Everyone one wants to save money, and saving money on a big ticket item like real estate seems quite attractive. Let’s take a look at what you have to do to save money on your next real estate deal.
Low fee listings and FSBO offer the promise of getting your house into the MLS and out onto the internet. This is arguably the most important task in selling your home. Here are the things you need to do. Physically prepare your house for sale. Clean up, fix up the yard, remove one fourth of your possessions to open up the rooms, take great photos, study the market, both for recent closed sales as well as current competitors, price the house correctly, and hold open houses. Let’s say you do all of these thing well and you get some showings, but you don’t get an offer. Now what?
Most all sellers overprice their home for sale so it’s time to either improve the condition of your home and/or lower the price. Buyers aren’t stupid and they are dialed into current prices. They also probably have an agent so they are educated about the market. Let’s say you get all of these changes right and you have an interested buyer. Now what? Who’s writing the offer and on what contract? You don’t have a contract so you either need an attorney to represent you or use the standard buyer’s contract. So now the buyer’s agent agrees to write up an offer but they don’t represent you. They have a buyer’s broker agreement with the buyer. Who represents you? Well, no one. In addition, since you don’t have an agent in your court, the buyer’s agent knows she is going to do double the work so she writes in a higher commission for her extra work. Poof! Just like that your savings are gone. But let’s say you proceed. Someone else’s contract, offer, and terms, and no one negotiating on your behalf. Let’s say that somehow you get this done and now you are navigating through the offer. What are the terms of the offer? What are you disclosing, and when? By the way this is governed by state and federal law so be careful. What about repairs? What’s “normal”? There is no “normal”, just what’s negotiated. What about closing costs and seller concessions? Good, bad, high, low? One side will have an advantage here.
Let’s say you finally get to closing. Is the closing statement correct for all of the dozens of fees? Did you clear title correctly? Are all the bills paid and prorated correctly, or is there a chance that something might be left out on your side, increasing the chances of lawsuit. Real estate has become very litigious in recent years and there are lots of ways to make a mistake. That’s why the sales contract and accompanying required documents now run to dozens of pages. It’s really hard to do everything right without some help from a trained professional. Why not hire a pro? After all, your commission savings evaporated early in the process.
