How to Sell Privately

My house was ugly. Real ugly.

Unkempt for years, I had it rented to a distant uncle who didn't make it any better. So when I decided to sell it, I had a huge dilemma: how to sell privately a dog of a house, because I was not about to pay any commissions to real estate agents.

Well, where do you go? As you might guess, I started searching the internet for tips, but boy, is there a lot of useless information out there. Millions and millions of websites, all trying to get your attention and they are useless regarding how to sell privately.

Regardless, after sifting through pages after pages, hours and hours spend searching I collected some practical information which, if you don't already apply, you might want to consider:

- Post the house on Craigslist and similar places - the problem I have with this is that your listing gets lost among the thousand real estate agents who post their own listings in there. The point of Craigslist is for people to post private sales, but these guys have taken over and it takes away from the legitimacy of the listings and the credibility of Craigslist as a resource for buyers. Kinda' disappointing, but still it is still very tempting to post.

- Place your pets somewhere else and any signs of them such as toys, dishes, food on the floor - this is in case the buyers don't have pets themselves, in which case it should be fine, but how do you know?

- Ensure the house smells good. Use Febreeze or similar products and air the rooms properly - good tip, nevertheless

- Wash the windows and clean the house so buyers find it more inviting

- Price appropriately - don't scare away buyers with a price that is too high

OK, fine, I applied these, and nothing. The house wouldn't sell. Not only that I had no buyers, but there no interest at all.

And that's when I came across the one website that was particularly useful and provided some really good stealth tactics that made all the difference.

This made me realize that anything can be sold as long as you have the proper guerrilla tactics in your back pocket.

And my jaw dropped but after following the advice, I sold the house and I got what I wanted.

But it's all in the little marketing secrets. Too many people take the same dreary, placid approach to house selling that doesn't give results. And I've found that actually house selling is so much fun for me it was so exciting to be successful in spite of the ugliness of the home.

If I had a nice looking house, I would have sold much, much faster, but this way I have a good story to tell at parties.

I hope everyone out there succeeds and has fun along the way.