5 Tips for Selling a For Sale By Owner (FSBO)

Hi Everyone,

Today, I'd like to discuss 5 very important tips for anyone trying to sell their home on their own. This type of arrangement is often referred to as For Sale By Owner, or FSBO.

Tip #1: PRICING: In order to determine a fair selling price for your home, you need to investigate home prices in your area. You'll want to review not only the prices that homes are listed for, but what they have sold for as well. Your best resource for this information will be your local newspapers. You can even take a trip down to your local government office to check out more details from the mortgages that have been obtained by new homeowners in your area and saved ("recorded"). These documents are public domain, and it takes a little time to get the gist and flow of how to do this research, however, there are usually plenty of clerks available to take your questions. Some other ideas: talk with real estate agents in your area, and check around for appraisers in your own network of family and friends. If you can connect with an appraiser, you can ask them for a general rule of thumb for pricing on your home, and perhaps they can make a few suggestions to increase the value. Finally, you can always shell out a few hundred bucks for an actual appraisal of your home, but most often that will not be required.

TIP #2: LEGALITY: Whenever you are talking about the sale of a big ticket item such as your home, it is always good advice to retain an attorney and/or consult with your local Title Company. To check if your state is a Title State or not, please refer to this handy resource: http://title.grabois.com/

TIP #3: MORTGAGE: I am a firm believer in lining up all of your "ducks" in advance. Before you get to the physical process, you'll want to consult with some mortgage brokers and banks to educate yourself on the financing side of selling your home. This goes both ways, in that, if you make a good contact with one of these individuals or institutions, you can always refer a potential buyer to them, since they would already be familiar with your situation from your previous discussions with them.

TIP #4: ADVERTISING: This is where you want to do your homework on creating your Ad. Check on the Web and in your local papers to see the most common Ad format. Once you have done your research, create an electronic copy of your Ad, perhaps in Microsoft Word. In addition, you will want to have high-quality images of your home, for the interior and the exterior. For the exterior photos, make sure you get a sunny day when you take the photos. Why? Would you be more excited about a photo of a potentially new home when the photo is framed by a grey, cloudy, and rainy day vs a bright, sunny day with blue skies? It's all psychological.

TIP #5: MARKETING: It's time to plaster your Ad everywhere - starting with the Internet. There are a lot of free sites - but with free sites sometimes comes the "time-wasters". The old adage, "You get what you pay for" certainly applies. In addition, there are forums, discussion boards, and many other places that will allow you to announce your home, of course, once you have passed the proper permission steps unique to each of those specific sites. Should you decide to also accept Rent to Own as an option to purchase your home, you can always place your "Home Available" Ad on our website, as a For Sale By Owner (FSBO), as well as a Rent to Own (Click Here to Sell Your Home).

So there you have it. Once you start receiving offers that are in your price range, this is where your attorney, title company, and ultimately, your mortgage broker, will come into play.

Have a great 4th of July Holiday, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !!

Foreclosure Prevention, Improved Housing Markets, Social Media Blog Updates...

Good Morning to All,

Glad to have you back here with us today ! I don't know how the weather has been where you are, but the humidity has been sky-high here on the East Coast, and it's not even summer (officially) yet, and if this is any indication of how this summer will be, then I'm ready for the Fall !

Today, I wanted to share two interesting pieces that crossed my desk; Once is concerning foreclosures, and the other one is a little more positive, and is regarding some housing markets that are showing improvement.

Let's first begin with the sour apple of the two: "Avoid foreclosure-prevention scams: 3 tips" (Source located at this link). Without regurgitating the entire article, the three tips for whom to avoid are summarized as follows; Those who "Ask for a fee in advance, Tell you they can guarantee foreclosure will stop, and Urge you to stop paying your mortgage and pay them instead".

These are great pieces of advice, but there are a few more that we would like to add, namely, when someone tells you that they are a member of XYZ Corporation, don't just take their word for it...do your due diligence. Investigate the company. Ask for a corporate phone number. Make sure they are for real, since it is your home that is on the line.

