Selling Your House Without a Realtor
Selling your house without a realtor is a growing trend these days. The influence of the Internet, use of forms, and desire to avoid thousands of dollars in realtor commissions are the reasons.
Selling Your House Without a Realtor
Despite popular belief, selling your house without a realtor is much easier than people try to crack it up to be. Real estate agents try to scare you into thinking that you won't be able to sell your house without a realtor, but in reality they just don't want to lose the big commission they'd receive for their services. Selling your house without a realtor is actually a viable option that every homeowner looking to sell should consider. In fact, more and more are doing it every day.
Realtors are not known for providing their services for cheap. Consider your home and the price at which you are thinking of listing it. If you intend to sell it for $200,000, a realtor's commission will be $12,000 based on the usual six percent commission. A sales price of $300,000 raises the commission to $18,000 while $400,000 results in a whopping $24,000 commission. Are you really willing to throw away large chunks of your equity on such "services?" You should not be.
If you are trying to decide whether you should be selling your house without a realtor, there is something you should know. Over 70 percent of homebuyers now look to the Internet to find properties. You don't need a realtor to list your property on the net. In fact, we let you list a property for free for the first 30 days and then a whopping $25 a month thereafter. Hmmm, free to $25, or $12,000 to $24,000 in commissions? The answer seems fairly straightforward to me.
One of the issues sellers get nervous about is documentation. Again, this shouldn't be a concern. The documents used in the sale of a property are all pre-printed forms. A realtor doesn't provide a great deal of expertise in this area. Their knowledge pretty much runs to the extent of knowing that certain forms are required. Sounds like a nominal amount of knowledge in exchange for a six percent commission. In truth, you can head to any office supply store and buy a FSBO kit that has everything you need, or you can get a how-to book for your state in a bookstore, or you can use a link from a page on our site that goes into the issue of real estate forms in more depth.
The real key to selling your house without a realtor is the Internet. Specifically, you want a site like ours that is designed to facilitate FSBO listings. The key to using our site successfully is to provide information and photographs. You should think of your listing as a personals advertisement on a dating site. Provide plenty of information regarding the property and as many pictures as possible. Potential buyers want to see what is being offered, not guess at euphemistic real estate phrases like "cozy." Remember, over 70 percent of buyers now look to the Internet for properties. Give them what they want and you will do fine.
Selling your house without a realtor may sound a bit intimidating at first, but thousands of people do it every day. The key is to getting a basic understanding of the process, price your home appropriately and list it with photographs on the net. Follow these steps and you will save a bundle on real estate agent commissions.