How to find a buyer? (Phoenix: real estate, how much, houses)

[jco]

I'm trying not to get too excited, but we have a really good job prospect that would require us to sell our house in the next couple of months. Fortunately, we have enough equity in the house to really cut the price down, but even so, I hardly trust a realtor to do all they can to sell our house when they have so many others listed. (We'll still be listing, though.) Other than listing on craigslist, does anyone have an tips for finding a buyer ourselves?

[sierraAZ]

Originally Posted by jco

I'm trying not to get too excited, but we have a really good job prospect that would require us to sell our house in the next couple of months. Fortunately, we have enough equity in the house to really cut the price down, but even so, I hardly trust a realtor to do all they can to sell our house when they have so many others listed. (We'll still be listing, though.) Other than listing on craigslist, does anyone have an tips for finding a buyer ourselves?

I've seen threads on this topic in the RE forum.

[sheena]

Originally Posted by jco

I'm trying not to get too excited, but we have a really good job prospect that would require us to sell our house in the next couple of months. Fortunately, we have enough equity in the house to really cut the price down, but even so, I hardly trust a realtor to do all they can to sell our house when they have so many others listed. (We'll still be listing, though.) Other than listing on craigslist, does anyone have an tips for finding a buyer ourselves?

Where do you live maybe I'll buy it

[Jammie]

Originally Posted by sheena

Where do you live maybe I'll buy it

OMG, she lives in the town you're considering. You know, the one closest to the beach????

JCO, you've been so quiet. The last I knew you were thinking of relocating in the future. I hope you have good luck with that.

[jco]

Originally Posted by Jammie

OMG, she lives in the town you're considering. You know, the one closest to the beach????

JCO, you've been so quiet. The last I knew you were thinking of relocating in the future. I hope you have good luck with that.

This really came out of the blue. We stopped sending out resumes and planned to wait until prices start to go up and were totally fine with that! Life changes fast! Either way, we'll be happy.

[jco]

Originally Posted by sierraAZ

I've seen threads on this topic in the RE forum.

I was hoping to find some tips specific to the Phoenix area. I'll have to check out that forum, too.

[Captain Bill]

Originally Posted by jco

I'm trying not to get too excited, but we have a really good job prospect that would require us to sell our house in the next couple of months. Fortunately, we have enough equity in the house to really cut the price down, but even so, I hardly trust a realtor to do all they can to sell our house when they have so many others listed. (We'll still be listing, though.) Other than listing on craigslist, does anyone have an tips for finding a buyer ourselves?

JCO, As you know I'm a realtor so take consider the source as I respond to your questions.

It is extremely difficult for an owner to find a buyer themselves, especially in this market. In a buyers market is easier. The statistics are that 75% of buyers trying to sell themselves eventually end up listing with a realtor.

Over 80% of home buyers begin their search on the internet and those hire a realtor to help them in the final stages of locating and purchasing their home.

The rest begin by calling a realtor.

One reason it is so difficult is that if your home is not on the MLS it is not seen by the realtors who are searching for a home for their buyers. We don't search realtor.com because the search parameters are limited. On the MLS we can search for over 150 criteria to really narrow the search down for our buyers.

The successful realtors spend a lot of money marketing for buyers, and a lot of time networking and communicating with realtors out of state to develop relationships so those realtors will refer their relocating clients to us. I have relationships with a large pool of realtors in various states across the country and that helps me to find buyers.

The last two buyers I had came to me from the internet. The friend of one lives in Seattle. The buyer lives in Vancouver. The friend saw one of my 6 web sites and referred me to his friend, who consequently bought a home through me. The other buyer saw an article I had written that was published on Realtor.com and called me because of that article. Another buyer saw my full page ad in a magazine and called.

The realtors who take the maximum advantage of the internet in marketing, which is expensive by the way, in addition to some very expensive local media marketing will attract buyers as well as sellers.

There is much more to marketing a home than what I've mentioned above. That is really just a start.

You should interview a few realtors and have each of them spell out in detail exactly how they will market your home. Compare the price range they suggest with the actual comps of active, expired, and sold listings. Make sure that you are pricing the home at or slightly below the market if you need to sell it fast. Also it needs to be spotless and preferably staged so that it shows well.

The realtor should take around 50 good photos to make sure they have shots that will best display the features of your home.

Even then it is difficult in this market, but using the stragegy above will give you the best chance of selling it within a couple of months.

