How to Sell a House By Owner in Utah

Why sell a house by owner in Utah?

The top three reasons people cite for selling FSBO include knowing the buyer, a relative, friend, or neighbor (38%), and avoiding the agent commission (30%).

To get a firsthand perspective on selling homes in Utah, we spoke with Stephanie Grable from The Stern Team in Salt Lake City, who is a single-family home expert in The Salt Lake Valley. Her team works with over 67% more homes than average agents in their market.

Grable says Utah FSBO sellers she encounters “think they will save money on real estate commissions by selling their home themselves. However, they usually end up making less money on their home sale if they sell FSBO than if they enlisted the help of a top agent.”

According to NAR, FSBO homes sold for a median of $380,000, significantly lower than the median of agent-assisted homes, which was 4345,000.

As you can see, FSBO is a mixed bag. So, before we share our selling tips, let’s lay out some pros and cons to help you decide if this is the route for you.

In spite of the cons, we’ll help you navigate the challenges of FSBO if you’re committed to selling your Utah house without agent assistance. For some, selling a home FSBO is a challenge worth accepting, and success can be measured in more ways than one.

Steps to sell a house by owner

Next, let’s review the FSBO process step by step.

1. Prepare your house for sale

Whether you’re selling with an agent or FSBO, at a minimum, you’ll want to get your Utah home into respectable shape before any showings to increase your chances of receiving a fair price. Here are a few standard tasks to add to the list.

Indoors

These efforts will go a long way toward impressing buyers looking for a home in Utah

• Declutter floors, shelves, and surfaces throughout the home.
• Make small fixes and repairs, like a leaky faucet or broken door handle.
• Lightly update with new light fixtures, faucets, or cabinet hardware.
• Refinish hardwood floors.
• Repaint bold walls (or those that look dingy) in a neutral color.
• Reduce furniture in crowded rooms by keeping them in a temporary storage unit when selling a house full of stuff.
• Stage the home with final touches like fresh-cut flowers or a basket of fresh produce.
• Use rugs to define spaces and place them strategically.
• Deep clean until the house is sparkling.
• Open blinds or drapes to show off a great view and add natural lighting. Replace any dim, blown, or missing bulbs with bright bulbs.
• Remove all personal and religious decor so you don’t turn off any potential buyers.
• In Utah, not everyone likes the idea of deer antlers on the wall or seeing a moose head mounted above the fireplace. So, remove all animal-related items before showing your home.

Grable says, “Buyers want to be able to picture themselves in the home and not still think of it as someone else’s home, that’s why it’s important to remove religious symbols, political decor, family photos, and other personal memorabilia.”

Outdoors

48% of agents agree that improved curb appeal is a strong selling point among home features, as mentioned in HomeLight’s 2024 Top Agents Insight Report.

Some important curb appeal upgrades can include:

• Mow the lawn and pull weeds.
• Apply fresh mulch liberally.
• Upgrade your landscaping. Consider a new walkway, flowerbed, or shrubs.
• Add a fresh coat of exterior paint.
• Install a new garage door if yours is looking old or not working properly.
• Shovel any snow and de-ice all walkways and steps during the Utah winters.

“Your curb appeal sets your first impression, so make it a good one! If you have overgrown weeds and peeling paint, the buyer will think the house isn’t taken care of, and they will start to look for other flaws once they get inside,” says Grable.

2. Do the homework necessary to set a competitive price

You’ve arrived at a critical moment in your FSBO process: setting a listing price. You don’t want to leave money on the table, yet you want to encourage activity on your listing.

Before listing a home, an agent usually conducts a comparative market analysis (CMA). This is a highly detailed study of “comps” — similar homes nearby that have sold recently, are pending, on the market, or were previously listed but taken off the market. Some may even have been pulled off the market without a sale.

“It’s essential to set the listing price right the first time. You don’t want to go too low and leave money on the table, but you don’t want to list too high and miss out on potential buyers because it’s listed out of their price range,” recommends Grable.

Without an agent, you’ll miss out on the complexity of a full CMA and the know-how to interpret it. However, with a little time and money, you can set a competitive price yourself.

