How we sold our house in 48 hours without a realtor!

Selling a home is always a whirlwind, but selling Farm Hill Cottage was a super fast, super unexpected, mega whirlwind in the best way possible!

You can read why we decided to sell FHC here. Once you read that, you will see that we weren't really planning on selling our home just yet, especially during a PANDEMIC. I always pray that God will make it very clear what we need to do in our lives and I think selling our house was one of those moments that he made sure to paint a very clear picture of the path we should take. It was almost crystal clear that this was our time to move and sell which felt sort of weird to us because our country was and still is in such a weird and unpredicted place. I honestly questioned if this was the right thing to do up until the moment I shared that we would be selling and the request for showings started rolling in.

Why we didn't hire a realtor:

I want to start by saying, we have so many wonderful realtor friends, I have worked for several realtors as a hired marketing and branding consultant and I love and appreciate what they do. They can help immensely in the process of buying and selling a home. We have used realtors in the past and a realtor was part of the plan to sell this home if we weren't successful in doing it on our own first. The main reason we didn't hire a realtor in the beginning is simply due to the cost of hiring a realtor. We worked so hard to give our home new life and increase the value of our home. We wanted to put every penny we put into the house back in our pockets plus some. We decided we would try selling our home on our own first since we have experience buying and selling homes and just see what happened. We planned to list our house on Zillow, post on our personal social media pages and stick a for sale by owner sign in the front yard and pray for a buyer to come along!

Gearing up to sell:

Before we made it public that we would be selling our home, we HUSTLED to get our home in the condition we felt it needed to be in order to get the dollar amount we were shooting for. I thinned out our closets and cabinets to make them look spacious and did a lot of work to stage our home. I'll be blogging all of my home staging tips soon.

We also still had a lot of work to do on our outbuilding which is also where the laundry room is. We added window units to it to make it a heated and cooled space so that it would count towards our homes square footage (the sell price relies heavily on square footage which we don't have a lot of) and Daron worked every night for about three weeks along with some friends to finish out the building so that buyers would have a vision for the space - an important part of selling. You want buyers to be able to invision themselves and their things in the home. We also had some things to do like painting all of the trim on the exterior of the house which we hired out.

The outbuilding felt like it was never going to be finished but it was SO CLOSE. I finally decided to take photos of the house and post on Zillow. I patiently waited for Zillow to post our house but after 48 hours of our listing pending approval, I got impatient. I posted a video and photos of our house on my personal Instagram and Facebook pages. It's always good to share that you are selling with your soft market, you never know who may be in love with your house or know someone who is looking. I made my post public and it got over 40 shares on Facebook in one day. I was so shocked and thankful. Within twelve hours of posting on a Thursday night, we had 8 showings booked for the weekend. EIGHT!!! We weren't even finished with the outbuilding or painting the trim. We didn't even expect to have one showing over the weekend.

We sent the kids to spend the night with their grandparents and we cleaned, mowed, painted, staged, and organized until we were almost in tears. Okay, let's be honest, I was in tears by the end of it.

Showings:

We had our first showing Friday on our lunch break. It was a super quick showing and the family immediately fell in love with the home and wanted to make an offer. They came for a second showing Friday evening and they were ready to sign the contract. We couldn't believe it!!! They wanted to do the financing and closing a little different than what we had in mind and we had some questions and concerns about it. We asked if we could meet the next day because we needed to update the contract based on our discussion and we also wanted to make sure we were doing everything correctly (this is were not having a realtor can become tricky - you want to be sure all of your i's are dotted and t's are crossed in this process). The next morning, they called and backed out. We were a little deflated but knew that they probably weren't the buyers we were praying for and made peace with the situation. Plus we had seven more showings with more messages rolling in with inquiries so there was hope.

The next couple that came to look at the house were very interested and also ready to make an offer but they needed to talk with their lender on Monday before doing so. This lifted our spirits and we were humbled that two couples in a row loved our home so much.

The third couple that came to look fell in love with the house too. They loved it so much that they weren't willing to walk away without a solid offer and putting earnest money down. We agreed on a price and got started on getting a contract in place. I immediately called and canceled our other 6 showings which most realtors wouldn't advise. Most of the time when there is a lot of interest on the house, they recommend keeping the showings and giving a date range for people to make offers that way you can accept the highest offer. Again, this is another reason we chose to try selling on our own first.

This was a very personal sell to us as this was Daron's great grandparents home that we restored. We were looking for a family that was going to take care of the home and continue making improvements. We really didn't want to see this home turn into a rental property and immediately go back down hill. While we don't have control of the home once it's sold, we can get an idea of the buyers and a feel for their plans with the home which gives us peace of mind knowing it's going in good hands. While we obviously want to make money off of the house and sell it for good price, we also want to know it is going to be well loved. The only way to get a feel for that is to show it ourselves and meet the buyers.

One of our showings that we canceled was with a realtor and her client. She asked if she could still bring him to look and make a backup offer. Of course, we said yes! He loved the home too and would have been a great owner for the home. We felt good about every person that came to look at our home and expressed interest. We prayed for a good next owner and God sent so many our way!

At this point we had a contract and back-up contract under way and we were sitting in a good place. What some consider the hardest part of selling the home was a breeze for us! We had our home under contract within 48 hours of sharing it on Facebook. We never even put a for sale sign in the yard. So crazy!

The next steps:

Next up is the inspection and appraisal and too many waiting games for my liking. The process slowed way down after the fast and furious weekend of showings... it actually went so slow that it will require its own blog post. More on that soon!

I think there were several things working in our favor which helped us get this house under contract so quickly: The home is in a rural area on one acre, completely updated in a reasonable price points. So many properties in rural areas around us come with a huge amount of land and not-so-great structures on them but the land drives the price up bumping it out of many buyers price ranges. I also think having the home well-staged, tidy and clean helps tremendously. It lets the potential buyers know that the home is well cared for and it gives them room to picture themselves in the space.