Is Selling Your Home By Yourself A Good Idea?
Hi everyone. Just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes about selling your home on your own. It is currently a seller’s market right now, so it means that there’s many buyers looking to purchase a home and not enough homes on the market or available for sale. Many people feel that if they want to sell their home and in this market, they feel that, “oh, well, I know my home was so quickly because it’s a seller’s market, it’s going to be easy. Piece of cake. (It was a seller’s market at time of publishing this video in 2018)
I might as well just do it on my own and not have representation and potentially save me a few thousand dollars on commission.” And although that does sound intriguing and very possible for someone who’s never sold a home on their own, there’s a lot more to it that goes into selling your home. First thing is that if you list your home with the right Realtor, you most likely will have more advertising and marketing put behind that, other than just what you would provide is a sign in the yard typically and putting it on Zillow and maybe Craigslist. So having more exposure to your home will more likely get you the right buyer for the right price at the right time. The other part of it is that when you’re selling your home on your own, if you’re not going to put a lockbox on your door and that means that you’re only going to show the home when you’re available.
For those of you who don’t work from home and you work a nine to five, that’s going to cause issues for you because for one, you’re going to get calls throughout the day. For one, mostly from Realtors wanting to list your home, which is going to annoy you very much and you’re going to want to block people and you’re going to hate it. Trust me, I know. And then the other part of it is that you work that nine to five so you feel like you need to answer the phone all the time to make sure that you don’t miss out on an opportunity to sell your home to someone else.
However, when that buyer calls and they want to schedule a showing with you, you’re not available. You may not pick up in time and it’s hard for them to schedule a showing because you work from nine to five and you can’t show it until your lunch break or you can’t show it until after 05:00 p.m.. Yes, in many cases that’s when most people do want to view homes. But for that buyer, those buyers that are looking and are available between nine and 02:00 p.m. to show a house and they’re represented by a Realtor and they’ve already had four houses on the list that are going to see that day. If you aren’t able to confirm and they aren’t able to see it within that time frame, they may like one of the other houses enough or they don’t want to wait around and check out for your house.
They know things are selling really quickly, so they’re going to put an offer on a house when yours could have been a better option for them. So that’s another thing to look at. The other part is that you do want to make sure that you’re only having pre-approved buyers coming through your home. Most Realtors, they will meet with their clients before showing them any houses, making sure that they are able to really qualify for these homes. You don’t want just anyone coming through your home, especially if you’re still living there. Coming through, they could be taking things, they could also be wasting your time just looking at the house, have no intention of actually buying the house and that ends up being a waste of your time.
And so even though you think you’re saving money in that way, you’re really losing money because that’s time you could have been spent on investing into something that is going to help you increase your income. The other part about selling your home on your own is just making sure the transaction goes smoothly. Other than them being pre-qualified for the home. They want to have an inspection.
You want to make sure all the title work is done properly. Some people who have sold homes on their own, they have an attorney and that’s great. You definitely want to have an attorney if you do decide to sell your home on your own. However, the other thing with that is the attorney is going to get paid whether you close on a home or not. A Realtor only gets paid when the deal is done.
So in my opinion, I know for me, if I know someone that’s providing service to me and they’re only going to get paid when everything is done completely, then I know that they’re going to have a higher integrity and higher passion around getting the job done because that’s the only time that they’re going to actually get paid. The attorney gets paid whenever you hire them. I mean, how much of a concern are they about it actually closing, right? They want to get paid at the end of the day.
So those are other things that you want to look at. And the other part of it is because if you hire the right Realtor, obviously then they’re going to want to market your home properly to get the most exposure and negotiate for you to get you the best price possible for your home and get you the right terms and everything to make sure you have a smooth transaction and you walk away with the most money possible. We do a comparable analysis report so we’re able to make sure that you do, we have different strategies. We’re professionally trained to help you get that opportunity. So we don’t want to make sure that you’re not leaving money on the table or you want to make sure you’re not listing your home too high to where no one is even interested in your home.
And the other part of it is clients who are working with buyer’s agents are going to be set up on a customized home search that comes directly from the MLS. So your property, if it’s not on the MLS, they might not even know that it’s available because their realtor is representing them. And then if you’re not even going to compensate a buyer’s agent for bringing you a buyer, then it’s likely that that client isn’t actually even going to even see your home. So there’s a lot of factors that go into selling your home, and you want to make sure everything is done properly, especially if it’s one of your biggest assets and you want to avoid a lot of the hassle. So just think about those things.
If you are selling your home, there’s other things that go into why selling your home (by yourself) may not be the best fit, but definitely want to make sure that if you do sell your home, you do it the right way.
This has been “Is Selling Your Home By Yourself A Good Idea?” by Patrice Henderson of Designed Living Real Estate. Be sure to subscribe to her YouTube channel for all your real estate tips, home tours and advice. Get your FREE listing consultation or home evaluation to find out the best strategy to price your home.