Conduct your own “CMA Lite”

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and research.

Start with an online home value estimate

As a starting point, look at several online estimators for your home’s value. HomeLight’s Home Value Estimator aggregates publicly available data, such as tax records and assessments, your home’s last sale price, and recent sales records for other properties in the same neighborhood.

We also add a new layer of information to our estimates using a short questionnaire. Tell us a few details about your Utah home, such as:

• How much work does it need?
• What type of home is it (single-family, condo, townhouse, or other)?
• Roughly when was your house built?
• Are you planning to sell soon?

Using these insights, we’ll provide you with a preliminary estimate of home value in under two minutes.

Whether you use Zillow, Chase, Realtor, or Redfin to get a home value estimate, think of any online home price tool as a first step (not your only source of truth) and recognize that the data used may be limited.

Narrowly filter your search for comps

When you’re ready to find comps, you can choose from sites like Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, or Realtor.

You’ll want to filter your searches to the area very near your house (within blocks if possible) and with similar characteristics. If you’re not finding any comps, expand your search map.

You’ll also want to filter results by details like:

• Listing status (look at recently sold, pending, and active)
• Number of bedrooms
• Number of bathrooms
• Square footage
• Home type (single-family, condo, etc.)

Beyond the above criteria, the more houses you find with floor plans and an age similar to yours, the better.

Use a site like Zillow to collect your data

As an example, let’s take a look at how to filter your search for comps on Zillow.

• Navigate to Zillow.
• Type in your address. If a pop-up with your home’s specs appears, close it with the “X” on the top right (or sometimes you must click “Back to search” on the top left).
• Filter by “sold.” Yellow dots should appear on the map surrounding your house, and you will see all the recently sold homes on the right.

• Now, filter by the number of bedrooms and bathrooms and check the box “Use exact match.”

• Next, filter by home type.

• Next, select the “More” box. Here, you can specify square footage, lot size, and year built.
• While still in the “More” filter box, scroll down and select to view houses that sold in the last 30 days. If you find that there are not many results in your area, try expanding to 90 days. However, the further back you go, the less relevant the comps.

• If necessary, click the plus or minus buttons to widen the search area.
• Once you’ve collected data for sold houses, revise or restart the search to view active and pending listings, as well.

Invest in an appraisal

If you want to further reduce guesswork, top agents recommend paying an appraiser to provide a professional opinion of value for your home. An appraiser will combine recent property data, research of the surrounding market, and information collected from a walkthrough of your home to determine an appraised value.

An appraisal for a single-family home will likely cost up to $500—well worth it to avoid potentially over- or underpricing your house by thousands.

Make sense of the research

Compare your home’s features against the nearby comps you collected. Hopefully, the houses you studied give an indication of an appropriate price range for your home. From there, you can make dollar adjustments based on characteristics that add value (patios, curb appeal, an extra bedroom) versus detracting from it (a busy street, deferred maintenance, less square footage).

Consider the differences and similarities of comps with the appraised value of your home to choose a price that will encourage activity (too high, and it may seem out of reach to many buyers), but will also maximize your profit.

“Utah is such a diverse state, and buyers move here from all over the world — and they want different things. However, most buyers really look for a home that can help them escape the hustle and bustle of big-city life. Large yards, mountain views, and warm light-filled interiors are all popular features that can increase your home’s value,” according to Grable.

3. Photograph your home

Listing photos are powerful, either pulling in buyers for showings or keeping them away.

To give your listing an edge, consider hiring an experienced real estate photographer. While they may charge as much as $110 to $300 per project,

“High-quality photographs are important for selling a home because they’re giving a potential buyer the first peek of the house, and they’re deciding whether or not they should even visit the house based on the photos,” Grable says.

But if you do go the DIY route, make sure to:

• Use a good camera with a wide-angle lens.
• Pay attention to lighting.
• Include a photo of every room.
• Take multiple pictures of living areas, kitchens, and bathrooms.
• Try shooting different angles.

Review our guide on how to take quality real estate photos for further guidance.

