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Why Should I Pay A Realtor? I could Sell My Own House & Save Some Money!

The Short Answer:  Because a home listed “For Sale By Owner” often stays that way…”For Sale.”  It’s tempting to think about listing your home and not having to pay a Realtor to do it but the reality is, for sale by owner homes often just don’t sell!

Why?  Lot’s of reasons, but some of the big ones are…

Advertising!  One of the biggest issues you’ll have when listing your own home, is that you don’t get the publicity needed to let buyers know that your house is on the market.  A good Realtor markets your house!  We don’t just stick a sign in the yard and hope for the best.  A big source of advertising comes from the MLS (Multiple Listing Service).  This is where Realtors go to view homes for sale. We use this database to send potential homes to our buyers & see if they’d like to view the home (incidentally, this is also where Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia and all the others pluck their information from).  When you list your own home, it’s not listed in the MLS and therefore Realtors don’t see it & don’t show it.  This is a major problem for someone selling their own home because no one knows it’s for sale.

If you do get showings, you’ll find that you’re often not available to show your home when a buyer wants to see it.  Realtors put a lockbox on there so other realtors can access the home easily.  If you list your own home, you’ll find yourself leaving work to go show your home or you won’t be able to leave work, in which case, buyers won’t be able to see your house. I’ve found that seeing a house is key to selling it, so this becomes a very major problem. 

You will also be opening up your home to who knows who!  As Realtors, we make sure the people we work with are pre-qualified prior to showing them houses.  If you’re selling your own home, you have no way of knowing who’s coming in to view it, and that can be a VERY scary & potentially dangerous situation!

So, IF you get buyers who want to see your home and IF you are available to show it, and IF they’re not ax murders, then you have another problem.  A buyer isn’t going to tell you what they honestly think of your home for fear of insulting you.  You’ll find buyers going through saying “how cute” something is and how the house is “adorable” but then they leave, don’t put an offer in and you’re left wondering what went wrong.  Buyers aren’t going to tell you your wallpaper is awful and your home is way overpriced.  That’s what they talk to their Realtors about and that’s the feedback a Realtor gives the homeowner, so that they can better understand why their home is not selling and what they need to change to make it sell.

9 times out of 10 the For Sale By Owner home will stay listed for a very long time until the owner either takes it off the market or does the reasonable thing and hires a Realtor.  So, don’t waste a year of your life thinking you can sell your own home by putting it on the market yourself.  Hire a Realtor and get it sold!

Tis the Season for Home Sales...

Ever wonder why it is, that about this time every year you start seeing tons of houses go up for sale?  It’s because there’s a season for selling (and it’s starting now)!  The summer is prime real estate time!  The main reason buyers move over the summer, is because moving can sometimes mean switching schools and parents don’t want to do that to their kids mid-year.  So they wait until the summer to make the move and the kids can start the new school year no problem....Plus, everyone just has a little more time over the summer which makes summer a good time to move! But before they can buy that next house, they often have to sell the current one and wa-la…houses popping up for sale everywhere right about now.

For those who don’t need to sell their home prior to moving, it’s still a good idea to start looking in the next month or so if you’re planning to move over the summer – finding the right home can take time.  Sometimes we find the perfect house right out of the gate but often, people will take their time and look at a few places before making such a big investment. 

Once we find the perfect home and we get it under contract, it still takes about 45-60 days until the house is yours...and that’s for your basic sale.  If you want a home that’s a short-sale or foreclosure it can take much longer!

So, if you were thinking about moving this summer but haven’t yet contacted a Realtor, go ahead and give me a call!  It may seem like summer is still far far away, but it’s going to be here before you know it and it’s a good idea to get a jump start when it comes to real estate! 

As always, if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home in Tallahassee or anywhere else– Call me at (850) 294-7058 or shoot me an e-mail at CorinneJohnston@KW.com I’d love to help you!

He's like a little Godzilla!

Staging your home = Selling your home!

The house should feel like you could live there but look like no one does.

This cabbage patch doll is hands down the strangest thing I have ever seen while walking through a house for sale -- THIS is a perfect example of bad staging!  My hope, is that they were trying to pack, realized she didn’t fit in the bag and gave up. They didn’t think people would be coming by to see the house, but people did and this is my point…a seller must always have their home ready to show!