One other thing that you want to do is to have them lay out a plan in writing and on their corporate letterhead (for a corporation that you have already done your homework on from our previous tip listed above). Have them put everything in writing and get them to notarize it. If they falter or give you a difficult time with any requests that you may have, a red flag should go up. There are many hunters out there looking for "prey", or people who are in a very bad economic situation and are highly susceptible to any offers, good or bad. Keep your eyes and ears open, and make sure that you don't lose your home and any additional money you have to a scammer.

As for the Housing Markets that are showing improvement (Source located at this link), the top 5 are: Denver, Boston, St.Louis, Pittsburgh, and San Jose, California. Some of the factors that were used in building this list were home prices and bids placed on homes. The complete list of 20 of the improving housing markets is located at this link. Do you live in one of these cities? Have you sold a home in one of these areas, or have you been trying to sell a home or to rent to own a home? Please weigh in on this and let us know what your thoughts are.

We are happy to say that we are now saturating over 50 Social Media Sites with our Blog posts, so if you prefer to read our posts on your favorite site, we are already on most of the major sites. If there is a site that you would like us to update, check with us and if we are not updating it already, we will be glad to add it.

Stick with us. This is going to be an exciting week !
Have a great week, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !!

Ambivalent Housing Market, Secrets of Rent to Own, etc...

Hi Everyone,

I hope you are having a great week. We are already half-way through, and chugging along towards the long Holiday weekend !

Today, I wanted to return to the ambivalent topic of the housing market, and I wanted to cite two very interesting pieces. The first article is about the rise in New Home Sales in April. This is very interesting, but as we know, the tax credit expired on April 30th, and to see if the mad rush to buy new homes continued after that date, I want to see the numbers for May ! Am I never satisfied? Well, that brings us to the second article, which says, "After increasing last summer, U.S. home prices are drifting lower again". "Clashing, Contradictory, Uncertain, Undecided"? These are all synonyms from Thesaurus.com that describe this ambivalent condition. One would have to argue that as the old cliche dictates, "only time will tell".

On the Website side of things, we have been working hard to get our site to render/appear well on your IPhone, Droid, etc. We will be entering the mobile testing phase in the next few weeks and will post our results for some of the most common mobile devices after that time.

Be sure to check out our "Secrets of Rent to Own" Guide Here. This is a handy guide for anyone that is Looking to Buy a Rent to Own a Home or is Selling a Rent to Own Home. It's a great first step in the direction of a Rent to Own agreement, if that is indeed what is of interest to you.


What else would you like to hear us Blog About? We have been taking your opinions and surveys and responding to them. Keep it coming, as we truly value your input and suggestions. Comment below or E-mail us Here.


Have a Great Week, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !!

Pending Home Sales and Real Estate Trouble Spots

Hi Everyone,

Hope everyone had a healthy and productive week. Not only is Friday upon us, but yes...May is upon us !

Living on the East Coast has it's perks, and being a couple hours away from Atlantic City is one of them. That is if you enjoy that kind of stuff. I came across an article citing Atlantic City as one of "Tomorrow's Real Estate Trouble Spots". No surprise that Atlantic City, N.J., is on top of the list, however, I always thought that aside from the Casinos, the area outside of the bright lights was depressed, in terms of home prices and the economy. So, basically, it's more of a yesterday and today "Trouble Spot". As a side note, this was from a survey of 315 cities, so the sampling size they used was pretty large, and it carries some weight with it.

We have been doing a lot of internal work on our site, in terms of aesthetics and our database. We will have a new Press Release coming out next week, and we'll be sure to notify everyone here regarding it.

Next Week (Tuesday, May 4Th), The Pending Home Sales Index numbers will be released, and this should be reflecting the tax credit for (new) home buyers.

Finally, for additional background on our Rent to Own website and a peak at our history, please read more about us here: http://www.lease2buy.com/rent-to-own-homes.php

A lot of exciting and cool stuff coming next week - so stay tuned.
Have a Great Weekend, and Happy Rent-to-Owning !