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We are getting ready to put our house on the market and make a move across the country. We don't have a ton of equity in our house, so every penny we get will be important. We are trying to decide if we should try selling it on our own before we list with a realtor since saving the price of the commission would be helpful in our move.
Just how difficult is it to sell without a realtor? We know we wouldn't have the MLS exposure. What we don't know is how hard it is to handle all the paperwork and legalities without an agent. Can you hire an attorney to take care of this stuff?
Can anyone tell me what a realtor would do for us that we can't do for ourselves or hire a lawyer to do? Please excuse me if I'm asking frequently asked questions, I tried to search for answers before posting.
This is such a big undertaking, and any advice or suggestions are greatly appreciated!
Do you have any experience doing contracts? Do you know how to price your house? Do you know a local real estate attorney? What would you think if a Realtor could get you more money?
The only experience we have is I have sold two homes before I met my husband, and we have sold and bought one together. All of these transactions were done with realtors. The last house we sold sold in a weekend for our asking price. I do know the market and area is not as good as it was when that house sold. IF a realtor could get us more money, of course I'd use one, but I'm not sure that that would necessarily be the case.
You must have an idea of what youd like to sell the house for yes?
Speak with a couple realtors and see how they interpret the market price for your home.
If its more than you want then you may want to use a realtor.
Thats not the only consideration though. Not having the exposure and/or marketing tools a realtor would use could delay the sale of your home and end up costing you more in monthly mortgage payments every month it doesnt sell.
What is your home worth? A good realtor will show and explain market value, not just a guess of your home's value. A good realtor should not only list the home on the MLS (which is nothing short of great), have it professionally staged for professional photos, have a list of buyers/buyers agents he can send mass emails to, snail mail marketing to the area, a huge sphere of influence he will tell (facebook, social media).
If he/she is linked globally he can also market your home to other countries (international buyers in texas are 1 in 10 transactions).
May I suggest a compromise: Redfin will list for you for (typically) half the normal commission (1.5% instead of 3% in most of the places I've seen). You will be relying on computational models more than if you had a full-time realtor dedicated to you, but you'll still get a Redfin agent on your side and you'll have their resources at your disposal.
Having said that, I haven't used them myself, but an attorney friend (not an RE attorney) did and liked it. She was pretty savvy though. There are so many aspects to a real estate deal that ignorance can cost you a lot more than 1.5%. Budgetary pressure alone might provide incentive but it is no substitute for expertise.
I run a business and have been involved in several real estate deals - and while I might consider buying without an agent, I don't think I'd ever fly solo on the sale side. It's unfortunate in this case that you're moving across the country, because for a local move many agents will take a discount on the sale commission if they're getting the buy-side commission as well.
Have you had a recent appraisal done? Are you willing to accept it and list your home for what it is actually worth (and be willing to drop the price if it doesn't sell?)
Many buyers are turned off by FSBOs because they typically list too high and are unrealistic about what they can get for their home. They may be unwilling to negotiate either because they can't afford to take less for their home or they have a crazy sentimental attachment and may dig their heels in and get offended if someone tries to lowball them. If you are in the situation where you need to squeeze every penny out of the transaction, it sounds like you are setting yourself up for failure. Unless you are prepared to be realistic about the price and negotiate down, your home will likely just sit in the market forever (especially with such little exposure).
Is it possible that you could wait a few years to sell when you may have more equity? Maybe rent the place out after you move and use the money to rent a place in your new location?
Thank you, Auitaine, I will look into Redfin. Though I've heard of that site, I'm not familiar with how it works. I actually have been thinking that some sort of compromise would be nice~not flying solo, but something in between that and paying 6% of our sale to realtors.
dihappy, we do know what we'd like to get for our home. Unfortunately they aren't many comps for our house. We live on over 2 acres of wooded property, but it's right at the edge of a subdivision where small houses are crammed onto small lots. So, you can't fairly compare ours to those houses. There are only about 8 houses on our street that have comparable lots and then the road behind us has maybe 12 more that have similar properties.There's not too many recent sales in this small area, but one sold about 6 or 7 months ago right down the street from us that we are using as a good ballpark of how to price ours.
I realize not having our house on the MLS will greatly diminish our exposure, but we figured maybe a couple of months of trying FSBO might be worth a shot? I'd love to hear from someone that has had success with this!
but we figured maybe a couple of months of trying FSBO might be worth a shot? I'd love to hear from someone that has had success with this!
The cost: You'll lose prospective buyers who do find you if you haven't taken care of everything. Hard to put a number on that. Plus you'll still need attorneys for closing.
The benefit: A fixed amount of money you can weigh against the cost.
I don't hear a lot of FSBO success stories except from folks who really know the business.
I have only skimmed the threads here but check out the mysecretagent.com it is a very inexpensive flat fee to sell your home. You still do most of the work I think but the house gets on the MLS. Also, in my experience the problem with FSBOs is many owners can't photograph their house properly. When I check out redfin.com and see the FSBO's there... all the FSBO photos are blurry or upside down etc... And I dont want to waste my time on a house I cant view online first.
So be sure to clean and do a good job photographing the features.
Also it seems true that many FSBO's are overpriced. So if you can sell your house at market price without the hefty commission! Go For It!
Find a LOCAL flat fee listing service, it should be about $300 to get on the LOCAL MLS for 6 months, list on Zillow for FREE. I agree with the above that many FSBOs as well as many agents don't take good photos...hire a professional, should be a couple $100-200, you can probably find someone on Craigslist. Give it a go, and line up a RE attorney to help with the paperwork if you receive an offer. Also in your listing say you are "willing to work with agents".
Since you are by a subdivision, any chance your property has value for future development?
Good luck!
Last edited by gray horse; 03-02-2015 at 10:28 AM..
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