Just an FYI

An alternate point of view

How I sold my house without an agent.

(video at bottom)

I initially hired a real estate agent to sell my house in 2015 and followed their advice on how to stage the house, times to list yada yada. So the agent wants 6-7 percent to split between the buyers agent and themselves. I figured they are the professionals so they will earn their commission by using the experience to get the house sold fast. Needless to say the advice and effort didn't work and initially I thought it was a waste of time but it actually taught me what not to do. The pictures published by the agent were not at the best angles and the lighting provided very little that was appealing.

After the first few weeks I had a neighbor check out one of my open houses to see what he thought of the agent. He reported back the he was able to walk through my entire house before she noticed he was there and she never once got up from my dining room table to ackonwledge him and was on the phone the entire time.I decided then that this agent was not acting on my behalf and had to go. We unlisted the house that fall and toward the end of winter we started interviewing agents for the eventual listing for the upcoming spring using what I had learned from my previous experience.

I started asking questions like:
- What they would do for marketing and it was cookie cutter to what I had already been doing.

- Were they flexible on the commissions? No, they were a rigid 4% seller agent 2% buyer agent

- Could they give me a list of comparables to my house? They didn't even come close to what we were selling.

- How long would I be locked into a contract with them? 6 months to encompass the entire selling season.

It didn't take me very long to figure out I needed to try to sell my own house because no one would have a bigger stake in wanting it sold then me. Fortunately my previous agent wasn't able to make a couple of open houses and I hosted them myself. I asked for peoples feedback as to what their likes and dislikes of the home. It turned out some of the potential buyers were under the impression that my siding was asbestos but in fact it was a composite shingle, similar to the roof shingles but thicker. You can't properly market the house if you have to defend & explain something like that.

Armed with this knowledge I started pricing out certain upgrades like residing the house and adding a half bath. I ended up getting prices on these things but quickly found out I will be doing this myself also. That will be another video discussion topic.

Back to selling the house.

So after I resided the house, added the half bath and staged the rest of the house now it was time to get the marketing plan in place. We decided to use a flat fee broker in order to add our listing to all the MLS websites that were once restricted to full service real estate agents. The fee was about $400 to list for the 6 months instead of 3-4 percent of the sale price the full service agent wanted to list it.

I deciced to give the buyers agent 4% versus the 2-3% that they normally get. This would put me on the top of the list for most buyer's agent to look at when with their clients. So instead of splitting 6-7 between the buyer/seller agents I decided to give the person doing most of the work the extra 1%. Let's face it without the buyer's agent we don't sell the house. So my total payout was close to 4.25% between the flat fee broker and the buyer's agent instead of 6-7%. Big savings!

So we scheuled our first open house and we got alot of interest. I was intent on listening to what the agents were saying to their clients as they walked through. You could tell they were trying to talk their clients into the house and get the 4% commission even if the house wasn't a fit. It didn't take but 2 open houses over 3 weeks to get close to full price offer.

If you haven't tried to sell a house before maybe visit some open houses in your neighborhood to see comparables for yourself and maybe visit a flat fee broker's website to see if selling your house on your own is appealing.

If you find this video was informative. Please subscribe for video updates.

uploaded 03/18

Click link for video.



Subscribe To Our Channel!

Disclaimer

Although everyone has their own specific set of circumstances and situations more information usually helps to make informed decisions. We will publish videos on many different topics based on challenges we faced and resolutions that worked for us

We have had many projects and situations where we chose an unconventional method to get the desired effect. In almost all situations we had one common denominator in that we had to take some additional time to understand some of the tips, tricks and obstacles. In some instances we were able to call in service professionals to guide us through the project and in other instances they became the obstacle that needed to be avoided completely

Keep in mind that everything on this website is information that applied to our situation and should not be taken as advice to your situation. A few of the finished projects are showcased in the video below. We added half bath, resided the house & sold the house without a seller agent.


Other Videos

half bath

residing

Some trades