As the U.S. median home price continues to drop, ForSaleByOwner.com (http://www.forsalebyowner.com) is helping home sellers who don’t want to lose even more of their home’s value by paying a 6 percent commission to a real estate broker. By providing online marketing, property pricing reports, real estate resources and access to legal forms, ForSaleByOwner.com offers all the tools that homeowners need to market and sell their home in today’s tough real estate market. ForSaleByOwner.com offers these “Top 5 Tips” to help people get started on how to sell their home “for sale by owner.”

1. Be Your Own Agent: An agent’s commission cost home sellers 6% of their home’s value. ForSaleByOwner.com customers are able to competitively price their home compared to similar homes represented by agents and still come out ahead financially because they are not paying commission. In addition, separate recent studies by professors at two of the nation’s most prestigious universities, Northwestern and Stanford, determined that unrepresented homeowners are as effective at maximizing the sales price of their home as agents.

2. Use the Internet to Market the Home: More than 84% of buyers use the Internet to search for a home. Putting a home on ForSaleByOwner.com helps home sellers market their home to nearly 2 million people monthly. Online property listings should boast multiple high quality, digital photographs of their home’s interior and exterior. Homes with multiple photographs receive more attention from buyers. The online listing should be combined with a yard sign to attract people driving by the home.

3. Price the Home Accurately: The market in 2008 is very different from a few years ago when bidding wars drove up home prices. In today’s market, home sellers need to become more educated about their local real estate market so that they can effectively price their house. To make it easy, ForSaleByOwner.com provides its customers with a customized property pricing report that contains recent home sales data and home valuation data. Sellers should also research their neighborhood to compare the listing prices of similar houses and use that information to competitively price their home.

4. Consider Placing the Home on the MLS: The Multiple Listing Service, or MLS, is a complete inventory of homes on the market. Sellers should remember they no longer need a real estate agent or broker to get their home on the MLS, and their home can be placed on the MLS through ForSaleByOwner.com.

5. Don’t Be Afraid of the Paperwork: While one of the biggest myths in real estate is that agents handle the legal paperwork, the fact is that other professionals provide these services. Whether a seller uses an agent or goes “for sale by owner,” outside help is needed to navigate through the legal process of transferring the title. A real estate attorney or title company will prepare and handle all of the legal paperwork for sellers.

ForSaleByOwner.com is the nation’s leading “for sale by owner” website. Since 1999, ForSaleByOwner.com has saved home sellers more than one billion dollars by providing premium Internet marketing services, property pricing reports, real estate guidance and information, downloadable legal forms, as well as live customer support, to help customers independently sell their own homes. The company charges a modest fee for its wide range of advertising and real estate resources, priced from $89 to $899. In contrast, a person selling a $300,000 home through a real estate agent would be charged a 6% commission fee and pay approximately $18,000. Prospective homebuyers can browse property database, available at http://www.forsalebyowner.com, at no charge.

Beware

Every Realtor using Sprint PCS that signed up during the initial phase of the E-Key launch that were offered freebies to change their plans should immediately be aware that Sprint is expiring those freebies.  Offers differed in many areas of the Country, so it is impossible for me to break down what problems you may experience.  These expirations come with no warning and you may incur serious charges for downloading your MLS data to your phone, text messenging, peak and off peak times, without refund or explanation.  Realtor beware, read your bill and pay very close attention to the “data usage” on your bill. 

We’ve spent the better part of 4 hours on the phone with customer retention as well as several hours in the Sprint store over the past month resolving these issues to the tune of nearly $1,000.00.  It is Sprint’s policy to address no charges more than two months old so I advise you contact Sprint immediately.  I would also recommend if you are unsure what exactly will or has expired that you contact Sprint Customer Service as soon as possible. 

I can only speak for myself when I say we were never told these plans would expire, nor was I ever told that the discount offered to Reators would expire- We have seriously been mislead, and the outcome is that the new plans offered by Sprint are much higher per month than what we switched from.  A Sprint Store manager stated while speaking to Sprint Customer Service by phone, ”There’s going to be a lot of pissed off Realtors lined up in my store.” The Sprint response was, “The plans no longer exist.” 

According to Customer Retention, these plans offered to the local boards had a life expectancy of 2 years in most cases.  We found it odd that even the Sprint associates that were charged with signing up thousands of agents had no idea of any expirations of the promises being made by Sprint. 

I would assume that other services offering data phones and plans for E-Key such as Cingular will suffer the same fate.