 | | | | How to Sell Your Home in 5 Days |  | Author: William G. Effros
Publisher: Workman Pub Co
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $0.33
You Save: $14.62 (98%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $0.33
Avg. Customer Rating:  (41 reviews)
Sales Rank: 189482
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 260
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 11.3 x 8.5 x 0.8
ISBN: 1563054965
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.3383
EAN: 9781563054969
ASIN: 1563054965
Publication Date: December 1993
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
First published in 1993, How to Sell Your House in 5 Days outlined an inspired plan for homeowners to handle the sale of their own houses, and it went back to press 5 times for a total of 65,000 copies in print. But in that time, the author, Bill G. Effros, did two things to make a new edition both desirable and necessary--he personally helped hundreds of sellers a year use the 5-Day Method successfully, and in the process of doing so, he refined and revised his original system.
There's still nothing else like it. Based on the one basic truth of free enterprise--that your home is worth exactly what the highest bidder will pay for it--this better way will enable every seller to make more money in less time with no risk. The step-by-step plan shows exactly how to price your home, write an effective ad, use buyer psychology, and conduct round-robin bidding. But now in the second edition are: more in-depth descriptions of different types of buyers; additional steps to take to prepare a home for sale; a new "What If" troubleshooting guide; detailed instructions for conducting an open house; a new chapter on closing sales; a new chapter for buyers bidding on 5-day sales; a chapter debunking home-selling myths, such as why the season doesn't matter; and an updated chapter on transferring ownership.
Amazon.com Review
Homeowners who are determined to sell their houses without agents, but who have no time to waste, may want to try the unusual approach detailed in How to Sell Your Home in 5 Days. After many months of failing to sell his house through an agent, author Bill Effros quickly and successfully auctioned it off. He since has sold several houses that way and helped others do the same. This involves placing Wednesday newspaper ads announcing that the home will be shown on the weekend and sold to the highest bidder on Sunday night. Daring as this sounds, Effros has a technique for handling the round robin bidding to elicit a bona fide offer at fair market value. Not for everyone, maybe, but a fascinating lesson in the mechanics and psychology of making an efficient market for a house or anything else. --Barry Mitzman
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 36 more reviews...
 Sorry, but I find the information useless. Utterly useless. November 8, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book proposes an auction method. The method doesn't require bidders to put any "skin in the game."
For starters, the process doesn't qualify prospective buyers at all. It would be more effective if potential bidders were required to, for starters, purchase an auction packet. The packet would contain detailed information about the property such as a Survey, a Title Insurance binder or commitment, et al. Price the packet at $25 and you'll know that the person who bought it is interested enough to spend $25 for the opportunity to bid hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Think about it. Why would you entertain a bid from a person who wasn't willing to purchase a $25 packet? The fact that the book doesn't even suggest the creation of such a packet.
Then there's the actual bidding method. It suggests you call the interested parties in round robin fashion. Huh?
I'm sorry but I did not pick up a single useful tidbit from this book. I know because I've auctioned a home before.
where will this work? August 7, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I had great hopes for this. Ran ads as they said and it costs us hundreds!
Not one called and not one person showed! Total waste of time and money. I'd like to know where this really works!
 Concept is gold. Just don't get your hopes up. February 3, 2007
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
The concept of this book makes great sense. However...
POINT 1: First and foremost, ask yourself this VITAL question: When you ACCURATELY describe where you live (as a township or municipality), will that location alone draw attention to your listing with such a low featured price? If the objective answer is "no" then this program will NOT work!!!! St. Louis is plagued by many pockets of unincorporated areas, leaving the homeowner to describe their location in terms of South County, North County or West County.
POINT 2: Using a newspaper to place your "5-Day Sale Ad" is antiquated in most markets. Again, that includes St. Louis. The St. Louis Post Dispatch is a poster child for poor presentation of real estate. Major realtors buy half-page and full-page ads to feature their listings in order of price, not location. For all others (mostly FSBOs), you're left to slot your ad within a tiny municipality that most people have never heard of (even those who live there). And you won't find realtor's listings repeated in these location-specific sections. So guess who looks there? All those who can barely afford your home at its starting bid price.