4. Create a detailed, compelling listing

Along with stellar photos, you’ll want to craft an informative and compelling listing. Leverage both the listing description (a paragraph or two highlighting key features) and the property details to show potential buyers all about your home and what makes it desirable.

Tell a story with your description

Draw in potential buyers with a powerful listing description that tells a story about your Utah house, including details like:

• Your home’s most unique and desirable features, like a breakfast nook or sunroom
• Recent upgrades like a kitchen or bathroom remodel, a new roof, or a modern HVAC system
• High-end appliances, materials, or finishes
• Outdoor features like a pool or patio
• Neighborhood features and amenities
• Nearby parks, walking trails, restaurants, and attractions
• Garage and storage space for snow and ski gear

Don’t skimp on the property details

Aside from writing the description, you may be prompted to enter information like:

• Age of the home
• Square footage
• Architectural style (i.e., split-level, rancher, craftsman)
• Appliances included
• Exterior building materials
• Flooring types
• Homeowners association (HOA) fees
• School zone information
• Lot size

Many real estate agents and potential buyers read the “fine print” on your listing, so include accurate details and plenty of them.

5. List your home online

It’s finally time to post your Utah home online. While you can create FSBO listings for free on popular search sites, you’d have to painstakingly post site by site, and your listing wouldn’t reach the majority of buyers and agents.

To give your home the most exposure, pay to have your home put on your local multiple listing service (MLS) — a platform agents use to share properties with one another as well as major real estate sites. Posting there will feed your listing to buyers’ agent databases and to common sites buyers use.

Only licensed real estate agents and brokers who are MLS members can post to the MLS. However, you have two options to gain access: paying an agent to post for you or using a FSBO platform online.

Pay an agent to list your home on the MLS

A local agent may be willing to list your house on the MLS for a flat fee, without any other involvement in your real estate transaction. If you decide to go this route, ask whether the fee includes updating your listing if necessary.

Use a FSBO platform with an MLS option

You can use various paid websites to list your Utah house online as “for sale by owner.” These sites offer packages ranging from about $100 to $400 for just a listing, or a larger flat fee of $3,000 to $5,000 that includes any number of additional professional marketing services.

Some of these companies display their rates on their websites, but others won’t quote a fee until you input your address or select an area of the country. A few examples include:

• ISoldMyHouse.com
• FSBO.com
• Houwzer
• Homie Real Estate
• Assist-2-Sell
• Help-U-Sell

It’s important to note that most of these companies serve FSBO sellers nationwide, which can cause challenges if the assisting representatives don’t understand the local market trends in your Utah neighborhood.

Whatever you choose, read the fine print carefully: some sites may have hidden fees or even take a percentage off your sale — a detour you’d rather avoid on the FSBO route.

Not willing to pay for the MLS?

If you’re determined to save money by foregoing the MLS, creating a free FSBO listing on Zillow might be your top option. You can post a video and unlimited photos, and get fairly wide exposure via Zillow and the Zillow-owned Trulia.

6. Market your home

Now, it’s time to spread the word about your Utah home.

Experienced agents like Grable know that posting a home on the MLS is just the beginning of the marketing phase. A successful home sale requires a deliberate and targeted marketing plan to reach the right buyers and attract the best offers.

“You need to market your Utah home to not only local buyers but buyers moving from other states, countries, and buyers who want to purchase a vacation home in Utah. A top real estate agent can market to all of these people for you,” says Grable.

Here are some of the steps you can take to market your home:

Place a nice FSBO sign by the road

Consider getting a custom yard sign rather than purchasing a generic one you write on with a Sharpie. You can order a custom sign on a site like Vistaprint with your contact information, plus a stand, for as little as $25 plus shipping. Note that some MLS providers may have rules about whether you can post a FSBO yard sign while your home is on the MLS.

Share on social media

Share your home across social media — and ask your friends to share, too.

