-10 minutes before each showing if there is a realtor involved—people want to see the house alone and be able to talk amongst themselves and their realtor freely.

G) Don’t leave the house if it’s a private showing—you don’t know who is entering the house. Don’t oversell the home—you’ll end up seeming desperate. Remain calm and do a walkthrough with them. Create a features and benefits list about the house and the area, and hand that to them as you show them around.

6. Get a Lawyer.

If you’re not using a realtor, your legal fees will be slightly higher, since your lawyer will need to do more paperwork for you and guide you in each step. I try to get my clients to use Nanda Law & Associates because I have had great experiences with them and are incredibly knowledgeable and reasonably priced. Here is a link to their website: www.nanda.ca

Here is a sample of the documents and clauses you can expect to see when you get an offer: Check out Page 6 for some of the clauses that you can expect to see in an Agreement of Purchase and Sale

Sample Forms

***Always consult a lawyer when it comes to legal documents—these are just samples for your knowledge and change over time.***

7. Home inspector

If you need to consult a home inspector or would like to get a home inspection before you list your home, I recommend you use www.homestars.com. I tell all my clients to use HomeStars because it keeps my hands clean—there are hundreds of professionals, and I don’t know who you are going to call. I have noticed that people always complain about issues in their house and blame their realtor for referring to his own Home Inspector. This way, if there is an issue, you can go and rate the Home Inspector, not reflecting on the work I do.

You can use this site for any type of contractor when it comes to your home. People like yourself will go and rate other professionals here. Here is the link to my marketing plan that I am currently using to sell home

Here is the link you will need to find out steps to buying a home more efficiently

I hope this has been an informative blog for you and wish you all the very best when it comes to selling your home. This blog is not intended to solicit anyone under a contract. If you have any questions, please call me at (416) 994-0188 or email me at info@movewithmanoj.ca.