Customer Reviews

How to Sell Your Home in 5 Days: Second Edition

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I sold my San Francisco condo using this method at market price.
I netted $30-$40k more than if I were to have sold it using the conventional method paying a 5-6% broker commision. Here are the updates I would suggest:

1. use a website service - George Cappony's 5-daysale.com does a great job. The website service should include a way to track the number of hits.
2. If you use a website, expect fewer calls (most people I talked to said they got 5-10). The website does the work for you, and you don't have to be at home to answer calls.
3. Use a minimum undisclosed reserve price to protect yourself. This should be what you think is market price minus the 6% commission you would normally pay. Then make the listing price REALLY low. If people don't say your price is ridiculous, then drop it even more.
4. Place your newspaper ad for 8 days instead of 5 days. Most people only read the Sunday paper, so if you start the previous Sunday, you will get maximum marketing exposure.

It isn't every day that a book can save your hide, or change your life, but William G. Effros' "How to Sell Your Home in Five Days" did both for me. My wife and I owned a home in Maine. We needed to move to Massachusetts for work and were unemployed. Our house had been on the market for NINE MONTHS with brokers and no real offers. After reading the book, we followed the directions to the letter, and did what our lawyer said was impossible: Sold our house, and at a fair-market price. After the sale the lawyer could not believe how well the it had worked, and the price we got for our house. He graciously admitted that he had been wrong, and said that he had never seen anything like it. We must be geniuses. I told him to read the book. IT WORKS!!! If anyone has any question about how to do it you can call me (Tim Hunter) at (413) 528-7904 or freesongs@aol.co

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.

We bought and read the Effros book, it is unique. I have read probably 200 real estate books and his 5 day method is different and effective. You have to get over the mental block of starting off low in your asking price. We modified the technique to serve our purposes. We employed a MAI (Member of Appraisal Institute) appraisal done on the property. After physically preparing the house by painting, cleaning, and some new flooring, ads were placed in the newspaper. We received offers above asking price and settled within 30 days. Everybody was happy. We have William Effros to thank for the unique idea, and ispiration of his book for our quick sale above asking price. Thank you, sir.

My wife and I bought this book and tried following it to the letter but ran into lots of unexpected hurtles. The book is an easy read but desperately needs to be updated. It states that advertising on the Internet is not necessary and that is just a completely outdated thought. The ad he tells you to put in the paper won't fit in our local papers, but nonetheless we came up with a solution and worked through the process. TO avoid legal problems of disclosure, we did work with our attorney. We learned a great deal and will try it again in the future now that we feel more comfortable, however WE FAILED! We never reached our reserve! :-(

I spent $2,000 advertised in 2 Bay Area papers, on eBay, on a local community web site, working with our attorney and even put banners over our local freeways. It all resulted in 70 people calling us by Friday night, 40 people coming by our house and 13 people making bids. We had 6 rounds of bidding but never reached our LOW reserve. The problem was that the people reading the paper and looking on eBay are bargain hunters, not actual homebuyers in the Bay Area. Here in Silicon Valley, everyone is working 60-80 hour weeks and they have no time to look in the paper for a house. Instead they tell their realtor to call them when something new comes up. These are the serious buyers with money. It didn't help that our house was not centrally located in a metropolitan location. I can see this working INCREDIBLY well in a desirable neighborhood in San Jose or in downtown Santa Cruz.

As for us, as our backup plan, we listed with a realtor and have 4 offers to choose from marked up 20% over our asking price.

The concept is great, and I did sell the house in 5 days. Still waiting on closing which is in 2 weeks.
He doesn't promote the internet, which is an absolute must now! I made my own website with all the details, and directed all my advertising there. Worked like a charm and I had over 400 hits to the site in the 5 days.
Worth the inexpesive price just to learn the basics.

I used the first edition of this book to sell my parents' home in less than a week for the same money that their neighbors received for an identical house.

It took the neighbors a year and lots of time and money "fixing things up." They used two different brokers (each of whom lost interest when the house didn't 'move' quickly) and suffered a bunch of anxiety (due to illnesses, moving, etc.)

We spent five days in the active sales phase, had 200 people through to see our house in a weekend and had hot competitive bidding right down to the wire.

The book was well written and easy to use. Although the prospect of selling the house ourselves was a bit scary, the inexorable logic of the market place worked just as Bill described.

Highly recommended!

The advice in this book SUCKS! Before I bought, read and attempted this "new idea", I came and read the reviews posted on this website. I saw more positive reviews than negative so I figured that it was just negative people writing the bad ones. No, they were probably the only ones that are not personal friends with the author.

I had my property listed at $60,000 below market value. Because my local paper was running a special, I had my ad in the paper for over two weeks. In that two weeks, I had only 19 people call about the ad. And the majority of them were investors looking for a good deal thinking that they were going to get a great place at next to nothing.

Again, DO NOT waste your money on this book. It is like taking that money and flushing it down the toilet with the rest of the crap. Caveat Emptor!!!

I bought the book three weeks ago and decided only about 10 days ago to sell my house this way. Although the book was first published in 1993 and updated only in 1998, it still works. I simply followed his advice in this book to the letter. I placed my ad in the city and local papers for Wed-Sun (modeled on his examples in the book), and put up signs on Sat morning (I didn't use his sign models, tho; I used the ones from the associated website). I got 26 calls by Friday night (he says you need a minimum of 25 or you should stop the sale). I had 55 groups of people come to my open houses (he says to have them on Sat and Sun 10-5), and I had 24 bidders on my bid sheet by Sunday night. I did 5 rounds of calling Sunday night from 8-9:35 p.m. and sold my house to the highest bidder! I got slightly more than what I would have gotten had I sold the house for its appraised value minus a 6% broker's commission. So, I didn't make MORE money, necessarily, but it was great not having to have my house in perfect order for months, worrying about whether it will sell at the listed price, etc. Also, I had to move out of state within 6 weeks, so I wanted a FAST sale. I got it, at a fair price. It definitely worked for me, notwithstanding that the sale was the weekend before Thanksgiving, not in the best of times to be selling a house. Worth giving a try, I say.

We sold our house in New Jersey. Our friends recommended the book to us and although thier experience was different, the results were the same. Our house sold for market value. Its true that the buyers were a bit confused, but after explaining how it worked, people were excited to place a bid. Selling our house in 5 days was so important for us. We have three young children and keeping the house in shape for sporatic showings would have been impossible. It really is no risk with the exception of the money you lay out for ads and signs. Our buyer came from the signs, but bought due to the method. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in saving money.