1)  Make the House Beautiful

“Curb appeal” is the word usually used to describe this. In other words, when someone pulls up to the house and looks at it, it is very appealing. A little well thought out landscaping can go a very long way. Plus, it’s cheap.

Remember, you never get a 2nd chance to make a 1st impression. If you keep this in mind when preparing your house to sell, you will be just fine. If not, you are fighting an uphill battle.

Key areas to pay extra attention to are front yard, foyer, kitchen, bathrooms and master bedroom. I’m not saying to neglect the other areas, but these are usually the most important... especially to the wife. By the way, the wife is usually the decision maker, at least in my house anyways!

2)  Drive traffic

The next step in the house sale process is to drive traffic to the house. I don’t mean physically get in your car and drive people there, what I mean is make as many people in the area know that the house is for sale as possible. In short, market the house! Marketing is one of, if not the, most important part of sales processes. After all, if you have enough people who know about and want what you are selling, it shouldn’t be that hard to sell, right?

There’s many ways to market a house for sale.

The absolute best way I know to sell a house is to already have buyers waiting before you even put it up for sale. I accomplish this by building a solid buyers list and staying in touch with them. I use a website designed specifically for finding buyers in a certain area, then capture their contact information and make them aware every single time I have a house available in their area. I sell most of my houses this way without ever even lifting a finger.

If you are going to market the house on your own, the 2nd best way I have found is to use handwritten or printed “bandit” signs which give a description of the house and the approximate down payment and monthly payment to purchase. I never put the actual price on these signs for the same reason that car dealerships don’t advertise price. Most consumers think in terms of how much it will cost to get into the deal and how much it will cost each month to stay in it.

If you intend on using a realtor® to market your house, be very careful!

Marketing is a key ingredient in selling your house and if you get locked into a contract with a realtor® who doesn’t do his part, you will have a long road ahead of you. If you must list the house, try to negotiate an agreement with the realtor® which allows you to find your own buyer and avoid paying a commission.

After all, you don’t want to do all the work and still have to pay a commission do you?

However, make sure you operate honestly. If the realtor® does his job, make sure he gets the commission he earned.

NOTE: Unless you know a “good” realtor®, you are often better off just using a flat fee listing. The way this works is you pay a company a small fee and they put the house in the MLS for you.

3)  “Guide” the buyer

This is an extremely important step to making this system work. Whenever possible, you want the buyer to obtain financing through a mortgage broker or lender that you know will do a great job. Believe it or not, it is very hard to find one that will do a good job. While they do exist, they are far and few between.

This is a critical step because if you send your buyer to the wrong person, you can end up wasting a month or more with a broker who doesn’t know what they are doing. Unfortunately, some brokers will tell you they can do a loan and then 45 days later tell you they can’t. While their intentions may have been good, their knowledge of the lenders programs weren’t.

The end result is that you have wasted a month or so and probably lost your buyer. So, make sure you find a good mortgage broker or lender and then build a sound relationship with them. Once you start sending them business regularly you will become their top priority.

4)  Manage your team

Your “team” is your buyer, mortgage broker and title agent. If you are using a realtor®, they are part of your team as well. Regardless, they all need to be managed. If you want to make sure your house sells, you can’t sit back and expect everything to fall into place. This will ever happen in real estate. You need to stay in regular contact with your mortgage broker, buyer and title agent. Whenever you speak, ask probing questions. This way you can help solve any problems that may arise, hopefully before they turn into major problems.

5)  Collect Check

Congratulations! You sold your house. Now take your profits and reinvest in strong marketing to find more great deals.

Sean Flanagan went from dead broke, living off Ramen Noodles and selling used pallets from the roadside for $20 a day, to a self made real estate multimillionaire in under 2 years time. He now shares his secrets with thousands of students across the country.

He has a FREE audio course titled 7 Secrets to Making Big Bucks in a Slow Real Estate Market which you can get right now by quickly visiting www.YuckyHouseSystems.com. He also gives away a coaching program for new real estate investors where he offers a risk free trial to prove to new real estate investors how much money they can make with his program at www.YuckyHouseSystems.com.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - 5 Tip’s for Selling Your Houses Fast in a Slow Market