Selling your house is something you’ll have to do maybe just a few times in your life. Unless you know a local Salt Lake City licensed real estate agent who will sell your house for free or willing to reduced their commission, it can be a irritating and a pricey process to see it through to the end.
So you found our website with this page about “How to sell your house by yourself in Salt Lake City Utah” because of a few reasons I’m guessing…
- You have no or small amount of equity in your house so you can’t afford to pay a typical real estate agent’s commission
- You have some equity but want to try to save on expenses by selling the house yourself before you choose to hire an agent instead
- You’re in foreclosure (or heading in that path) and need to sell quickly without incurring thousands in agent commissions
- You don’t have the time to wait for months it sometimes takes to sell a house in the Salt Lake City area
If any of the above applies (or for any other reasons entirely) there are ways to sell your house yourself here in the local Salt Lake real estate market.
Since 2015, the housing sector has been experiencing a massive recovery. Selling your house today could be very lucrative if you do it in the right order. In most instances, it is about using great and effective marketing strategies and being realistic about your sale expectations.
This short article will give you some tips or ideas to help you sell your Salt Lake area house yourself.
How To Sell Your House By Yourself In Salt Lake City Utah – Let’s Dive In
Know The Salt Lake Real Estate Market Thoroughly
The first and most important step is researching your neighborhood in Salt Lake City Utah. This involves visiting various real estate sites (Zillow, Eppraisal the Chase house value estimator, etc), calling a licensed Realtor or two to see what the value of your home is worth, or researching about the different market pricing methods. Doing research on these issues will assist you with coming up with a right selling price for your house and will also help you to prevent making certain selling mistakes all too common of people selling their house by owner who rush into the situation.
If you don’t want the headache of trying to come up with your home’s value yourself, give us a call today at 801-820-0049 and we’ll give you a valuation of what your house is worth on marketing for full retail value (if it takes 3-6+ months to find the perfect retail buyer that can get a loan). And if you want to, we will make you a quick, fair all-cash offer on your Salt Lake City house to give you that option of selling fast (we can close with our Attorney in as little as 7 days if you want to!).
Review the market
This step is just about as similar to collecting market research, only that in this instance, you are only searching for your neighborhood and similar houses. This is what we call ‘running comps’, which is very essential when comparing apples to apples. Are there several houses for sale in your neighborhood? If so, what is the average price they are listing for? Are they the same style of home? Are there lots of foreclosures or short sales in your neighborhood? That will cause your house value to go down.
Review the house
As a seller, your house should be in very good if not excellent condition and shape in order to sell at a healthy price. Why did you buy this house in the fist place? Pick out certain unique characteristics about your property and emphasize them in your marketing campaign. For example, a Salt Lake City house with curb appeal is usually more attractive to buyers compared with one with limited outdoor appeal.
Also, does your house require repairs or is it in distress? Does it need a new paint both inside and out? How is the age and condition of the roof? Is the landscaping appealing? Does he house seem updated and appear modern compared to other homes in the neighborhood? All of these items affect its desirability to most home buyers, and ultimately, what they may be willing to offer for your house.
Analyzing the above items will help you come up with a fair asking price, one that is in line with current market values in your neighborhood. Be careful not to ask for top retail price or you may watch your house just sit there unsold for months, even in a hot market like Utah.
Use Photos or Videos
Salt Lake City buyers are can be obsessed with media. Using the videos to advertise and taking walk-through videos of the house will enable you to reach a wider range of people. In fact, these videos are considered more desirable than taking pictures. However, this should not stop you from using the latter option since it is more affordable compared to the video.
So take some great photos. Take a picture of every room in the house that helps show it off. Show pictures of the house from the outside in a few different angles… 90% of the people want to see the house online before they ever show up to see it. So having great pictures of your house online could be the difference between getting the right buyer quickly… and waiting months and months to sell.
Get Your House “Listed” On The Local Salt Lake City MLS And Market It
You can find low or no fee Realtors these days who will charge you a few hundred bucks to put your house on the local Salt Lake City MLS. This gets your house in front of all of the real estate agents quickly (so be prepared to pay those “buyers” agents a 3% buyers broker commission if you plan to have their support in helping you locate a buyer.
Place ads in the local newspaper, signs on the roads, and hold an open house.
All Of This Sounds Like A Lot Of Work To Sell Your Salt Lake City House Fast Yourself?
It can be.
And in the end, many Salt Lake City house sellers think they’re saving money and time by marketing the house themselves… when in the end it costs them a lot more money to go that route.
When you sell your own house here are some things you need to consider…
- If you’re not a good at SEO or a good marketer or aren’t ready to spend a excessive amount of time marketing your house right… selling your house by owner may not be your best bet
- If you don’t do a good job updating, cleaning up the house, and the marketing materials… and working with buyers to really build the value of your house in their minds… you may actually sell the house for 3-8% less than you may get for the same house an experienced person marketed the house for you
- Very few sellers ever think about the time it takes to sell a house or repair costs… every month that your house doesn’t sell means another mortgage payment, tax payment, insurance, utilities, etc. If your mortgage payment is $1,500/mo… and $1,300 of that is interest… if it takes you 7 months to sell your house… that cost you an extra $9,100 (not to mention taxes and insurance you paid during that time). So, if you were able to sell that house more quickly… would it make sense for you to provide a buyer a discounted price today so you can close quickly and move on? Something to think about.
If you’d rather not deal with the hassle of trying to sell your Salt Lake City house yourself and would rather just sell it fast for a fair price without paying any commissions or fees…
… here at Salt Lake City Home Buyers we actually buy local Salt Lake City Utah houses.
We’d love to make you a fair, NO OBLIGATION and NO HASSLE cash offer on your house.
We can close quickly (in as little as 7 days if you wanted to)… which would save you thousands of dollars vs. trying to selling the house yourself and waiting several months.
Also, when we buy local Salt Lake City houses we do all repairs that are needed (we pay for it ourselves) so you don’t have to worry about that.
If you want to see what we can pay for your house, give us a call today at (801) 441-2800 or just fill out the quick simple form below.