Don't Sell Your Home Alone!

Home Sellers:

Most people realize selling your own home can be costly, time-consuming, and even risky. Unless you’re just naturally lucky, you need the help of a professional REALTOR. If you’re thinking about selling your own home, maybe you should consider some of them.

What’s Your Price?

The first thing the professional can do for you is recommend a fair and reasonable asking price. Do it yourself and you will probably ask too much or too little. Either way, you lose. Don’t be fooled by the belief, you know pretty well what your home is worth. Market demand, seasonality of sales, location, and many other variables affect your home’s value. A skilled real estate person knows all about these things. And, most important, knows people.

Don’t Talk To Strangers:

If you love talking to strange people at strange hours, by all means sell your home yourself. The “For Sale By Owner” sign in your front yard means you’re fair game for everyone even those passers-by who “just kind of wanted to see what the place looked like.” That sign may not get all the prospects you want, either. You may have to advertise and that means phone call at all hours. A REALTOR can solve these problems by screening prospects, finding out their need, desires and financial situations. They separate those who are seriously looking for a new home from those who are just looking. Best of all, showing your house only when it’s convenient for you.

That Beautiful Art:

Okay, tiger. You’re selling you own home. You know the needs and desires of your prospective buyers. And you know what to say, how to present your home to convince them. Wrong, REALTORS are trained in the art of salesmanship. Their study of sales techniques has shown them how to get the uncommitted buyer to make a decision, how to close the sale. In fact, they’ve gone to school to learn how to do precisely that.

Formal Negotiations:

What happens when a prospective buyer makes an offer one that’s well below your asking price? You’re going to argue. And that’s the worst thing you could do. As a principal, you’ll discover it’s pretty hard to bargain with a buyer to negotiate about such things as price, terms and possessions. Misunderstandings may crop up. And those small disagreements can spoil a sale. When a real estate professional helps sell your home, he or she takes on the difficult task of negotiation, acting as a sort of go-between and advisor. One who’s objective. One who can tell you when the buyer is right and when you should stick to your guns. And one who is usually a heck of a nice person, too. One who knows how to smooth over, or completely avoid, those sale-killing misunderstandings?

How to Shop For Money:

Many prospective buyers don’t know much about financing how and/or where to get a mortgage. Sell your home yourself, and there’s not much you can do to help them. A REALTOR knows just about all there is to know about financing. Knows how to work closely with all kinds of financial institutions, knows their methods and requirements. Very simply, the professional real estate person can help your buyer find the money needed to buy your house.

Red Tape :

Selling a house involves many details. Paperwork, title searches, financial arrangements. There are a hundred little things to be done. Unless you have a mind like a computer, you’ll need professional help to get everything done and keep it straight. A REALTOR will guide you through the tangle of details as painlessly and safely as possible.

Be It Ever so Humble:

Crowded closets may make a home look lived-in, but they don’t do much for a prospective buyer. Neither does a dripping faucet, unkempt lawn, or loose door-knob. There are dozens of little things you can do to make your house more saleable. The real estate expert can show them to you. (Some of them would have never occurred to you.) Showmanship is all it’s cracked up to be.

A Word about Us:

When you sell your house, you will provide an Owner’s Title Policy to your purchaser. Your REALTOR will advise you to select a title company and we hope it will be Masterpiece Title. If you have owned your house more than three years you may be entitled to reissue credit. Please call us for a quote.