 Selling
your home online gets easier every day
|
 Dear
Real Estate Adviser,
How difficult is it to sell your home online? Is there a Web site
where you can do that?
-- Mellow W.
 Dear
Mellow,
It's getting easier and easier to sell your home online, and that
opinion is not simply drawn from surfing the dozens and dozens of
Web sites out there that offer thousands of listings and all kinds
of related real estate buying and selling services.
The latest research by the National Association of
Realtors, or NAR, shows that 77 percent of home buyers in 2005 used
the Internet in some capacity to search for a home, compared to
just 2 percent in 1995. Further, when the buyers surveyed by NAR
were asked where they first learned of the homes they bought last
year, 24 percent identified the Internet, up sharply from 15 percent
the previous year and overwhelmingly from 2 percent in 1997.
A few or the more popular for-sale sites are ForSaleByOwner.com,
Realtor.com,
Owners.com,
Craigslist.org,
Byowner.com,
Fsbo.com, and
Hometoursonline.
There are many, many more. EBay is even getting into
the listing act to a limited degree. I do not endorse any of these
sites, by the way.
Sometimes, it's all about marketing. The more quality pictures you
can provide these sites, and the more vivid descriptions and selling
points you write, the better. And the more space and services you
use, the more you'll pay, naturally. It helps to be very handy with
a digital camera or to know someone who is. Many of these sites
offer virtual tours that give potential buyers a 360-degree view
of your home's rooms. That photography generally has to be done
by a professional.
One of the biggest advantages of a Web listing, by
the way, is that it gives out-of-market buyers a means of looking
over a home from afar -- an important consideration in our ultra-transient
society.
NAR, which is also a Realtor-advocacy organization,
says the majority of Internet buyers and sellers still use an agent
in some capacity to help shepherd along these Web transactions.
Sellers who choose to go the for-sale-by-owner, or
FSBO, route can list their homes on their market's official Multiple
Listing Service, or MLS, for a flat fee that ranges from $200 to
$500. The price often includes peripheral listings of their homes
on the sites of local newspapers and other media, as well as on
FSBO Web pages, etc.
More and more home buyers are also using the Web to
enlist mortgage services and other real estate services, as well
as to research pertinent data about school districts, tax rates,
crime rates and community amenities. One Internet tool you might
find useful in pricing your home is the online valuation service.
The new Zillow site,
for example, offers valuations of your home and area, illustrating
them with satellite images of your home and neighborhood. (Smile
at that nice satellite and say "cheese.") Oh well.
So, don't be yellow, Mellow. Get on the Web!
To ask a question of the Real Estate Adviser, go to the "Ask
the Experts" page, and select "Buying, selling a home" as the topic. |
