Why choose a Real Estate Agent over "FSBO"?

It may seem to be a good idea to sell your home yourself and save some bugs from real estate agent’s commission by being a For Sale by Owner also known as FSBO! Here’s why you should reconsider:

1. Agents may not show a FSBO listing

The buyer’s agent will know that there is no professional agent representing the seller’s side of the deal when the need will arise to schedule a showing, negotiate on client’s behalf and follow through such steps of the process. This may make your home not get on his list for showing.

2. Selling involves emotions

Selling your home is typically an emotional process. A seller’s agent will look at the home from a general perspective safeguarding the emotions. Also, the agents will not let you make the mistake of overpricing your home, suggest changes if needed, reconsidering counter offers and focus on the deadline of selling your home. More to this, a home-owner following up himself gives wrong signals demonstrating desperation and need of accepting low ball offers as well. All rejections and objections to the home or price of the home can be passed to the homeowner by the agent with constructive criticism versus taken as negative feedback directly.

3. It is a time-consuming process

Can you effectively market the home with all marketing strategies in place? Can you be available to show your home any hour of the day when the buyer/buyer’s agent wants to visit? Can you answer the phone of every random buyer/his agent and talk about the home? Do you have an experience of how deals are executed? An agent in your place would be able to say yes to all these questions unlike your answers. An agent will be able to put in more time from showings to shortlisting the right few clients and negotiating with them as it is his full-time job.

4. Agents Access Large Networks

A real estate agency has a bigger pool of clients, connections and potential buyers looking out for homes. Also, they have an array of marketing strategies to market your home to invite more offers, filter out of those and bring to you only that are important. This will not make you wait for a longer period with your home on market with lesser demand and hardly any offers.

5. Qualifying the buyer’s intent:

To spare time for showing, make the house look perfect and go through the process with all the many onlookers will be time consuming and cumbersome. Instead, a right agent will help you minimise this procedure by his way of qualifying the buyer by determining his seriousness, budget and criteria. The thumb rule of any showing says that the owner of the house should not be present while showing. In case of an FSBO, the seller himself is presenting and showing the house which can make the buyer uncomfortable in cruising through, visualising the house as his home, in probing questions, showing interest and negotiating the price.

More to this, negotiation is a skill which a real estate agent has mastered with training and experience of negotiating a hundred of such ones. Being a homeowner, it is easy to ignore a few flaws of the home as you don’t tend to observe while staying in the same home. Emotions take you over any feedback that comes from a potential buyer which may lead you to completely ignore that client’s offer. Last but not the least, selling a home has many legal procedures and documentation to be checked.

Not hiring an agent can surely save you the commission fees, but in turn land you into various hassles of the selling process. An agent brings with him a hefty set of benefits like expertise, knowledge, marketing strategies, negotiating skills to save you time and get you the best deal! Won’t you agree?