Now you probably won’t find a cabbage patch doll being suffocated in a plastic bag at most homes you walk through but you would be amazed how often I walk into a house and find little chachkies EVERYWHERE, or books & paperwork scattered about.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like these people are living in filth.  It’s just day to day clutter that comes from living your life, but that’s not what you want to present to people when they are looking to buy your home.  Shove it in boxes and cram it under the bed, but get all the clutter out of sight!

You want potential buyers to be able to walk in and feel like they could see themselves living there and to do this it needs to feel spacious, clean and uncluttered.  Your Realtor (me) can always give you advice on what to remove and what to keep but here are a couple useful tips:  Start by taking all the personal items out of the house -- bye-bye framed family photos & hello non-descript art from Home Goods.  If you have big furniture that overtakes the room, remove as much of it as possible -- You don’t want someone walking away because they don’t feel like there’s enough room for their furniture.     

Now the hard part:  Once you get everything perfect, keep it that way!  I know, I know, it’s a total pain to clean the house everyday so that it’s ready at a moment’s notice for potential buyers -- but it’s necessary! Remember staging your home = selling your home! 

As always, if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home in Tallahassee or anywhere else– Call me at (850) 294-7058 or shoot me an e-mail at CorinneJohnston@KW.com I’d love to help you!

When it Comes to Loans – What’s the Difference Between Pre-Qualification & Pre-Approval?

When it Comes to Loans – What’s the Difference Between Pre-Qualification & Pre-Approval?

This is a very common question from people looking to buy a home (particularly first time home-buyers).  All the lender terms can be a bit overwhelming so let’s break this one down…

It’s slightly more involved than this but basically here’s how it works -- When you call a lender, they’ll ask you some basic questions about how much you make & what kind of debt you have.  You answer those questions honestly & the lender runs the numbers and says “based on what you’ve told me, we believe you are pre-qualified for X amount.”  That’s it !  You’re pre-qualified for a loan! And now that you know how much you can spend on your home, you and your Realtor (Me:) can begin the house hunt. 

Once we find a home you love, we’ll need to make an offer on it.  That’s when you go back to your lender & get pre-approved.  This means that you now have to prove that everything you said to the lender was true when you were going through the pre-qualification process.  Banks like knowing that they will get their money back before they loan somebody money.  So, they run a credit check, get your W2’s and basically verify that you will be able to pay back your loan before they hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars to you. 

That’s it!  No big deal right!?!  So  now when you begin searching for your new home, you won’t be intimidated by the lender and all the Pre-qual vs. Pre-approval jargon and you will be able to confidentially maneuver through the process!

As always, if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home in Tallahassee or anywhere else– Call me at (850) 294-7058 or shoot me an e-mail at CorinneJohnston@KW.com I’d love to help you!

Do I need 20% Down to Buy a House?

REAL ESTATE MYTH:  

I need to save 20% for a down payment before I can buy a house…

I can’t tell you how many times people have said to me “I’m thinking about buying a home in the near future but I’m still saving up that 20% down payment I need to make it happen.”  Truth be told, I thought the same thing when my husband and I were looking for our first home a few years ago – of course this was prior to my becoming a Realtor.  Now I know better! 

I mean, think about it… If someone was looking to buy a home for $200,000, and they needed to have a 20% down payment, that’s $40,000 they would have to have saved up prior to buying their house! Add in the money needed to cover closing costs and you would have a lot of people who were unable to ever buy a home! The truth is you don’t need to have a 20% down payment.  Now of course this will depend on your specific loan so talk to a lender for exact numbers but generally speaking…

If you have a FHA loan you only need a minimum of 3.5% down -- So that $200,000 home you were looking at? You would only need $7,000 for your down payment!

You’d need to have slightly more on hand for a Conventional loan as they require a minimum of 5% down -- So you would need $10,000 on hand for that $200,000 home!

USDA & VA loans require absolutely no money down so if you qualify for them congratulations!  So if you are one of those people who were saving up that 20%, you may already have enough saved!  In which case, give me a call and let me help you start your house hunt!

My thanks to Brian Vincent and the fine folks over at University Lending for allowing me to pick their brains before writing this blog! 

As always, if you or someone you know is looking to buy or sell a home in Tallahassee or anywhere else– Call me at (850) 294-7058 or shoot me an e-mail at CorinneJohnston@KW.com I’d love to help you!

Cute kid pic for the week.