Steps for Preparing your Home For Sale by Owner

Step 1.  Prepare your Home and Price It Right

Get all the pieces in place before announcing to the public that your home is for sale.
When you sell your home without a realtor, there are a number of professionals that you want to be connected with to help you complete the sale and transaction process after the contract is signed.  Thinking through the whole process before you list your home will help you avoid confusion and delays once you do find the perfect buyer for your home.  Here is a list of professionals that you want to have in place before you market your home.  Check your local yellow page listings, or ask around your neighborhood, to find the right people to fill these spots.  You will be surprised by how many word of mouth references you will find once you start asking around!

• Home Inspector/Inspection Company

• Title & Escrow Company

• Real Estate Lawyer

• Real Estate Appraiser

• Home Warranty Company

Prepare Your Home Inside & Outside and Stage your rooms for showings.
Most buyers prefer homes that are not in need of major repairs, so you'll want to address any maintenance issues and correct them before placing your home on the market.  There are three areas of your home and they all need to be prepared to work in full cooperation to offer every potential buyer the opportunity to imagine themselves living in this home and enjoying every outdoor living space too.  Focus on and prepare each area:  curb appeal (the first 15 seconds are extremely important), inside the home, and outside yards and living spaces.  Walk around your property, view it from the street, and look for any problem areas. Trim any overgrown bushes, lay down fresh mulch, plant some flowers, cut the grass, touch up the outdoor house paint, and wash the windows. Take the time to do these things for a major payoff.  You will also want to stage the outside living spaces of your home by placing nice lawn furniture around and planters to make an atmosphere of relaxation and peace.


Staging the inside of your home is probably the most important thing you can do to help sell it quickly. Click here for some staging tips.  Optionally, you could hire a professional stager and it would be well worth the money - check your local yellow pages for professional home staging companies.  Otherwise, there is so much you can do yourself. Think about overall color and appearance, most buyers will prefer neutral color schemes and be able to visualize their belongings in the home if they do not have to work through bright or odd color schemes. Also, think about repairs like caulking, grout repair, any plumbing issues, carpet cleaning, etc. and make sure these things are done before hand.  One of the most inexpensive things you can do and get tons of mileage from is applying fresh paint to the interior walls of your home.  PICK NEUTRAL COLORS! If you are not a neat and experienced painter, then spend the extra few dollars and hire a professional painter to do the work. Messy paint jobs only appear as more work to do for the potential new home owner.


One other topic to cover: pets.  We all love our precious "family members."  But when you are attempting to market your home, probably one of your most valuable assets, it is not the time to leave any furry friends around to interfere with home showings.  Prior to home showings, make sure litter pans and pet beds and blankets are removed from the home.  In addition, deal with any unpleasant odors left behind, in fact, carpet cleaning and fresh draperies can help tremendously with any foul odors.  Make sure all pet hair is cleaned off of carpets and furniture, and remove pet food and water dishes.  This portrays a very clean and neat appearance to your home, and eliminates any objections to animals.


One of the most important steps to preparing your home is the decluttering process.  If necessary, consider a pre-move as part of the preparing process.  This simply means boxing up any and all unnecessary items out of each and every room.  Mark those boxes clearly and move them to a local, secured, storage unit until the actual move is made.  Doing this will help immensely with portraying a clean and tidy home but also you will be one step ahead for when the time comes to make your actual move.  Also move out any extra and unnecessary furniture and lamps.  A few accessories and throw pillows can really make a room feel nice, but too many items and suddenly it appears filled up and not spacious, so be cautious when deciding on what to leave and what to pack also keeping in mind that a bare room may feel cold and unwelcoming.  Click here fore more staging tips.


Once your home is ready, consider purchasing a home inspection and having it readily available to any potential buyers.  This will help you identify any problem areas and have them corrected prior to home showings.  But most importantly, it will remove any questions from the buyer's mind and give them a higher comfort level when making an offer on your home.  It simply removes any grey areas and makes everyone involved more informed and more comfortable.


Once your home is perfect, TAKE PICTURES!!  Take lots of pictures from a variety of angles and locations, inside and outside and backyard and frontyard.  You will need these pictures ready to go when you list your home on FSBONebraska.com.  Depending on the listing package that you choose, you may upload as many as 12 photos of your home.  Take alot of pictures and then pick out the best ones!

