Effective FSBO Advertising Writing

By Mark Camphaug

Most buyers will discover your home either by driving by and seeing your professional real estate yard sign (surprisingly, 18% of all home sales are initiated by lawn signs), visiting your webpage or by reading your advertisement in the newspaper or local newsletter.

Since it costs money to advertise in any major print media, you’ll want to keep your ad short but effective. You still need to highlight the most important features of your home. The purpose of an advertisement is to get buyers to call you for more information. It should contain enough information for the prospective home buyer to pre-qualify themselves in terms of price range and location, but not so much that it costs a fortune to run or eliminates the need for potential buyers to call you for answers to their questions.

The minimum your ad should contain:

• The fact that you are selling FSBO. Usually this means either putting FSBO, For Sale by Owner or BY OWNER at the beginning of the ad.

• The price of the home. While this will disqualify some buyers, what is the sense of having $75,000 or $300,000 buyers call you when your house is priced at $175,000? Buyers shop by price, so put yours in the ad.

• Your neighborhood. You can best decide whether you want to list the specific neighborhood or just the area of town. If your neighborhood is well known and highly desirable, obviously you should include the name. However, if you are selling a home in a less desirable neighborhood, just put in the area of town. Get an idea of what others are doing by looking at classified ads for homes in your area.

• Prospective home buyers generally have a size in mind when they look for homes. Most buyers know that they need at least 3 bedrooms or a family room or a large yard. Put the approximate size of your house in the ad, along with number of bedrooms and baths.

• The most compelling selling feature of your home. For instance, if you are selling a low-priced home, the feature might be that the payment is no higher than typical rent. Or, your home might be completely remodeled, or unusually charming or a wonderful family home. Your schools might be exemplary or your neighborhood very family-oriented. Or perhaps your yard backs onto a park or that your home is priced below appraisal. These are all features that will draw buyers.

• Your PHONE NUMBER, WEBPAGE ADDRESS and FSBO reference #!

So, a good small classified ad might look like this:

BY OWNER $150,000 3 BD/2BA Colonial in Parklawn Village. Excellent schools, great neighborhood, priced below market. Call XXX-XXXX - or visit www.website.com - FSBO# XXXX.

Another type of ad you could consider is a more informative ad. This would be a good ad to place in a neighborhood newsletter or on bulletin boards of local employers or in your information box on your sign. This type of ad doesn’t work well for classified advertising because it is simply too expensive to include so many words. An informative ad would include all of the above, plus more personal information.

For instance, a good informative ad might look like this:

LIVE BY A PARK! BY OWNER $150,000 3 BD/2BA Colonial in Parklawn Village. Enjoy a wonderful yard with built-in barbecue all summer and gaze at a winter wonderland all winter from the cozy fire-lit family room. This charming family home is nicely and neutrally decorated and in move-in condition. The neighborhood offers excellent schools, a swimming pool and tennis court – all in a fantastic location and priced below market! Please call for more details: XXX-XXXX - or visit www.website.com - FSBO# XXXX

Mark Camphaug is currently President of FreeFSBO.com and it’s parent Martcam LLC. http://www.FreeFSBO.com is a For Sale by Owner (FSBO) website that offers a free online listing and free real estate lawn sign to prospective FSBO home sellers. Camphaug spent the last 6 years as Vice President of one of the world’s largest and most successful Interactive Marketing Agencies where he specialized in all aspects of internet marketing, including SEO, PPC, Email and Affiliate marketing. Prior to that Camphaug spent 12 years in the competitive new home industry, duties included sales, marketing and client relationship management.

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3 Easy Steps to Selling an Investment Property

By James Klobasa

Believe it or not, the most stressful part of real estate investing is making a sale. During this phase of the investment there are so many things that can go wrong, and your profit depends on making a smooth and quick sale. While most sales do go through smoothly, the uncertainty and anticipation can keep you worrying late into the night. This is especially true if you choose to bypass an agent and sell your property on your own.

A brokerage agent does do a lot of leg work during a sale, but all of it comes at a cost. Hefty brokerage commissions turn many investors off of the idea of using an agent and onto the idea of selling the property themselves in the hopes of increasing residual income. If this sounds like something that you would like to do, follow the following steps for selling your investment property.

The first thing that you need to do to make your first sale in real estate investing is to calculate the asking price for the property. You can do this by hiring a professional appraiser to price the home or by checking the sales prices of comparable homes in the same area of your property. This is normally done at the court house by comparing similar recent real estate sales prices within a few miles of your property. You should also take into consideration the current real estate market. If the market is a buyer’s market, you will probably have to lower your price. If it is a seller’s market, on the other hand, you might be able to fetch more than the market value of the property.

Once you have settled on a price, you need to market the property. This involves advertising the property and showing it to perspective buyers individually and at open houses. During this phase you should also contact your attorney to draw up the necessary purchase contract forms. This purchase contract will need to be signed by you and the buyer once you have negotiated an offer.

After you have negotiated an offer, the real work begins. Now it is time to close the deal. To do this, you will need an escrow company to perform the closing. This is the time of paperwork as you will need to provide the buyer with disclosure statements and he will need to provide you with a loan commitment letter. Inspections are also performed during this time and a title search will be completed by your escrow company. Next, you will need to meet with the escrow company and buyer to sign the paperwork; pay closing fees to the escrow company; pay off the mortgage; and pay or put aside any taxes owed.

As you can see, the closing phase is the busiest time of selling your first property in real estate investing. But it is also the most exciting. This is where all of your hard work pays off and you get to walk away with the profit.

James Klobasa, once broke with no job and $20,000 in debt made a choice that changed his life forever. That choice was investing in Real Estate. With the founder of, The Little Building Co. you too, can learn at Real-Real Estate Investing

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