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Selling A House With No Realtor
Selling a house is a big deal. It's usually the most valuable item a person
or family owns (or partially owns) and it usually holds many emotional ties
to the owner. Houses are almost like big, wooden, expensive pets - except you
generally don't have to clean up after them. But unlike pets, everyone needs a house and those needs vary quite a bit. Some
people need five or six bedrooms while others only need two. Some people want
5,400 square feet while others only want 1,400. It used to be that the only
efficient way to find a house that suited one's needs was to go to the local
real estate brokerage to get a list of homes on the market matching one's desired
criteria.
The internet changed all that. People can now search
for houses for sale online with greater ease and accuracy than ever before.
Now that searching homes for sale is easy, you'd think that there'd be much
less use of realtors for the buying and selling of real estate, right? The typical
savings of 5-6% of a house's selling price is a pretty big motivator for people
to sell with no realtor.
However, most statistics so far have only shown marginal changes in the number
of people who actually sell their house on their own, compared to ten or fifteen
years ago, even though those that do are selling with greater speed and ease.
So what's going on here? Why aren't more people selling without a realtor now?
There are a couple of possibilities:
- Sellers don't mind paying 5-6% of the final sales price to an agent, in
exchange for the services provided
- Sellers don't know how to sell a house without a realtor
The second possibility covers a lot of ground, and is the more likely culprit.
Most people would prefer to keep $10,000 or more when selling their house, right?
The first thing a seller thinks about when they want to sell their house on
their own is where and how to advertise it. Everybody knows that you have to
do some advertising if you want to get buyers looking at the property. This
isn't a big issue. There are many web sites on the internet that specialize
in "for sale by owner" advertising,
which all provide comparable services for generally comparable prices. Some
get more traffic than others, which is basically the only real difference.
But what does a seller do when a buyer wants to walk through the house, and
more importantly, what does the seller do if the buyer wants to make an offer?
This is where many sellers start to get confused, scared, and closer to hiring
a realtor - simply because they don't know what to do next. An easy way to overcome
this problem for any seller is to build relationships with professionals who
can help you along the way. These professionals include:
There are others, but those listed above are a good start. This may sound strange
but even realtors can be a good resource (and trust me, you'll have plenty knocking
on your door as soon as you put a for sale sign in your front yard), because
sometimes they will help you do paperwork for a nominal fee.
If you get involved with a mortgage broker from the very beginning, you can
help yourself by making sure all interested parties have a letter of pre-qualification
prior to allowing them inside your home. This is a good idea not just because
it eliminates "window shoppers" and unqualified buyers, but it will
often scare away criminals who would enter your home with bad intentions.
In addition to pre-qualifying your buyers,
mortgage brokers will get the ball rolling for the completion of the sale. You'll
need to have a satisfactory purchase
contract in place between you and the buyer, or the buyer won't clear final
approval with their lender's underwriting department. Mortgage brokers will
also need to order an appraisal and a preliminary title report as part of the
regular process of approving and closing a mortgage loan, which each present
a necessary part of the home selling process.
Mortgage brokers, title representatives, and appraisers will also often know
home inspectors, home warrantors, and others who you may need before completing
the sale.
If you build a team of professionals while also advertising your house for
sale by owner, you stand a much better chance of successfully selling your house
without a realtor. Finding interested buyers is the easiest part - it's getting
everything else done that presents the true challenge. Good luck! Posted 7/21/2006
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