Bill

[cxray]

I would get my own license if I were you. Courses cost less than $500 and you can complete them in as little as 2 weeks if you go full-time. If you or your significant other can get a license, I would do that. You wil save yourself thousands of dollars by representing yourself. I'm in the process of getting my own real estate license. I have no desire to sell houses for a living, but should I choose to sell and buy another house in the near future, I can do that without the pain of dealing with a real estate agent. My wife and I pretty much did all the work in finding our current house. All realtors do the same thing. They take pictures of your house with their digital camera and then put them up on the MLS. That's essentially it. They might put those pics up on some other websites but ultimately the MLS is where all realtors and the clients go to search for houses. Getting a real estate license empowers you. Knowledge is power and the more you know, the less likely someone can cheat or mislead you. Wouldn't it be nice to have some knowledge of the industry without completely relying and depending on the expertise of a realtor? Remember that real estate agents are ultimately salesmen. They dress well, drive nice cars and spout a lot of b.s. to look and sound important. Can you really trust everything they say?

You don't want to deal with a real estate agent if you can help it. They don't have your best interests at heart. They will tell you what you want to hear ie: "I want to make you happy so I get repeat business from you" They are only trying to acquire their commission. They will constantly harrass you about making upgrades and paying a lot more money to improve your house to insure it sells faster even if there is a possibility that it will sell without the upgrades; they won't want to take that chance. They don't want you to waste their time so they will encourage you to fix every little problem in the house so they can sell it. They will put a lot of pressure on you to do this and call you incessantly at work etc. If you sell it on your own, you can pretty sell it as it is with a few minor changes. You can even negotiate more freely without a realtor breathing down your back.



They also don't care about maximizing the amount you sell it for. It doesn't make much of a difference to them if you get another 10-20 grand for your house; it doesn't really affect their bottom line that much. ABC's 20/20 proved this with a Real Estate special. The realtor doesnt' care how much you get for your home. He or she just wants you to sell it period. They are not going to haggle over 20-50 grand and lose a potential buyer even it means more to you. This is why you will see the buyers agent and the seller's agent always chatting in secret. Trust me, you will see this all the time. Your agent will be walking next to you but when the buyer's agent calls, your agent will suddenly walk away so you can't hear the details. They prefer you not be there. The reason for this is their clients will discover the buyer and seller's agent only care about each other and not their clients. They are just trying to get a deal done so they can both make their commissions and leave.They could care less about fighting for what the client wants.

If you can't get your own real estate license, see if you have a friend or an acquaintance that doesn't sell real estate full time and will split the commission with you. There are a lot of people like myself that don't sell realestate fulltime and have access to the MLS. They will represent you and sell your house and split their commission with you.

[jco]

I certainly never thought of getting my own license to do this before, but I think that even if I don't, a lot of others will benefit from your advice, cxray.

I plan to list with a realtor, but I still want to try to do all I can to find a buyer. A close friend of ours is a realtor, and we're hoping that he would let us out of the contract if we find our own buyer. Basically, we plan to list for way less than every house in our sub-division, but we can cut the price another 15k if we don't have to pay realtor fees. I don't know how to get the word out about this except by listing on craigslist. Should I look into running an ad in the paper or listing on forsalebyowner.com? Perhaps this is all I can do. We're waiting until my husband's second interview next week to make a final decision on whether or not we list, but it would be nice to have some ideas for a quick sale.

[sablebaby]

Originally Posted by jco

I certainly never thought of getting my own license to do this before, but I think that even if I don't, a lot of others will benefit from your advice, cxray.

I totally agree with cxray about getting your license!! It does take a time commitment, but it's so worth it. I've had my license twice in the last 5 years. I got it the first time but did nothing with it and let it go. The second time was when we were in the middle of our home search and after using 6 different agents got completely fed up. I was doing half the work of locating homes, while they did very little other than unlocking the doors for us. I knew I could do a better job representing myself. I had to go back to school and retake the state exams to get my license again. 3 weeks later it was done and we were happy campers being able to find homes at all times of the day or night. Plus the knowledge you learn is invaluable. It felt great to be in charge.

Now, it will cost some money to get started. The school is usually cost about $350 but then comes all the fees you normally don't know about until later. The NAR, AAR, PAR, ARMLS, brokerage, exam and other fees. I think after everything it cost about $1000. And these are mandatory fees.

Good luck!