Hold an open house

Try these strategies for a successful open house event:

• Share details on Facebook and Nextdoor.
• Update your MLS listing with the open house details (if you’re able to as part of paying the flat fee), or update your DIY FSBO listing.
• Place open house signs at nearby intersections.
• Tidy up the house before potential buyers come through.
• Pass out info sheets with the address, bullet points about the house, your contact info, and perhaps one photo.
• If you can, collect visitors’ info, then follow up later to ask if they have any questions.

7. Manage showings

If your marketing is successful, your next step will be to show the home to prospective buyers. Welcome to the busiest phase of the home sale process.

According to Grable, a major reason some FSBO sellers switch to an agent is that they underestimated the time, energy, and expertise needed to manage this crucial step.

To manage the logistics of showings:

• Respond to inquiries ASAP.
• Set end times if you need to fit many showings in one day. This will also create a sense of demand and urgency for buyers to place offers.
• Remove or secure valuables.
• Make sure the home is clean and tidy for showings.
• Follow up with buyers’ agents after showings to get their feedback.
• Check the weather and road conditions before scheduling a showing. You don’t want to schedule a showing during a blizzard or ice storm.

Should you be present for showings?

If you’d rather not be present for every showing, consider using a lockbox with a code to let buyers’ agents enter the house. This is standard industry practice among agents. To ensure you’re working with someone legitimate, use Google or sites like arello.com to check their real estate license number.

With unrepresented buyers, plan to be on the property for the showing. During a showing, we recommend you:

• Point out a few highlights of the house.
• Let buyers look without hovering.
• Be prepared to answer questions.
• Avoid the temptation to tell all and let the house and listing do the talking.

Grable always recommends that a seller not be present for showings if at all possible. Let the buyers look around the house freely and imagine themselves living there.

8. Evaluate offers, negotiate a deal, and make disclosures

You’ve got your first offer — congratulations! Before signing anything, Grable recommends thoroughly reading through the offer and noting not just the offer price, but if there will be a mortgage, and when the closing date will be. Remember to take your time and be prudent when responding to offers.

Here are key considerations when considering an offer on your Utah home:

• Vet potential buyers by requiring a mortgage pre-approval letter or proof of funds.
• Require everything in writing.
• Remember, you can counter-offer and negotiate.
• Look for a good real estate attorney. (See the next step!)
• Please read the entire offer and pay attention to specific details, such as whether the buyer is getting a mortgage, if a home inspection will be ordered, and when the closing date is.

Property condition disclosure

In Utah, a residential property seller is generally required to disclose the condition of the home to the buyer. This form is called a Utah Seller’s Property Condition Disclosure. It needs to be filled out, signed by the seller, and given to the buyer prior to closing.

Whether required by law or not, some sellers may prefer to provide the disclosures before an offer has even been presented so that a prospective buyer is more informed beforehand and less likely to withdraw from a deal later on.

In an agent-assisted sale, your listing agent would likely provide you with the required disclosure form(s). However, as a FSBO seller, you can find the form online.

What will you be asked? In Utah, you can expect to disclose any significant defects or issues you’re aware of concerning:

• Appliances (washer, dryer, refrigerator, range, disposal, etc.)
• Electrical systems (light fixtures, garage door openers, smoke and burglar alarms, etc.)
• Water and sewer systems (plumbing, water heater, irrigation, well, septic, etc.)
• Heating and cooling system (central air, fireplace, propane tank, etc.)
• Roof (structural issues, leaks, repairs and replacements, etc.)
• Hazardous conditions (methane or radon gas, lead paint, mold, asbestos, etc.)
• Other disclosures (foundation problems, land use, encroachments, zoning or code violations, moisture or water problems, damage from wind, termites, or rodents, etc.)
• If there are any legal violations or lawsuits pending on the property
• If any part of the property is currently rented
• If the home is part of an HOA
• If solar panels are present and currently functioning

If in doubt about a problem with the home’s condition, most top real estate agents would recommend you disclose it. If you know of an issue and choose not to disclose a major problem, and that defect is later discovered, you could be held liable for damage or subsequent costs.

Grable calls the Seller’s Property Condition Disclosure “the do-not-get-sued document.” She recommends disclosing everything that you know about the house so the buyer can’t hold you liable for something later on.

