Use a real estate broker or try for sale by owner. It is an interesting question and hot topic in terms of today’s housing market.
So, what exactly do these real estate brokers do for their over inflated fees, and let’s face it couldn't home owners do better?
We're staring a recession in the face and unfortunately some of us home owners are faced with the reality that a house move could be on the way, perhaps due to job moves or for the less fortunate, perhaps those house payments are just becoming unmanageable. Either way we need to make a decision on how to deal with the transfer of our property to somebody new
The easy option is the obvious one;
You hire a real estate broker, the broker does everything from taking pictures to conducting searches, taking advantage of bulk advertising they reach a wider audience and deal with the lawyers when offers a made. The real estate broker shows people around your property in a way you had probably never dreamed possible and share information with other brokers across their network of branches. Brokers will network within the local community perhaps even their own competitors if it means a quick sale. Oh yes, the broker is your best friend, or are they? At the end of the day they make a small fee of ... 6%.
Let’s just run that again in simpler terms, they sell your house and you give them 6% of the entire value which has taken you years to accumulate. Let’s just do that one more time 6% on a $200,000 house that’s $12,000, or in the UK with average housing standing at £180,000, that’s £10,800!
Okay, I note from many websites that these broker fees are apparently coming down, but are home owners seriously telling me that if I give them $12,000 they can’t do the job of selling your house well within that budget as well as a broker?
Let’s consider the necessities here, what does the home owner need;
1. Pictures of the house taken from advantageous positions
2. A poignant and accurate written description of the property
3. To identify the category of buyer likely to be interested
4. present the details above to a sufficient number of individuals identified
5. An educated idea of the market value and above all realistic expectations of what the property might fetch
6. Some time on your hands to deal with correspondence and enquiries
7. A Positive Mental Attitude
I’m not even sure I want to bore you all with qualifying the above with explanations as they do all appear fairly straight forward.
There are plenty of individuals out there who would be more than enthusiastic to demonstrate their writing and/or photographic abilities to the masses and indeed knowing your market requires you to do one thing and one thing alone ... look in a mirror!
Today, there are a countless number of websites which will distribute your pictures across the UK or US for very minimal fees, if any at all. Perhaps the one thing which you may need to enlist help for is the PMA, but let’s face it, that is exactly what it says on the tin, and to demonstrate a front for a period of perhaps 30 minutes is within us all. If you cannot stretch yourself to a bit of selling you will almost certainly know somebody who can help you out once those appointments have been made.
Broker vs. For Sale by Owner?
We’re living in an age where self help is becoming more of normality than ever before. Personally, I am in the unenviable position of leasing which affords me the single advantage of not having to give the idea much serious consideration, but given the opportunity I do sincerely believe that having weighed up the options I would take on the challenge myself. My only stipulation would be to ensure that a good lawyer is on hand to help with the end game.