Do I need a REALTOR®?

Welcome to our BRAND NEW video and blog series!  Our ‘Wise Seller Series’ will include a series of blog posts intended specifically for people thinking about selling their home and will feature tons of great information, tips, and tricks to help you sail through the home selling process.

Selling your home is a BIG deal and let’s face it, using a REALTOR® to sell it for you can seem expensive. One of the first questions a seller needs to answer is:  Do I really need a REALTOR® to sell my home?

We know you have choices.  Today there are many options for home sellers include everything from ‘For Sale By Owner’ (FSBO) to turning the sale of your home over to a professional who will take you through the entire process making the effort on your part as minimal as possible.

We have a pretty good idea of what’s on your mind:

1. You Want to Save Money – By far the biggest motivator for people to choose to sell their home on their own is money. REALTOR® commissions’ vary, and they are generally paid as a percentage of the sale price of your home.  Each REALTOR® sets their own fees so it is important to clarify these up front.  The good news here is that REALTORS® work on commission which means they will not be paid unless they successfully sell your home.

Consider shopping around for a REALTOR® who offers a flexible fee structure, like us… the Wise Move AZ Team!  We support our sellers who want to sell their own homes and reward them with a significant break on our commissions, based on the level of assistance they need.  We know how to make it worth your while.  The pay-off for you is that you will have a professional doing the work for you, you’ll net about the same amount of money, and probably sell your home faster. That’s what we all want, right?

2. You Want Top Dollar for Your Home – Again, the money motivator, we get this too. The most common mistake that FSBO sellers make is to over-price their home.  Remember that all buyers, especially those searching the FSBO market are also motivated by money and they too have carefully studied the market.  An overpriced home can languish on the market for a very long time.  Our team of experts lives and breathes real estate every day, we put a lot of care and consideration into recommending a price for your home (more on this in a later blog post).  Remember, your success is our success, we want you to get top dollar for your home too!
3. You Want the Ability to Schedule Showings and Open Houses at Your Convenience – Yup, we get this one too, it is hard to keep your home in pristine showing condition 24/7 while your home is on the market. You think that if you list yourself you can control the showing and open house schedule. This may sound perfect, but are you really going to say no to a buyer who is sitting outside your home and wants to see the inside? What if you are 50 miles away doing something important?  The right REALTOR® can and will control and manage showings to suit YOUR schedule.  We protect and respect our clients’ homes as if they were our own, so you can rest assured that we will respect you and your family’s schedule when it comes to showings and open houses.

When deciding whether to list your home yourself or to use a REALTOR®, ask yourself if you are ready, and experienced enough to take-on the legwork necessary to manage the sales process.

Some of the things you will need to be ready to say yes to include (but are not limited to):

• Valuing your home yourself: This means comparing the interior and exterior, size, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, upgrades and all the other features of your home to all homes sold (and actively for sale) in your neighborhood to determine the right price.  You need to get this right because if your home languishes on the market too long, there is a risk of it inheriting a stigma that can make it even more difficult to sell.

If you’re using an online service such as Zillow to determine the value of your home, you need to know that you are relying on an algorithm that does not take the fine details of your home into consideration.

Zillow itself admits that it has a margin of error of 4.6% (yup, you can read all about it on Zillow).  This means that if your home is worth $300,000 your Zestimate range will be somewhere between $286,200 and $313,800.  That’s a $27,600 gap and could easily be the difference between selling your home in a timely manner and not selling at all.

Your REALTORS’® commission on a $300k sale will be far less than the potential $27,600 price discrepancy.  Are you willing to take the risk and spend more money for doing so?

Here are a few other points to consider:

• Drafting contracts and other legally binding documents – REALTORS® have exclusive access to standard form contracts that are carefully crafted to protect the buyer and the seller.  Are you confident that you could draft all the necessary legal documents and have them hold up in court should an issue arise?
• Pre-qualify / screen potential buyers – do you even know what needs to be done here? How will you determine if someone is financially qualified to purchase your home?
• Coordinate the sales and marketing process – do you have enough experience with and access to the markets/websites to reach your target buyer?
• Negotiate on your own behalf through the offer/counter offer process?
• Navigate the inspection period including responding to the buyers’ BINSR without adversely affecting your own rights and/or jeopardizing the deal.
• Work with a buyer’s agent
• Work with the buyer’s appraiser

This represents only a small portion of what a professional REALTOR® can and will do for you.  We do this for our clients every day, and we absolutely LOVE IT! The decision boils down to this, are you willing to do the things that are necessary to sell your home?

We at the Wise Move AZ Team hope that if you do decide to entrust your real estate needs to a REALTOR® you will choose us.  We are committed to working hard to get the job done within your time frame and to making it a fun and stress-free experience.

We would love to know what you think: REALTOR® or no REALTOR®, FSBO or forget it!!! Let us know below.

That’s it for today’s post, if you want more information on what a REALTOR® can do for you, or if you want to stay up to date on all things Anthem, make sure you like our Facebook Page at ‘Wise Move AZ’ or subscribe to our Wise Move AZ channel on YouTube.

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