9. Close the sale — with professional help

Time to button up that deal. While some states require that FSBO sellers hire a real estate lawyer to help close their sale, Utah does not.

However, it’s still a good idea to invest in the services of an experienced attorney as you close one of the biggest and most complex deals of your life. By doing so, you’ll minimize your legal and financial risk, plus simplify the process for yourself.

Real estate attorney fees can vary depending on location and how much help you want or need. In Utah, they generally cost $298 per hour, well worth it for professional guidance in closing one of life’s largest legal transactions.

FSBO mistakes to avoid in Utah

On your FSBO journey, watch out for these major pitfalls:

• Missing out on the MLS
• Not being open to paying the buyer’s agent commission
• Over- or under-pricing
• Letting your house sit on the market too long
• Not marketing your house properly
• Skipping decluttering and depersonalizing the home

“One of the most common errors FSBO sellers make when selling a home in Utah is pricing the home incorrectly, which can delay or even kill a deal,” says Grable. “Utah is a non-disclosure state — none of the home sale data is disclosed — so FSBO sellers often price their home too low or too high without using the help of a top agent.”

Grable adds that another common mistake that FSBO sellers make is not marketing their home to enough potential buyers so it sits stale on the market.

Alternatives to selling by owner in Utah

If you decide you don’t want the hassle or pressure of FSBO, you’ve got other solid options.

Enlist the help of a top-rated real estate agent

Ultimately, the services and price gains you can get with an experienced real estate agent may put more money in your pocket than FSBO. A proven agent is also better equipped to help you achieve your selling and moving timelines.

Grable had a FSBO seller who made the mistake of leaving too much money on the table during the inspection negotiations. Since then, this homeowner has referred all her friends and family to Grable so they can have the help of a real estate professional when selling their homes.

Working with a top-value agent has so many benefits, including marketing the property to a larger pool of clients. Grable says that her clients’ homes receive far more exposure than what a typical FSBO seller can achieve.

Moreover, her team can help the seller add value before the home is even listed. More exposure and a better-prepared home translate to more proceeds for the seller and a faster sale.

Interested in such expertise? HomeLight can connect you to top-performing agents in your Utah market. Our free tool analyzes over 27 million transactions and thousands of reviews to determine which agent is best for you based on your needs. It takes only two minutes to receive your matches.

Request a cash offer to buy your Utah home

If you’d like to skip the sale prep altogether — plus avoid paying agent commissions — you can opt to sell your home “as-is” to an all-cash buyer instead.

For a low-stress experience, consider requesting a cash offer from HomeLight’s Simple Sale platform. Tell us a few details about your home, and within 24 hours, we’ll send a no-obligation all-cash offer your way. If you decide to accept the offer, Simple Sale sellers have the ability to close in as little as 10 days.

Without leaving the Simple Sale platform, you’ll also be able to compare your cash offer to an estimation of what your home would sell for on the open market so you can make an informed decision.

Ready to sell your Utah home?

Unless you already have a buyer lined up, selling a house by owner in Utah requires a significant investment of time and effort. You’ll need to pull your own comps, capture excellent pictures, create a listing, market the house online, field inquiries, host showings, negotiate, and close the deal. And that’s after preparing the house itself.

You also have to consider that FSBO listings tend to sell for less than agent-assisted sales. An experienced agent who knows the area can make recommendations for targeted upgrades to help you maximize your sale price and get a premium offer. This can help to offset or, in some cases, more than make up for the cost of commission — while saving you time and headaches.

If you choose to go FSBO, you should have a good idea now of what to expect from the process. Otherwise, work with a top-performing agent.

Our internal transaction data at HomeLight shows that the top 5% of real estate agents sell homes for as much as 10% more than average, and we’d be happy to introduce you to some of the best agents in your Utah market.

Editor’s note: This blog post is for educational purposes only. HomeLight recommends that you check local real estate regulations and consult a trusted advisor.

Writer Hayley Abernathy contributed to this story.

Header Image Source: (Ales Krivec / Unsplash)