5-day Sale Results

Well, the 5-day sale results were somewhat disappointing. I sure am glad that the whole thing is non-binding!

To talk generic numbers, let's say we hoped/expected to get $100 out of the sale. According to the 5-day formula, the number we put in the add is 50% of that, rounded down to the next "magic number" in the book. In our case that was about $44. We would have been OK with anything above $89.

The written bids (before the round-robin auction started) got up to $59. The highest bidder after the round robin was $71 - less than the liens (1st and 2nd) on the property and less than we paid 6 years ago for the house.

I can think of a few things I would do differently next time:

1) Ads - I would use the words "Will be sold Sunday night to HIGHEST BIDDER" instead of "House will be sold to HIGHEST BIDDER" so people know when it will be sold. There were two versions in the book, and I did not see the other one until later.
2) Neighbors - We never got around to talking to our neighbors about our sale, and I wish we would have. I would have encouraged them to tell people they know about the sale. It would be good for the neighbors (they get to help pick their future neighbor), and gets people out that likely already know the neighborhood.
3) Bidders - I think we could have done a better job with visitors to the house, especially sitting down with them after they had looked at the house, explaining the process again, and encouraging them to bid (even if only a penny).

While I would do it again, I hoped the method was a little more foolproof. We had a lot of calls and emails (probably 50-60), but we only had about 26 famlies/couples come tour, and 14 bids.

We will probably end up listing with a realtor so that we can focus on our "new" house - getting it fixed up and in good shape to live in.

I'm afraid that this is going to discourage a lot of people we know that are very interested in this method from trying it.

We definitely want to try this method on some other things the author recommends: cars and rental properties (for rental, not for sale).

5-day Home Sale

This week we will be selling our home using the 5-day sale method. I ran across the book that describes it on Amazon.com just completely out of the blue. (Though I truly believe that everything happens for a reason.)

We decided to use this method because we know exactly when the house will be sold, and the price from these sales is usually just as good as you get with a Realtor.

The summary is this: you advertise thoroughly Wednesday through Sunday, have the house open for inspections on Saturday and Sunday, and people leave a bid if they are interested (even if it is only $0.01). Sunday night, you call through those who left a bid, from highest to lowest - you tell them the current bid and ask if they want to advance the bid or drop out. you keep going until there is only one bidder left. The bidding is non-binding on both parties, but the idea is that both parties will go through with it (and if the winning bidder drops out, the second bidder is probably only $500 lower).

You do have to put in a lot of work to get the house ready, assemble information on the house, take calls, and man the house for inspections (like an open house) on Saturday and Sunday. Definitely more work than would be involved with a Realtor, but for us it is worth it to get our house sold on our timetable.



I will let you know how it turns out, and I have attached a link to the book in case anyone is interested in this method. As he says in the book - might as well try this method first, then fall back on the Realtor sale if you are unhappy with the results.