May Home Maintenance Tips
Happy May! We welcome spring flowers, Cinco de Mayo, Mother’s Day and the unofficial start of summer-Memorial Day. We endured big rain storms in April
As a REALTOR®, I work closely with homeowners who want to sell their homes. Some sellers are worried about their bottom line and believe that selling the home themselves will help alleviate this burden. By listing the home themselves on a website or for sale by owner on a social marketplace, they hope to find the right buyer who is willing and able to buy their home for a good price all while not having to pay a REALTORS® commission. Maybe they know someone who did it and they seemed to saved big on commissions so they think it will be easy – and save them money. Yet once they scratch the surface, they realize how much work, thought, organization, and attention it takes to keep a sale together while navigating the legality of keeping everything moving forward. This is the definition of what a REALTOR® does.
FSBO is an acronym for “For Sale By Owner” and refers to a homeowner listing their home for sale without using a REALTOR®.
Listing with a REALTOR® means you list your home through a licensed real estate broker who represents you in the sale of your home and is, in turn, paid a commission.
A REALTOR® can provide a report that will help you track sales history and neighborhood trends, as well as market your home to their network and advertise it on multiple websites.
An experienced REALTOR® can also help you price your home appropriately, negotiate contracts, and provide support during showings and after the sale of your home is complete. When selling your home, it is always important to have a professional angling on your side.
Here are some stats put out by the National Association of REALTORS® that looked at all the sales in 2021 and compiled figures to represent the market. Below are the stats regarding For Sale By Owner homes.
Only 7% of recent home sales were FSBO sales this year.
FSBOs typically sell for less than the selling price of other homes; FSBO homes sold at a median of $260,000 last year, significantly lower than the median of agent-assisted homes at $318,000.*
The majority of FSBO sellers, 57%, knew the buyer of the home.
*The difference in median price is 17%, the average REALTOR® commission is a fraction of that.
Check out the NAR website and other interesting stats about homeownership in 2021.
One of the biggest considerations is exposure. How do you plan to advertise your home being for sale? Advertising on social maketplace sites or paying for placement on a popular home search site? Do you plan to declutter and clean your home? Have professional photos taken, a 3D tour, or marketing materials ready as a take-a-long with potential buyers? How about fielding questions about the age of appliances, roof, fence, will you paint before they buy, will you replace the carpet, does the living room light stay with the house?
With a REALTOR® listed home, the REALTOR® will handle this. They will walk you through the process of decluttering, suggested cleaning, and staging your home. They will order professional photos, possibly a video or 3D tour, and professionally printed marketing material that will have all the important information on it to remind them of how amazing your home is. Along with fielding any and all questions, most of the questions you will answer once and the REALTOR® will respond to the same questions multiple times, saving you a lot of repetition.
A REALTORS® job is to assist individuals in selling or buying a home, this is how they earn their living. If you decide to sell your home FSBO, do you plan to compensate the buyer’s agent? REALTOR®s may be leery of working with a FSBO in hopes their commission will be paid.
With a REALTOR® listed home, other REALTORS® feel confident that everyone is getting paid because a professional REALTOR® has educated their client on how the process works, explained the fees, and is there through the entire transaction. There is a relief for the buyers to know their interest is being handled between two professionals.
Choosing a price may be difficult. The estimate online isn’t telling you the whole story. It is simply an algorithm collecting sales, tax data, mortgage amounts, and length of occupancy to give you a number. It is not considering what interior upgrades the house down the street had that sold last month, or that you may have an extra bonus space that could be utilized as an in-home office.
A REALTOR® will run a market report that will show comparable homes in your neighborhood, and a price range you could list your home for. They will be able to suggest a price and why it may differ from what you hope to sell it for. The price will be educated and backed by data.
Showing your home could be tricky. How much information is too much information? I have found owners selling their own homes tend to overshare, in-turn overwhelming the buyers and potentially scaring them away.
With a REALTOR® listed home, the showings are automated through an online scheduling software that other REALTORS® have access to. You will be asked to approve showings and tidy up your home, and step out prior to the showing, but that is it. You will not be in contact with the buyers and that is for the best. There are ways of disclosing information you wish the buyers to know in a productive way using forms and conveyance sheets that a REALTOR® can prepare with you and present it on your behalf.
If you are a lawyer or have past experience as a REALTOR®, then you should be able to navigate the sales contract and other forms with little to no issue. Selling your home to ensure everyone will uphold the details of the deal can be tricky to manage.
A REALTOR® has training and experience working with these forms. They understand which forms to use and how to keep everyone in line and performing. They use standardized forms that are reviewed and improved constantly. This ensures everyone is upholding the same set of standards and service to our clients.
With all of this said, there are people who successfully sell their homes on their own and are pleased with their experience. I am here to help you sell or buy your home and I will be the professional who keeps everything in line and moving forward.
If you still think that selling your home For Sale By Owner is the way to go, then I can still help you. For a flat fee, I can help set up the paperwork, keep the timeline in order, help negotiate both sides, and ensure the transaction is smooth and is completed.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I hope it helped you. Please share it or pin it to your Pinterest board for future reference.
– Andrea Jean
Hi, I’m Andrea Jean. I am a real estate agent with Fairfax Realty Select serving the Alexandria, Vienna, and Clifton Virginia areas. Follow along as I help my clients buy and sell their dream home…or build it.
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