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Originally Posted by palor
We would like to sell our own home. In the past we have worked with realtors and we did not have the best experiences. Also we would like to get the most out of our home as possible. My question is in the state of PA does anyone know what I would need legally. ie: sales agreement ect... and we are could I get these forms. Also if my home is showed by a realtor/agent how do they get paid? If anyone could help me get started that would be great!
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All you really need is a RE attorney. If you go to a land title company, they'll usually have one that you can hire pretty cheaply to give you advice on the offer and what you need to do to make sure you've covered all the bases. The last one I used while selling didn't even charge me for all the pre-sale advice. The one I used the last time I wrote an offer charged about $50, and it was worth every penny.
Be very careful signing anything that an agent hands to you, and don't sign it if there's something that looks suspicious. Those forms are all written to benefit the realtors, and it may or may not be in your best interests to sign them. I put a blurb in my property flyer that I was willing to pay a 3% buyers agent commission upon closing, and when agents started handing me forms to sign, I handed them a copy of the flyer and told them it was already in writing. They weren't happy, but they showed the house anyway.
The discount broker is a good way to get your property listed on the MLS, which will help more people to see it, but don't count on that as being your only advertising. You should make up flyers on your own, and put them outside where people can get them. You should take advantage of any free advertising that you can get (such as Craigslist or local online classifieds), and if you know anybody who is good with a camera and/or photoshop, try to enlist their help to make those pictures look good. Keep churning the ads so they stay toward the top where people will see them.
If you know people who work at the local businesses, ask them if they could put a copy of your flyer on the bulletin board at work. HR people also get a lot of questions on housing when they're hiring or transferring people, so its a good idea to get a copy of your flyer into their hands too. Even if you don't know somebody there, don't be shy to walk in and hand them a copy.
Blogs are free to set up, and its a good idea to set one up to sell your house. Sometimes the online classifieds limit you to a little text and only a couple pictures, so if you can put in a link to your blog, you can show them a lot more.
The more work you put into selling, the better results you'll see. Even doing something as simple as putting together a list of how much all the bills are can give you an edge over the other houses. Buyers won't know how much it costs to heat and cool your house, and having that information at your fingertips helps to take away their worries.
In this market, do your best to stand
above the realtors. They may have 40 properties, and they only have enough time to give each one an hour or two a week. You only have one property, so it shouldn't be hard at all for you to give it at least 10 hours a week.
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