It is no secret that many homeowners are planning to sell their homes in the next 12 months in Wake County and the Triangle area of North Carolina. Many of these would-be sellers are considering selling For Sale By Owner. As you look into this option, you see the great benefits that the national For Sale By Owner magazines give you to sell your home. Many of these benefits are accurate, but are they skewed? It is an easy decision if you only consider the positives to selling your home by yourself which chief among them is not paying a commission. However, most of these sellers do not consider the challenges that are a great disadvantage to your ability to be successful. It is no secret that about 80% of all For Sale By Owners end up listing with an agent due to these issues that I will be covering for you. Don't do yourself a disservice by ignoring the obstacles. This is not to say that you cannot and will not be successful selling without an agent, but the odds are not very good.
Marketing
Marketing is a major issue for the unprofessional who attempts to sell their home without an agent. It is not as easy as placing a yard sign and an ad in the local papers as it once was. Furthermore, many people are using these Internet websites to market their homes for a price, but how much success do they get for their money. No one single marketing item is more important than another when it comes to selling your home, but rather the entire package leads to success. The purpose of marketing is to gain attention for your product and to create an interest and demand for the product, your home. When someone doesn't market a home to all the available sources, then that home does not gain maximum exposure and maximum appeal. How many homes have you marketed and sold in your life? A professional real estate agent has a marketing plan in place that all of their listings get as they sell them.
Do you have the time to design a marketing campaign for your home with all the fliers, Internet marketing, MLS, signage, and pictures to sell your home quickly? It is not an easy task to design a flier or a website for your home to get maximum exposure, but a professional Realtor already has the bones complete for their home marketing plan and only has to place your home's information into the plan.
Contracts
Have you seen a copy of the latest Offer to Purchase contract that the North Carolina Bar Association has produced? Many less experienced real estate agents will have difficulty with this contract, not to mention those with no experience with these forms. As a seller, you may say that you don't need to know how to fill out this 7 page contract since it would be the buyer's responsibility. However, you need to know how to decipher it so you will not be taken advantage. An experienced and competent Buyer's agent will know how to make the offer most beneficial to their client. By the way, they write in these benefits even when they are dealing with a listing agent to see how much they can benefit their clients. Most of the contracts that are negotiated in the Triangle are negotiated over the terms, not only the price. My last 2 contracts as a buyer's agent the price was never even negotiated, it was the additional terms that went back and forth for a couple of days. Are you prepared to negotiate a contract that you know nothing about?
Legal Issues
Do you know how to keep the transaction legal and enforceable through to closing on your home? There are many legal issues that a seller must have prepared for a buyer that if the buyer does not have, they can legally end the contract and keep the earnest money. Do you know what a Property Disclosure document looks like or where to find one? Every home sold in North Carolina is supposed to be accompanied with a Property Disclosure form with a few exceptions. Do you need one for your home or not?
Also, do you have the form ready for the Home Owner's Association available for the buyer's approval? Can you really take the chance in our challenging market to not be completely prepared for this possibility?
City Sign Ordinances
Do you know what the local sign ordinances are and are you in compliance? The resulting fines for these violations can be quite substantial and could easily destroy the profit you hope to make by not hiring an agent. If you plan to sell without an agent, you need to investigate the sign ordinances to be compliant.
Time Requirement
This is an area where many For Sale By Owners fail in their quest to sell. They do not realize how time consuming it is to sell a home. Add all the marketing preparation time, the Contract negotiating time, the paper work, open houses, the showings, etc. I could not hope to print all the items that real estate agents to for a seller since the list would make this article too long for anyone to read. If you want to know all the things that real estate Professional do for you, please call or email me and I will get the list to you. It takes a great deal of time and what if it takes you 6 months to sell without an agent. Are you prepared to spend every spare minute you have for the next 6 months just to save a dollar in commission.
Pricing
Most people think this is the easiest part about selling a home, but they are sadly mistaken. Pricing a home is the most important thing that you can do to make a home sell quickly and appraise. Remember, even if you find someone willing to pay your price for your home, the home must appraise if a loan is to be taken out on the home. I even encourage my cash buyers to have an appraisal and make it a part of the contract that it must appraise for the sales price. Furthermore, a home that is overpriced will not sell quickly and a home that is under priced will have its challenges. Many potential buyers will see a home that is under priced considerably in a negative light thinking that something must be wrong with the home. Therefore, it must be priced right when it is first place on the market to make sure it sells quickly. Not to mention, that homes sold with a real estate professional tend to sell for 18% more than homes sold without an agent. Can you afford to give up that much value to avoid paying for an agent's commission?
This is just a list of Six of the major challenges that face an unrepresented seller in the Triangle area of North Carolina. For a more comprehensive list, please contact me and I will be happy to provide it for you.
3 comments:
Working on your own certainly requires some time and effort in order to prepare for the whole process. Working FSBO is not as easy as it may seem. But more and more people nowadays choose this way of marketing and selling their property instead of dealing with an agent and paying a commission. Recently I have come across one interesting service ClimateWatch that can help home buyers when searching an ideal place to live. It is called Climate Watch. It allows homebuyers to check what the climate is like in another town or city all year round before they move there.
I suggest to try StreetView on the website of Fizber to explore city neighborhoods. It feels as if you're walking down the street!
These tools are helpful in finding a place that you would like to live, but ultimately, I think that visiting the place you are considering is the most important aspect of choosing a city. A good, competent agent can give you a good indication as to the feel for the area and the benefits of living there.
As far as not using an agent, as a buyer, it is a no brainer since the sellers in North Carolina pay the commission for your agent. Any home sold via a Realtor, the sellers have already agreed on a commission and will not give you a price break for not having an agent. The result will be the listing agent getting a larger commission check and not having to represent you in order to get paid for your side. I will not represent both sides of a home transaction, so if a buyer comes to my listing without representation, they will not have the benefit of an agents knowledge and experince with their purchase.
The questions I always put to would be FSBOs, "How many homes have you sold?" I bet you have not sold as many as I have.
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