Price Your Home Right

It may be needless to say, but probably the most important component of a successful sale by fsbo is the proper pricing of your property.  Educate yourself about the local real estate market including recent sales and listings, in your neighborhood, and in the surrounding area overall.  This will help you arrive at a proper price.  Listing your home at the perfect price will ensure that you get quicker offers, and that you keep as much equity in your pocket as possible.

~ FSBONebraska offers a home valuation service by a professional realtor for only $100. ~ 

Even though you have decided to sell your home without a realtor, consider purchasing separate services through FSBONebraska.com, from a licensed and professional realtor to aid you in the process.  FSBONebraska offers several options apart from our listing packages to make the listing process more tailorable to your exact needs.  Click here to see all services available from a licensed realtor without listing your home through their service.  Remember, by selling your home yourself, you can afford to be a bit more competitive than your neighbor down the street who has listed their home through a realtor and are paying a 6-7% commission on the sale of their home.  This will help you have an edge with the buyer who is truly looking for the best deal, and best opportunity when purchasing their next home.

Here are some further tips for deciding on the listing price of your home:

• Compare your home to similar homes currently listed on the market.  You can do this via the internet or by visiting some local open houses.

• Get a property valuation report for your home. This can be done through purchasing this option on our MLS Options page.

• Consider hiring a professional appraiser for an expert opinion of your home's value in today's housing market.

• Research and review the most recent sales of similar homes in your market.

• Consider what improvements you have done that may impact your home's value.

• Analyze all of your research and set an asking price.

Step 2.  Market Your Home

Nearly 90% of all buyers use the Internet to search for a home, so online marketing should be a key component to selling your home, along with traditional means such as a yard sign, local newspaper ads, word of mouth, and open houses. 

Here are some steps for successfully marketing your home:

• Create a listing on FSBONebraska.com!  We offer a variety of packages to fit any budget and boast of some of the most inexpensive advertising around.  We also offer top search engine rankings in Google. Yahoo, and many other search engines for the Nebraska area!

• Place a FSBONebraska sign in your front yard. Use our "print flier" option and print out a color flier that you can take to Kinkos and copy up a bunch of fliers, place them in a holder on your yard sign for interested parties to pick up and see your home's information and beautiful pictures.

• Place an ad in your local newspaper and set a time for an open house.  Also place an open house sign in your yard the day of the open house to catch as much foot traffic as possible.  The more people that see your home, the more likely you will find the perfect buyer!

• Spread the word that your home is on the market through family, friends, and coworkers. Post it on Facebook or any social networks you are involved in, and spread the word around!

• Place your home on the the local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) through FSBONebraska.  See our MLS Options page for more information.  This will allow your home to be seen and viewed by many more potential buyers and realtors and will increase your chances of a sale.

• List your home for sale on Craigslist and your neighborhood website.  Create a link back to your home's listing on FSBONebraska so people can click to see all the beautiful pictures of your home online!

Step 3:  Paperwork & Closing

Hopefully you have already completed the advice in Step 1 by having your professional team in place before you ever marketed your home!  Once it is sold, these people will help you through the paperwork and closing process smoothly and efficiently.  FSBONebraska.com does offer licensed realtor services on an ala carte' basis so you may want to consider buying one of those services for the negotiating and closing process.  If not, it is worth the several hundred dollar fee to hire a real estate attorney to assist you with contracts and paperwork.  But here are a few simple tips to help close the sale:

• Make sure potential buyers are pre-approved to ensure that they will qualify for a mortgage. This will help the closing process go much more quickly.

• Download Nebraska real estate forms and contracts from FSBONebraska.com. 

• If you are not using our licensed realtor services for completing the contract and forms, please hire a local real estate attorney to assist you with completing the contracts.

• Anticipate that the potential buyer will want an inspection done on your property by their home inspection team.  Avoid any delays by having all repair and upkeep issues handled before the sale is made and before the inspection is done!

• Only accept offers from pre-approved buyers.  When you receive an offer, you and/or your attorney can accept, reject, or make a counteroffer.

• Agree on a sales price, and ask your attorney to assist you with the contracts and terms of the sale.

• Agree on a closing date that is acceptable to all parties.

• Contact your mortgage lender to determine the exact mortgage payoff amount and be in touch with your closing company to make sure they have all information necessary for the preparation of all forms for the closing.

• Have the property in tip top condition for a final walk through by the buyer prior to closing.

• Closing day arrives!  You and your attorney or representative from the title company will meet with the buyer and their legal counsel to sign a wide variety of closing documents that will give title of the property to the buyer.

• Hand over the keys to the new owner of the property.

• Determine how much you saved in commission, this number will be in the $$ thousands $$!!