Selling your home isn’t something you should take lightly.
While selling a house isn’t rocket science and many homeowners have deal with 1:1 transactions where is owner and buyer dealing with one another directly. While this is common, it is also very common for attorneys, real estate agents, title companies and lenders to hear about and fix situations where one of the parties got accidentally taken advantage of.
Realtor’s aren’t sleezy car sales people. Not that car sales people are sleezy and not only sleezy sale’s people sell cars. Realtors are guided and regulated by the highest of Texas statutes, regulated by a board and can get in legal trouble for misrepresenting your best interest. We’re meant to help you finding the best deal structure for your transaction and guide you through the process until completion. We earn our pay through the completion of a successful transaction that can take up to months to complete. Most homeowners who sell a home on their own do so simply because of the assumptions the general public has of a typical Realtor. Leaving the fact that most Realtors are to blame for this misconception, it’s still worth clarifying here before we continue since you have to know that most realtors do honestly try their best to earn our pay and your satisfaction for a life long source of referrals.
Some of the nicest clients I have ever had the pleasure of helping have come to with questions about a particular situation they are trying to resolve. Sometimes is something as simple as ‘I didn’t know that the seller didn’t have to make the payments to the bank’ or ‘I’ve never gotten a receipt in 20 years and I can’t get them to tell me how much I owe’ ‘the shortgages were significant and now I’m stuck dealing with the costs when its clearly something seller should have disclosed’ – basic things that most ordinary non-realtors wouldn’t even thing about checking or negotiating.
When you buy or sell the property directly from the owner, consider that is not the same as buying anything else that is personal property such as a vehicle or even a gun. Real Estate is something that is regarded as one of the highest values within the U.S. economy and a big influencer in the market’s overall health, you are buying or selling a property that can be turned into general wealth by the right mindset and execution, depending on the location you may be dealing with mineral and or water rights as well for example. The fact that is regarded to a much higher standard of value yields the assumption that there will be more moving pieces and legalities which are opportunities for errors and omissions on the contract from you or the other party – when one side has an Agent or legal representative at least the chances for mistakes are reduced, but you don’t want to be on the end with no help on your corner.
You’re better off in most cases getting a Realtor.
Consider reading: Why sell a home during a recession?
When you’re selling by owner, FSBO as we call these transactions where the home is sold directly by the owner, both parties must do their due diligence in the property’s history and possible holes in the ownership chain that could come hunt you. Most good buyers will come with an agent and you want a buyer with an agent so that they can help ensure the transaction is done properly, but the irony of that is you don’t want to be the one without representation here.
You have all these companies fighting for your attention trying to make each other look bad, trying to make realtors look bad saying that you as the homeowner don’t need to waste time and money hiring a Realtor, but the reality of it is that they wouldn’t be attacking each other if they actually had something of value to offer. But these ibuyers or syndicated investor funds like Opendoor.com really only rely on homesellers who are not educated enough about their potential return listing on the regular market. When you look at a home that was sold to them for example and you see $300k, you may think “WOW! Opendoor.com paid that much for THAT house? Mine’s gotta be worth at least that!” So that drives interest amongst sellers. What about those bandit signs on the roads “WE BUY YOUR HOUSE CASH!” – aren’t they promising the moon? They buy fast, without hassle, and using cash.
Why would a homeowner ever pass on this? Well, multiple reasons. Almost as with selling through a company like Opendoor.com or Zillow… for example, why would any homeowner ever sell to someone who is going to ‘internally calculate’ what your home is worth, you trust it without external review, and then once you have the offer accepted come in the credits and discounts given back to the seller during closing, materially reducing your actual cash proceeds from the actual purchase price initially agreed upon. Why would a seller not want to put the house in the open market and let more than just one bid come in and see which is the highest? Why would any homeowner go with a single offer buyer who pretends to be doing you a favor in lieu of you not ever finding out that they are actually paying less than what you deserve, but that’s business right, they have to make a living, right? Buy low, sell high. Well, I say, let them make cookies with someone else’s chocolate chips.
Hiring a realtor would make better sense in my humble opinion.
Sometimes, honestly, a good realtor will mean the difference between you having to fix the home partially or in its entirety before listing on the market. A good realtor could help you find a good marketing angle and maximize the exposure your home can get with the right group of potential buyers. While selling the house through Zillow and Craigslist or Facebook may yield some drives, visits and open house onlookers, you won’t get the best deal this way. You may be thinking limitations and shortcomings with a home that needs work, while a good Realtor can help find a buyer looking for a blank canvas or your area and needs to be shown how to see past the cosmetics first, etc.
If your house needs work, you’re still sometimes better off selling through a Realtor and the open market.
There are plenty of reasons why a homeowner wouldn’t want to hire a Realtor, but I dare you – send me / submit your thoughts and scenarios and I guarantee I’ll rebuttal it intelligently and find a way how a realtor could make all the difference.
Thank you for reading!
Visit El Paso Living.com to schedule an appointment, get VIP access to houses and more.
Continue reading, check out next: Reasons Why FSBOS Fail