Why Should You Sell Your Home Privately?
This is a very important question that you need to ask yourself. Do I want to sell privately and save thousands in real estate commissions, or do I want to hire a real estate agent to sell it for me?
Let's go through some of the reasons why you should sell on your own.
1. MINIMIZE THE HASSLE AND FRUSTRATION
Selling through a real estate agent can be a lot of hassle and very frustrating.
Every time a real estate agent wants to show your home you are the one that has to leave. To me that is just wrong. You are the one that needs to speak up for your home, not a real estate agent that has never seen your home and has no ideas of the features and benefits of your home. So you are the one who knows your home and you are the one they want to leave. That does not seem right. And now you have to find somewhere to go for an hour while a prospective client is viewing your home. And many times this happens over supper time. Now you have to go out for supper which costs you even more money. By selling privately, you set the time that is convenient for you.
And every morning that you leave for work, you have to make sure things are spotless just in case someone comes to look at your home. You have no control over when someone comes to view your home. It would just be your luck that the day you were in a hurry and forgot to make the beds is the day someone would come to look at it.
One of my worst frustrations though has to be the real estate agents who bring clients over who are not really looking for your type of home. A real estate agent will bring over these clients to allow them to compare with other homes. They know full well that the buyer will not be interested in the home but still waste your time in showing it. By selling privately and advertising it on web sites like www.skhomes4sale.com , buyers will already have seen your home and will only book an appointment to view if they are serious.
Personal Experience:
My sister and brother-in-law decided to sell their home by real estate because they thought by selling it that way they would sell it quicker (that's another story). Anyhow, the real estate agent had not brought someone around for about 2 weeks. My sister called her agent inquiring about why no one had looked at it in 2 weeks. Well, later that afternoon, miraculously, someone wanted to look at it??? Yea Right!!! This stuff kills me!!!
2. YOU CAN "SELL" YOUR HOME BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE
Let me ask you a question. Who do you think knows your home the best? A real estate agent who has maybe looked through it once (if you're lucky)? Or you, who have lived in it day-in day-out? That seems like a pretty easy question to answer huh?
In selling our homes privately, my wife did an incredible job of selling the features and benefits, because she is the one that lived in it every day. She understood the features and benefits of our house. She had lived it and had a hundred times the compassion for the home that a real estate agent would have.
Personal Experience:
The home that my sister sold through real estate was sold in a similar manner. Because their home was for sale for over 3 months, they decided to take a more active role in finding someone to buy there home because they were moving to another city. As it turned out, some friends of theirs knew some friends that were looking for a house similar to theirs. They brought them over and showed them the house (without the real estate agent). And guess what...they bought the house. And you guessed it, their real estate agent had his hands in the cookie jar to get his commission.
Doesn't seem fair does it. Hard earned equity gone to someone who didn't do his job. So my sister took control of the situation. If she would have done this at first and sold it privately they would probably have sold it in less than a week.
3. YOU'RE THE ONE IN CONTROL . . . NOT THE REAL ESTATE AGENT
When you deal with a real estate agent, they require you to sign a contract where you are obligated to them. If you happen to be a little proactive in selling your home and find someone at work that would like to buy your home and you want them to see the house, you have to go through the real estate agent. If they happen to buy, the real estate agent gets his commission even though he did not find the buyer. That somehow does not seem fair.
Also, you decide when it is convenient to show your home to prospective clients, not a real estate agent. You can give yourself some time to make sure that your home is ready for viewing. No one will come to see your home when you are not home and when it may not be in the cleanest state.
4. NO COMMISSIONS MEANS MORE $$$ IN YOUR POCKET
Real estate agents take about 6-7% of the sale. Let's do a quick exercise:
Take the value of you home and multiply it by 7%, 6% and 5%.
For example:
$150,000 x 7% = $10,500
$150,000 x 6% = $9,000
Worksheet at the end of this section to calculate your own savings
You decide for yourself if it is worth the hassle of getting a real estate agent involved. This means:
- having someone else show your home who doesn't have the slightest idea of the benefits of your home
- having someone act as a middleman to negotiate the price of your home with the buyer.
This is a lot of money for such a service. My feeling is that the fee real estate agents charge is outrageous.
Real estate agents justify their fee by stating that they have a great network of buyers who are looking for homes in your area. Admittedly they do have a great network of clients, but with technology now-a-days any good "for sale by owner" web site will also have a great network of buyers looking for homes, and will charge considerably less than what a real estate agent will charge. Take for example, www.skhomes4sale.com . We get over 20 million hits per month, the vast majority of which are buyers looking for a home. 50% of the homes on our web site sell within 2 weeks and a month.
Here is a quick analysis on the home I sold in 2001
Sold for approx. $125,000
Total cost of advertising: $50.00 (it sold in a day, so cost was not too high)
Commission on $125,000 @ 6% = $7500.00
Hours it took me to get ready to sell my home and show it: 16 hours
Final Calculation:
$7,500 - $50.00 = $7,450 / 16 hours = approx $465.00
I figure that by selling my home privately I made $465.00 per hour. I worked 16 hours and saved $7,450.00. Now wouldn't that be nice to make everyday?
WOW!!
5. YOU CAN SELL YOUR HOME FASTER THAN A REAL ESTATE AGENT
My sister thought that by going with real estate, their home would sell faster. This could not be further from the truth. In fact, it is the opposite. By listing it with real estate will cause you a delay in selling your home.
You will need to inflate the asking price of your home. After about 2-3 months of people coming through your home, you will realize that your price is too high and you will have to drop it in order to sell it. If you sold it privately, you could have asked this price in the first place and sold it quicker. Now you get that price but have to pay real estate commissions on top of that. Not really a WIN-WIN situation huh?
6. IT'S EASY
I can't say this enough....Buying and selling your home privately is EASY . . . if you know what you are doing. And that is why we have created this step-by-step workbook
If you can sell your own car, you can sell your own home.
Real estate agents say the reason you need to list with them is because they have a network of people who are looking to purchase a home. By selling it privately, you don't have that network of buyers. Ten years ago I may have agreed with this statement. Today, though, I would strongly disagree. There are other marketing options open today that did not exist ten years ago. Specifically, the internet has opened up these new marketing opportunities.
For sale by owner web sites have popped up all over the place. All you need to do is find a web site that receives a lot of hits and have a good track record of people selling their homes. It is also important to choose a web site that does all the work for you. Many sites on the internet will have you send the pictures and do the write up your self. The good sites on the internet will come out take the pictures, do the write up for you, provide you with a sign and help you with the process of selling your home. This should include names of real estate lawyers who will provide you with an offer to purchase and will answer any questions you have on the legal side of selling a home.
At www.skhomes4sale.com we help you sell your home from start to finish. We don't just advertise your home on our web site. We have partnered up with various seller resources including lawyers, home inspectors, and home improvement to help sell your home. We provide a buying and selling community.
Our web site http://www.skhomes4sale.com receives over 20 million hits per month and the people visiting our site are buying.
When deciding on a For Sale by Owner web site, consider the following:
- How many hits do they get?
- How long have they been in business?
- Are houses moving (selling) on the site?
- Do they come out to take the pictures?
- Do they do the write up and create the web site?
- Do you get a sign?
- Is the fee you pay a monthly fee or a one time fee?
- What if you need to make changes? Do they charge for that?
- Ask if you can contact some of the people advertising to get there comments on your service.
- Do they have a local rep or are you dealing with someone 1000 miles away?
Other things you can consider:
- Call a client on the site that SOLD quick
- Call a client that has been on a while and has not yet sold
