Reasons to Sell Your Home with a Real Estate Professional

By the KCM CrewArizona REALTOR® Magazine » April 2011 Should you spend the money on a real estate commission or save that money by selling your home by yourself? That is a question many home sellers ask themselves. Today, we want to discuss why it is crucial to have a true professional guiding you through the minefield of challenges that exist in the current real estate market. The housing market today is more challenging than it has ever been and seems to be becoming more difficult each day. What impact will foreclosures have on prices? Which loan products that were available just last month are no longer available? How do you convince perspective purchasers to pull the trigger on an offer when everyone is telling them that they should see another 100 houses before they make a decision? These are tough questions even for a trained, experienced professional. The lay person would find it almost impossible to keep abreast of this rapidly evolving industry. Here are six important reasons to use a real estate professional: 1. Pricing Is Difficult Just a few years ago, you didn’t have to worry about overpricing your home. If it was too high, all you needed to do was wait as historic appreciation was taking place. The situation is quite different today. With the possibility of a continuing drop in home values, overpricing your property will cost you time. In this market, time costs you money. A professional real estate agent will discuss how increasing inventory could dramatically impact the value of your property in the months to come. They will help you set the right price in today’s market. 2. Negotiating Ability Is Crucial Buyers today have an almost unlimited supply of homes from which to choose. They realize this puts them in a great negotiating position. Most buyers are now being represented by an agent. Sellers need to also be represented by a professional expert trained to negotiate real estate contracts. 3. Mortgaging Is Key to the Deal The biggest impact on the housing market collapse is that lending standards are much stricter today than they were a few short years ago. Rules are constantly changing. Even FHA has gone through a guidelines overhaul in the last several months. You need a real estate expert who has teamed up with a knowledgeable mortgage professional to make sure that the buyer in the deal is in fact capable of obtaining a mortgage. Losing time with an unqualified buyer costs you money in a market where prices are falling. 4. Your Family’s Safety We have always found it puzzling that the same person who will lock every door and window and set the alarm today will then allow total strangers into their house tomorrow. The real estate industry trains its practitioners to take steps to protect themselves and their clients. Take advantage of putting a person between you and the person calling on an ad or a yard sign. 5. You Probably Have More Important Things to Do Selling a home could turn into a full time job. Learning the necessary disclosures, coordinating the dates of your closings, dealing with a challenge regarding your appraisal and re-negotiating the offer after an engineer’s report are just a few of the concerns you may face. You would probably be better off spending that time with the items important to you and your family and leaving the challenges to your agent. 6. Exposure to Potential Purchasers When sellers think of getting exposure for their home, they immediately think of print advertising. Certain print media might still have a place in marketing a niche property (luxury, equestrian, waterfront, etc.). However, we want our readers to know that although print advertising has traditionally been the way homes had been introduced to the buying public, the medium has been losing its impact over the last several years. Recent studies have shown that less than 3% of buyers find their home through newspaper advertising today. At the same time, over 30% find a home through the Internet. Let’s take a look at how real estate experts market listings today. Multiple Listing Systems (MLS)Once you list your property with a member of the local MLS, every other member of the system is alerted that your house is now available for purchase. In a matter of hours, hundreds or thousands of real estate professionals have the ability to easily share the specifics of your home with each of their buyers. There is nothing an individual seller can do to come close to this immediate exposure to thousands of potential buyers. Internet SitesAlmost every real estate company and many agents have their own websites promoting their homes for sale. Many companies also have standing relationships with national listing aggregators (Trulia, Zillow, Yahoo!, etc.). It would be impossible for a seller to get the width of exposure the real estate agent has at his/her fingertips. Social MediaMore and more industry professionals are learning the power of social media when promoting real estate. They have created a community of followers looking for information about the region or neighborhood where they work. Of course, a percentage of those followers will be interested in what is taking place with the real estate market within that area. A new venture, which has not yet been fully utilized, social media is beginning to play a larger role in the marketing of an area and the homes in that area. Bottom Line To make sure the sale of your home is handled professionally — hire a trained professional. In the long run, you will wind up with more money in your pocket and have fewer challenges with the move. This article was originally published on the Keeping Current Matters Blog.