6 Critical Tips for FSBO For Sale By Owners

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FSBO, or For Sale By Owners, have a tough job ahead of them given that the FSBO real estate market is a truly unique one given our quickly rising home prices and the city’s ethnic diversity and large influx of newcomers. So, having said that—allow us to give you a few tips that we’ve gleaned from our 30 years of experience as real estate agents.

Brampton FSBO

FSBO real estate tips:

  1. Be realistic with your Pricing
    Pricing a home is extremely difficult—which is why it is oft left to the professionals. Pricing it as the homeowner is even more difficult because of the difficulty of separating emotions from the deal. You need to be extremely objective while pricing your home and you need to a line-by-line comparison of similar homes that have sold recently and homes that have sold in your area. Once you have priced it and put it on the market be open minded and let the market tell you whether you need to raise or lower the price (–lowing is much more common with FSBOers).

  2. Stay Objective

    Your objectivity can’t end with the pricing of your home. You need to understand that not everyone will love your home as much as you do. You have so many memories there that you see the home in a different light—but many home buyers will only see brick and mortar. Understanding their view of your home will help you keep your cool while people nitpick.

  3. Do Some Deep Breathing Exercises
    At some point in the process you will get extremely frustrated and may even lose your cool. It will likely happen more than once. You’ll listen to complaints about your home to improve bargaining leverage, receive insanely low offers with weird requests, wait for offers that don’t come on, chase leads that never pan out, etc. Throughout this you will understand why people use real estate agents to sell their homes.

  4. Be Prepared (and Clean!)–Always
    Buyers won’t work with your schedule. You will have to be prepared for showings all the time. They will often come as a surprise “can we come by in 20 minutes?”. You need to be prepared or you WILL miss out on buyers and offers.

  5. Be Safe
    Letting someone into your home is always a vulnerable experience. Things can mysteriously go missing, and you are letting a complete stranger into your home where your family and loved ones are. Be safe by always requiring buyers to come along with a licensed agent.

  6. Learn to Negotiate. Well.
    Negotiation is an art form and very few people do it well as it is a skill you need to hone over decades and use on a daily basis. If you aren’t a good negotiator—find one—or it could cost you tens of thousands of dollars in the long run.


    How are we doing so far? We hope that you take the above advice to heart. If you still feel iffy or uncomfortable with selling your own home feel free to call us for a no-pressure, stress-free talk about whether selling your home as a FSBOer is the right decision for you.

Want more tips? Want more specific and tangible advice? Click here to see 13 more tips on how to sell your home as a For Sale By Owner–FSBO tips.