Pros/Cons of hiring a real estate agent for selling a house? (recommendation, appraisal)

[bigdaddycool1111]

What are some pros and cons of hiring a real estate agent for selling a house? Is it worth the big commission? Just seeking advice, thanks.

[Rakin]

Assuming you hire a good experienced agent and not a cheap do nothing agent:

1. They may be able to push the price up much higher than you can get.
2. They hopefully will guide you through the crazy Buyers and their crazy offers. (not to mention the crazy agents)
3. They know the loopholes in the contracts, how to handle Inspection negotiations.
4. They will help you prepare your house and photos to appeal to Buyers.
5. Their company has many agents and a presence in the market.
6. They have years of experience and many transactions to give you the best advice possible to protect you, your house and your money.

Or you could hire a crappy agent at a discount who does nothing but put you in the MLS system.

[jdallas]

I'm going to come at this from the opposite side and list a couple cons of not using a real estate agent-

1. you either have to be present or arrange to have someone be present at each and every opportunity to show the property to a prospective buyer.
2. FSBO buyers can be very unreliable when it comes to being punctual and respecting your time/effort. Think Craigslist types.
3. Agents tend to pre-qualify prospective buyers because they don't want to waste their own time with window shoppers.
4. When you deal directly with a buyer, emotions come into play more often.

When I sold my last house, the only pros from Rakin's list that applied were 3 and 6 but it was worth it to me to not have to deal with the cons of going it on my own.

I'll also add that another pro of using an agent is that they usually have a great contact list of contractors in the event an inspection turns up unplanned repairs/replacement (always happens btw). They know the contractors they use always show up and will get the job done to satisfy the buyer.

[MrRational]

Originally Posted by bigdaddycool1111

What are some pros and cons of hiring a real estate agent for selling a house?
Is it worth the big commission? Just seeking advice, thanks.

Here's a hint:
If you need to ask the question... you need the help.

If you can't articulate and rather specifically HOW you might sell some specific property
as a private party, what the pitfalls and issues and conflicts might be, and how that might
or might not compare to YOUR specific property... you need the help of someone who can.

Generally... sellers need agents and buyers need lawyers.

[nitynity]

I recently closed on my house and bought another one. So this is my take.

Seller Agent: Probably not if you can handle the paperwork yourself.
I hired this guy who claimed to sell my house 20k+ than what I thought was reasonable market price. House stayed on the market for 4.5 months before I ended up selling it to a nationwide rental company for 5k less than what I thought would be reasonable price. (One Realtor who flips the house told me it was way overpriced as well) Pretty much I paid his commission for none other than the paperwork (prepare counter offers etc.) He was in the profession since 1978 and I thought he knew what he was talking about. He didn't give any suggestions towards prepping my house, everything looked GOOD to him. Couple of my friends told me to remove personal pics etc before putting up in the market. So his 35+ yrs exp was useless to me. He even forced me to accept the rate offered by the rental company which was 5k less than the asking price since I already lowered the price by 5k 2 days ago. So that would be 10k drop in less than a week. He knew his contract was expiring in 2 weeks and wanted the commission desperately.

Buyers Agent:
I worked with this guy for almost 8 months before we made the offer. He was helpful, knowledgeable and gave us suggestions, pros and cons of all properties we saw. Only con was he was a very busy guy (closed 60+ properties in 6 months) and most of the time ended up not showing up for appts which he committed, instead sent his less experienced bro to do the showings who couldn't answer most of our questions even after we specifically mentioned we prefer him for showings. But we did end up buying a house of our choice. At first we thought the asking price was very high compared to neighborhood price and was worried about appraisal. But that's when his expertise come into play, he said the property is unique and hence the neighborhood price is inaccurate and he wouldn't worry about the appraisal at all. Appraisal came back at asking price. But again he didn't show up for closing due to his busy schedule and we were on our own for the closing. But it went smooth and straight forward. So whatever.

My recommendations: Yes go through an agent especially in TX where there will be foundation issues with most houses. But find someone in your local area and not someone who is too busy to make you feel important as well.

We made an offer to this house within hours it came in the market and they accepted it. So the Sellers agent made her commission in 2 hours while ours had to work for 8 months. In addition the Seller agent couldn't even get all the repair paperwork sent to us before closing and we threatened to postpone the closing to get some initiative. She gave us the attitude on closing date because of that while giving us the keys. Turned out she was a newbie with 1.5 years exp as Realtor. So there are people who works at grocery stores and become Realtor over night for easy money. Stay away from those.

If you can get a lawyer or someone to do the paperwork and do some research, I would avoid Sellers agents at all cost.

Hope it helps.

[Silverfall]

The pros (I'm assuming you are interviewing several and are hiring a good one):

You don't have to do any research into current laws regarding the sale of your home.
You don't have to research market conditions and stay on top of new listings/sales as they happen.
You don't have to interface with buyers or buyer agent's directly. Some people aren't nice and you won't know until you are in the transaction.
You don't have to deal with paperwork.
You don't have to deal with being available for showings of your property (biggest FSBO issue).
You don't have to try and figure out what is normal and customary for real estate transactions in your area.
You don't have to spend your time marketing the home and holding open houses.

The Cons:
You might hire a bad agent if you don't know how to interview people well. Then you are stuck.
It is expensive.