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!
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