Deciding to sell your home can be exhilarating, confusing, stressful and depressing all at about the same time. Selling it on your own you can double that anxiety unless you have a plan. Help ease some of those reactions by doing your homework before you make that life altering decision to move.

I have spent over 26 years in the real estate industry and for a great deal of that time I helped people sell their own homes commission free even though I was a realtor. Of course I was hoping they would fail and inevitably list their home with me on MLS. That's the first thing to expect, agents will be calling with phantom buyers. Give yourself time to find them yourself.

Funny thing about real estate, it's the most expensive investment many people will ever make in a lifetime and everyone thinks they're an expert in the field because they own a home. This over confidence has humbled many potential for sale by owners.

Most people these days would like to at least try and save the high real estate fees associated with selling through a realtor. In fact nearly 25% of home sellers try to sell privately at least for a couple weeks. Only 5% eventually sell their own homes; a surprisingly pathetic number really.

It shouldn't be this difficult and it really isn't. Not today with the power of online marketing. Gaining exposure for your home has never been easier or less expensive. Why pay a realtor to market your home when you can do exactly what they do from your home PC. Of course realtors do more than market your home. They presumably pre-qualify prospects, show the listing to prospects, and advertise on the MLS to other agents and brokers. Not to mention putting the offer to purchase together and negotiating the outcome. WOW, that's a lot of work and yet you can do ALL of this yourself and save thousands of dollars in the process.

You need professional counsel on the legalities of your sale from your lawyer. You also need to have your home looking top notch and staged so it appeals to the masses. You can find information online for excellent ideas on improving your homes appearance and you will net more profit from the sale as a result. Again after speaking to your lawyer and mortgage lender for legal and mortgage details, everything else can virtually be found on the Internet to make your sale easy.

Let's talk about marketing your home and attracting buyers. These days you definitely need to have an online presence since most people start their search here. Depending on the value of your home and assuming you've set your price you'll need to decide on who would be your target market. If you're selling an average size, affordable family home than your prospect pool should be larger. This means local traffic from local advertising.

If you aren't prepared to spend some money to sell privately you should go to a realtor straight away. You'll need a professional sign made, advertising in the newspaper, some cosmetic home improvements (don't go overboard) and you'll need that online exposure that is so important.

There are plenty of websites out there that advertise homes privately but you want to make sure you are targeting local viewers to your online listing. Make sure that the website you list your home on has a local web portal for your area. This means buyers are more likely to find you're listing in the search engines when someone enters Yourtown+homes+for+sale their search results will be targeted to your local market making it easier for them to find your listing. It's even better if the website publisher takes the time to optimize your listing for the search engines.

The good real estate websites are the ones that make it easy for you to present your home to quality buyers, supply you with information to assist your sale and offer you the ability to maintain your listing yourself. What an advantage you'll have if you can keep your listing looking new with fresh photo uploads and the ability to add or delete certain bits of information like price changes and open houses.

Plan carefully and when you think you are ready to move forward with your sale take another hard look at your plan of attack. There's always something else to consider. By preparing yourself and your home for the sale you'll be surprised how easy it really is to sell it yourself.

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