POINT 3: System doesn't work well in a Buyer's Market. Buyers can sit back and look at a surplus of homes with leisure. Why would they consider jumping into your home if they can't see it until day 4 or 5? Our home spent 6 months on the market in the $200K range using a realtor and attracting painfully few interested parties. We dropped the realtor, dropped our asking price by $15,000. We were then willing to accept $9,000 less than THAT selling by owner. Using this book's method we printed a starting bid at $40K BELOW THAT PRICE. By Friday, when you're supposed to receive a couple dozen or so calls at the minimum, we received only 3 phone calls. Newspapers don't credit you for pulling an ad on day 4. This little 5-day experiment cost us $250.00.
POINT 4: Unless you're in a progressive market, most people just don't understand the concept of a 5-day sale. Especially the real estate agents in my area. If they understood it, they would fear it. Now, if 100 interested parties had walked our home, then I imagine that we could have found 5 parties who understood the concept and would have been willing to play along. We didn't get 100. We brought in less than 20. None of them had done comparisons on the neighborhood. All were clueless.
POINT 5: The book is being revised so WAIT for the new release!!!! The version I purchased (the only one currently available) describes the Internet from a 1998 perspective which says it's not a prominent enough tool to possibly substitute for an ad in a newspaper. As you may have guessed, times have changed. I for one NEVER read the paper for available real estate (mostly out of poor presentation of the paper's real estate section). I use the Internet. I debated posting our home on MLS and [...] websites but you don't review those listings looking for an auction. I feared a massive onslaught of confused Buyers asking what I was trying to pull. Still, it would have attracted FAR more people in this market than our paper could have ever accomplished.
POINT 6: Visit the website associated with this book. It's ALL about buying bundled packages from the author's real estate expert friend. Those packages include listing your home on MLS and Realtor websites. I can't vouch for any of that... just found it to be opposite of what the book preaches. Maybe this will be incorporated into the 2007 edition.
 Great book for a Seller's Market November 4, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
A friend recommended the 5-Day method, and I bought the book. It's written like an infomercial, but the logic and methods are reasonable and smart. I was convinced, but I had 3 other people read it too. They had been skeptical of my description of how it worked, but they came away convinced, as well.
The book has a great explanation of the whole house selling process and a great checklist of what you need to do to be ready to put it on the market. However, the book was written and revised during Seller's markets. Prospective buyers were walking around with checkbooks in their pockets so they could be the first to put a bid on houses they liked. It's a different market now, and people don't want to commit on the day they see the house. They know they have time to think, and that's what they want to do.
I still think the method could work, it just didn't for us in these economic times. And we're much better prepared for selling the house using more conventional methods.
Could work but good results? September 1, 2006
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Our company that builds custom exec homes tried this method to move a property & to donate a percentage of net proceeds to charity. Everything went as planned, had 100+ people through, 25+ phone calls by Fri. Even had major newspaper coverage on the event. Made it past the low low starting bids at price but failed to even get to our reserve, which was basically the cost to build the home with a few thousand for our charity. The low starting price brought in people who had no business being there. Even when you advertise as a Exec luxury home, people only see the starting price as a reference. I had one woman screaming at me that I was using deceptive advertising since the bids start at price listed was so low. NUTCASE....It was exhausting, expensive and absolutely insulting with the offers we were getting. Reserve was $65,000 below its appraised value and we came short of the reserve by $30,000. And no one is going to tell me that my house is worth $90,000 below its appraisal. If you are in a good market area or need to sell quickly to get out from underneath a property, this is a good way. But, if I can't get my costs out of a property newly built, that's just sad. Some of it may be due to the markets, but not by that much.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| | |