Part 1 in a series of 12 posts for the would-be home seller.
Answer. Of course you could sell it yourself. The real question
should be, “What value does a Realtor bring to the sales process that justifies
the commission that I would have to pay?” The answer to that is that the
Realtor brings the marketing knowledge and tools of his/her trade to bear on
the marketing and sales process to facilitate making the sale faster and at a
higher value than the typical “For Sale By Owner” (FSBO) sale.
We collect a lot of statistics about this and can show that
only 10% of unrepresented seller attempts end up with a sale. About 10% of the
unrepresented seller attempts end up with the house being taken off the market
and the sale abandoned. The remaining 80% of unrepresented sellers end up
hiring a real estate professional for completion. According to National
Association of Realtors statistics, sellers who are represented by a real
estate professional get 16% more for their homes that sellers who go FSBO. A
part of that is due to the unrepresented seller’s tendency to overprice in the first
place, whereas the real estate professional works very hard at the front-end of
the process to get the property properly market priced.
Secondly, there is the issue of advertising. A house won’t
sell if no one knows it is for sale. Having a homemade For Sale By Owner sign
on the lawn is only a start (and a weak one at that). A Realtor may spend
anywhere from 6-10% of his/.her expected commission on advertising in
newspapers and real estate books, in addition to the cost of placing the
listing in the MLS and the cost of having a professional sign placed on the
property. Additional costs may be incurred for placing the listing on certain
Web sites and for other techniques that the agent may use to increase exposure
for the property. In addition, most larger companies now have mobile apps that
can be used to find your property, if it is listed. More and more buyers are
“going mobile” these days and you might end up being invisible in that world as
a FSBO.
Third there is the need to deal with potential buyers.
Buyers and their agents need to talk to someone to set up appointments and are
likely to call at all hours. A Realtor will have an office that people can call
for these appointment 7 days a week. A Realtor will also try to pre-screen
potential buyers and only set appointments for those that he/she feels are
valid buyers for the property. Stick a FSBO sign in your front yard and you
invite the whole world to walk through your house.
The last issue is one of time – time that the agent would
spend sitting in open houses, so you don’t have to and the time that you’ll
lose on the sale just due to it being a unrepresented sale. Without the benefit
of the exposure that the Realtor will provide for the house, through the
Multi-List Service and his/her advertising and marketing efforts, the
unrepresented house is likely to stay on the market quite a bit longer than a
listed house. Statistics tell us that an unrepresented seller’s house can stay
on the market almost twice the average for a listed property in the same area.
Remember that you’re making payments during that extra time and very little of
that money flows to your equity bottom-line.
Then there is the
fact that most unrepresented sellers will get calls from agents offering to
show their house to
So, if you’ve got all the time in the world and don’t really
don’t care if you get top dollar - go for it. Here are some other readings on
this topic –
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment