When the time comes to sell your home, most owners have a common objective in mind and that is to make the largest profit possible. If this is your objective, you have considered selling on your own to save on brokerage fees.
This can be a practical option for some. Before making that decision, it’s important to have a complete understanding of what it really takes to sell a property. On the surface, selling property may seem fairly simple. There are countless TV shows that feature people completing seamless real estate transactions. Let’s say you get figure out the value of your property, take photos, write a description, and post the listing online. Easy enough, right?
If you have done everything effectively and have a hot property, you will get buyer inquires. Let's say you even completed a few showings. This is where things can start to become overwhelming.
You may be asking yourself:
How will I manage and accomodate buyer inquires?
What do I do if I am not receiving buyer inquiries?
How many buyers will truly feel comfortable with the owner present?
How will I know if the people visiting your home are serious and qualified?
How much time can I allot to for showings and following up?
Selling a home is an involved process that requires time, patents, knowledge, and skill.
The latter two being the most important aspects and the two are learned from experience. There are million different things that go wrong at any stage of the process, many of which can the kill deal. Talented real estate agents sell 100s of properties in their careers. They have seen most, if not all all, of these issues before and work proactively to ensure they don't occur.
Achieving the goal of netting the most profit is a full-time job.
One must: respond to inquires in a timely fashion, keep track of those inquiries, accommodate buyers’ schedules to coordinate showings, follow up with them after showings, coordinating offers, negotiating, arranging the tedious board package, staying on top of the other involved parties (management company, mortgage banker, and real estate attorney, etc.)
Real estate agents do all of this and more to ensure you net the most money for your property. This is their full-time job. The right agent will be able to target qualified buyers, have a creative strategy to bring them in, and ultimately negotiate the most favorable terms possible. This could be the reason why only 4% of arm’s length real estate transactions are by done by owners.