How to List a Home for Sale - And Where to List It

Reader Question: I want to sell my own home, and the only thing I'm not sure about is listing it. How do I list a home for sale and where are the best places to list it?

The important thing is that you realize the importance of listing your home for sale. This shows you have a good idea about how the selling process works. I will give you some tips in just a moment, but first I want to explain the terminology being used for people who are unfamiliar with it.

Definition: Listing a home for sale means that you are adding your house to some kind of property database or list of properties, which is viewable by real estate agents and/or home buyers. The most popular database of this kind is the Multiple Listings Service (MLS).

Now to revisit the question at hand. Here's how to list a home for sale effectively:

In the definition I just provided, I mentioned the MLS. This also answers part of your question. You wanted to know where to list your house in order to get the best exposure, and this is the place to do it.

When you add your home to the Multiple Listing Service, you'll be putting it in front of hundreds, possibly thousands, of potential buyers in your area. That's because the MLS is the most widely used property database, and just about every real estate agent has access to it. Here's the bottom line. If you're serious about selling, and you want to attract as many buyers as possible, you should list the home in the MLS as part of your marketing strategy.

Listing Your Home in the MLS

The next logical is, How do I get my property listed in the Multiple Listing Service? There are basically two ways to go about it -- through a real estate agent, or through one of the big FSBO websites. Let's talk about each option.

• You can hire a real estate agent and have him or her list your home in the MLS. As I mentioned earlier, nearly every agent or Realtor has access to this database.
• If are going to sell your own home, but you still want to list it with a national database, you can use an FSBO website. Many of these services offer seller packages that include an MLS listing. Here's a good example: National Real Estate Listings without the Commissions!
  

Remember, how you list your home for sale is not nearly as important as where you list it. So it doesn't really matter how you get your property into the MLS database, so long as you do it. This is the best way to market the property to the largest possible audience, which is the first step to a successful sale. If you have an agent, he or she will handle this for you. If you are selling by yourself, you should list the home through one of the major FSBO sites (see link provided above).

Before You List Your Home for Sale

Now that we have covered the how and where of listing your home for sale, let's back up and talk about what you should do before you list it. In particular, let's talk about pricing and preparation.

Pricing Considerations:

It's critical that your price your home effectively for the market. Over-pricing is the number-one mistake sellers make, especially when they handle the process by themselves. It's hard for people to distance themselves from their homes, but that's what it takes to see things objectively and price the home accurately. So before you list your home for sale, you need to find out what it's worth in the current market.

You can get a general idea of what your house is worth by using a home value website for free. But these websites cannot match the accuracy of a professional appraisal from a licensed appraiser. After all, a website can only look at data -- it cannot take into account upgrades and improvements you've made to the home.

In summary, it's important to set the right price for your house before you list it for sale, because it determines your success or failure more than any other factor.

Preparing the Property:

If you're in a buyer's market, which most people are these days, you need to work extra hard to prepare the home for sale. This process starts long before you list the home, and it includes such things as landscaping for curb appeal, freshening up the paint job, staging the property and more.