Successful For Sale By Owner
Dump Your Agent…
Sell Your House…
Make a Huge Profit!
by Allen Smith
Copyright Allen Smith 2006
This publication is the exclusive property of the author, Allen Smith and the publisher, Allen & Allyn Books, at Smashwords and protected by copyright laws and other laws governing intellectual property. You may not modify, transmit, publish, reproduce, distribute, perform, display, copy, disseminate, create derivative works from, or participate in the transfer or sale of, or exploit in any way the contents of this e-book – in whole or in part.
Published by Allen & Allyn Books, a division of Allen & Allyn, LLC.
Copyright © 2001 by Allen Smith
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
ISBN:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Real Estate Exchange Process: Assessment
The Real Estate Exchange Process: Engagement
A Note Regarding Advertising Your Home for Sale
A Helpful Hint for Staging Your Home
Another Helpful Hint for Listing Your Home
The Real Estate Exchange Process: Contract Acceptance
The Real Estate Exchange Process: Transference
Real Estate Commissions by State or Territory
Visit the Author at ajsmith365.com
The do-it-yourself spirit is alive and well in all facets of life, and real estate is no exception. There is an abundance of information readily available via the Internet, user-friendly computer software, and cable television programming that can provide any layman with the necessary information and instructions to accomplish most tasks. Each year, I take advantage of the many tax programs to successfully complete my own taxes. I mean, why pay someone $500 dollars when you can do them for just a fraction of the cost. Similarly, individuals are writing their own wills, incorporating businesses, devising business plans, and performing their own general contracting work based upon information that is readily attainable in today’s technologically dependent, and non-global, society.
The practice of buying and selling real estate is not exempt from the do-it-yourself phenomenon that has permeated society. Initially, the do-it-yourself mindset began with buyers within the real estate industry. With technological advancements such as the Internet making information readily accessible to the public, potential buyers did not have to rely on a Real Estate Agent to locate properties for them. Buyers could, simply, search one of the numerous real estate databases on the Internet and schedule an appointment with the listing Broker to assess the property.
Now, homeowners are taking advantage of these resources to market and sell their own home while maximizing their profits by eliminating the use of a Real Estate Brokerage firm. Instead of coughing up thousands of dollars in commissions to a Real Estate Broker, homeowners are maximizing their return on investment (ROI) by utilizing the services of online discount Brokers that charge a fraction of what conventional Brokers charge, or they are simply selling their own house without the services of a listing real estate Brokerage firm.
As a Realtor® and avid do-it-yourselfer, I can truly empathize with the motivation of homeowners who have decided to sell your own home. Consequently, in an effort to help you become better informed about the for-sale-by-owner (FSBO) process and mentality, I have devised this book to help you in developing the perfect mindset for being successful in selling your own home.
As a professional Real Estate Agent and avid do-it-yourselfer, I would be doing you a big disservice if I gave you an overly-optimistic overview of the FSBO process. In fact, looking at the statistics, sellers would be better off relying on the skill and resources of a Real Estate Broker than pursuing the FSBO route. Typically, FSBO properties take longer to sell, and most homeowners, eventually, end up hiring a Real Estate Agent. The process is laborious, it requires a lot of attention and dedication that most people do not have the time for, and it also requires a particular skill that has taken Real Estate Agents years to develop – and they still do not have the science perfected. Moreover, industry data suggests that most FSBOs sell for ten of thousands of dollars less than comparable homes sold by a Real Estate professional.
Also, encouraging homeowners to go the FSBO route would totally contradict my philosophy as prescribed in my book The Real Estate Money Mindset, whose principle would tell you to value your time like you value your money. Selling real estate is a time-consuming process, and there is a lot of money at stake. It is not worth the gamble of exhausting energy on such a Herculean task when you could delegate this responsibility to an industry professional while you channel this energy to adding additional streams of wealth to your financial portfolio.
However, selling your house independently does fit some homeowners’ situations perfectly. And, with the proper mindset and strategic plan, you can become one of the elite few who have successfully sold their home and maximized their return on investment by minimizing (notice, I did not say eliminating) expenses. But, in order to do this, you must understand the skills that one must have, or develop, in order to become a successful FSBO.
There are numerous reasons why individuals should not act as a Realtor® and attempt to sell their own home. They might not possess the professional skill sets necessary to strategically price, market, stage, and promote their property. Moreover, dealing with contracts and negotiating the terms of a contractual agreement may not be within some people’s comfort zone. Also, you could maximize your time by delegating this task to a licensed professional and let them handle the stress and anxiety of selling your real estate. But, what if you do possess the knowledge, skills, and abilities to effectively perform these functions? Why risk your potential profits on a real estate agent who may not be as skillful as you are in maximizing your profits on your real estate transaction? Of equal importance, why give a real estate brokerage firm a sizable chunk of the earnings on the sale of your home for average, or substandard, work.
If you hire a real estate brokerage firm to sell your house, you may be throwing away money that you did not have to throw away. In addition to paying the buyer’s agent a commission for his role in bringing forth a buyer for your property, you are going to have to pay your real estate broker a commission for representing you in the transaction. And, unfortunately, listing agents do not put forth the same amount of time and effort in getting your house sold as a buyer’s agent.
Before the emergence of the Internet, Realtors® were instrumental in getting real property sold. They used bible-sized books that contained current houses for sale in order to locate properties for buyers. Buyers did not have access to the information that real estate agents had; therefore, they were at the mercy of the Realtor® to assist them in finding a home. The most leg work a buyer could do without a Realtor® was spend their weekends driving around prospective neighborhoods and hope to see a “for sale” sign in the yard of a house that matched their specifications.
Today, with the help of the Internet, most buyers are the catalyst in the homebuyer process. Buyers are just as informed as real estate agents and have, almost, the same access to properties for sale. Buyers can filter through houses based on price, location, square footage, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the school district or the type of heating and cooling system within the structure. Typically, it is the buyer, or the buyer’s agent, who finds the properties via the Internet and makes contact with the seller or the seller’s agent. Buyer’s agents are working hard to establish a list of homes that fit their buyer’s specifications. Or, buyers spend countless hours on their computers searching for homes on various web sites. It is the buyer and their agent, and not the seller, who is the main catalyst in getting a property sold.
When I first became a licensed real estate agent, my broker informed me that being a real estate Salesperson was not an easy task in regards to getting clients. They told me that, typically, less than ten percent of agents are responsible for ninety percent of the real estate transactions, while the other ninety percent are responsible for ten percent of real estate transactions. After a few months in the real estate business, I studied a few agents and talked to them in regards to helping me perfect my sales pitch so that I could get buyers and sellers to work with me. One successful agent told me that the best thing that I could do would be to focus on getting listings, getting contractual agreements with homeowners to sell their home, as opposed to working with prospective buyers. This sentiment was repeated to me by other agents of all success levels. The logic behind working with sellers as opposed to buyers was because, with buyers, you have to work too hard to make your money. You have to be flexible to go out with prospective buyers at any time of the day which, typically, wound up being when they got off of work in the afternoon. Also, working with buyers was time-consuming as you may have to drive them around, from one property to the next, and hope that they plan on buying a home and are not wasting your time. I have heard people say that they had, or knew someone who had, shown buyers over fifty homes before the person, finally, decided to purchase a property. A few agents even rationalized to me that, when working with buyers, you have to give up your Sundays to showing homes; consequently, you did not have time to enjoy the football games on Sunday during football season. Most agents were in agreement that working with buyers was a time-consuming, laborious, process.