Toronto Condo and Real Estate Blog

If you have decided that now is the time to sell your home, you might be thinking: should I hire a real estate agent or do it alone? Have you ever considered repairing your own car? Anyone can buy the tools and parts, however, most of us just do not have the knowledge, training, experience or the expertise and commitment of time to do the job properly. Besides, there are plenty of experienced professionals to do the work for us.

If you are tempted to do it yourself and save the real estate commissions, this article will be of great help to you in making your decision. Selling your home is quite a complex procedure, involving large sums of money, stringent legal requirements and the potential for very costly mistakes. It requires a tremendous depth of knowledge and experience, as well as substantial amount of time to follow-up on every detail promptly and properly.

Will you really save the real estate commission?
Most buyers equate a “For Sale By Owner” sign with a bargain. They assume you will sell for a discount because you do not have to pay the real estate agent commissions and, as a result, they’ll probably offer you less than fair market value. Negotiating your price upward to regain even a part of the anticipated commission savings will be difficult at best.

Do you have the time?
If you do it alone, how much will you really save when you factor in the considerable time you will have to invest? Without a real estate agent’s support, you are the one who will have to write and pay for the ads to market your property, remain available day or night for calls from prospects, run the open houses on weekends and show your property on short notice, screen potential buyers, fill out the paper work and do the dozens of things required to sell a home. Do you really have the time for all this? And what is your time worth - the time spent away from your family and friends and work?

How will you reach potential buyers?
Do-it-yourselfers are faced with the problem of how to market their home effectively. How good are you at writing hard-hitting advertisements that will stand out from all the others and entice prospects to call you? Where should you run these ads, when, and how often? Do you have the time and patience to handle telephone inquiries? Are you prepared for the cost of advertising - including a professional-looking “For Sale” sign? Real estate agents are experts in effective advertising and cover all of these costs as part of their service to you.

Moreover, when you work with a realtor your home receives far-reaching market exposure through the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). MLS is a computer-based system that relays valuable information about your home to a vast network of real estate agents and their potential home buyers in your market area. Remember, the greater exposure, the greater the chances for a higher price. Also, most real estate agents work for real estate companies that have their own websites or real estate online web portals which will feature your listing; these websites are generating thousands of visitors a day.

Do you really know the true market value of your home?
Setting a list price is perhaps the most difficult, yet critical, step in the home selling process. It requires extensive knowledge and training, as well as access to sophisticated market analysis developed over years of experience. Do-it-yourselfers usually lack these resources and often end up guessing at their asking price.

If you set your asking price too high, many prospective buyers will be frightened off without even seeing the property; too low and you will leave thousands of dollars on the negotiating table needlessly. One of your real estate agent’s most important roles will be helping YOU decide upon and negotiate a realistic asking price for your home that meets your both your sales objectives and fair market value.

Are you ready to “pre-screen” every prospect?
Do-it-yourselfers are faced with the challenge of interviewing every person who responds to their ads or “For Sale” sign. How do you go about this arduous task without offending those who are clearly not serious or qualified buyers - and yet protect your own interests and security? Do you have the skills and experience to ask the right questions over the phone before you let a prospect visit? How are you going to find out whether they are really qualified to purchase in your home’s price range?

Pre-screening prospects is absolutely necessary to weed out the lookers from the serious buyers. Your real estate agent knows how to do this effectively, saving you many hours of time and quite a few headaches.

How are your selling and negotiating skills?
Selling real estate is considerably different from selling most other products or services. Many do-it-yourselfers attempt to over-sell, smothering the buyer with every detail and nuance about the property. Few understand the subtle differences between a home’s features and the potential benefits to the buyer. Few know how to ask the right questions and uncover the buyer’s true needs and wants. Even fewer know how to complete the sale successfully through firm, impartial negotiation.

Real estate agents are skilled intermediaries with considerable ability to market your home successfully. Wouldn’t you feel a lot more comfortable knowing an experienced real estate agent is on your team negotiating the highest price possible for your home?

Are you up-to-date on real estate and contract laws?
Remember when you bought your home and had to deal with all these papers thrust in front of you for your signature? Well, selling your home is equally complex from a contractual and legal standpoint. If you attempt to sell it yourself, you will either have to prepare all your own legal documents when an offer comes in, or translate the language in the offer presented from the buyer. In the excitement of receiving an offer, are you confident you will be able to recognize terms and conditions that are not in your best interest, or worse, are legally risky? Real estate agents know how to protect you from these potential legal pitfalls, and will work to help ensure your interests are properly protected.

Let a realtor help you sell your home.
Most of those who sell their homes do so with the assistance of real estate agents. Of those that try to do it themselves, most change their minds and end up going with a real estate agent, because the process is too complex, too time consuming and too dangerous without the help of a professional. Working with a licensed real estate agent to sell your home, someone who is a member of a Real Estate Association, entitles you to an exceptionally broad range of services and benefits unavailable to do-it-yourselfers.

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416-388-1960

You are not hiring a realtor to put a sign on the lawn, an ad in the paper, and hold an open house - you can do this yourself. You are hiring a realtor to provide you with maximum exposure to the greatest number of qualified buyers for your home.

Supply and Demand

We are sure you’ve heard of supply and demand, right? The more potential buyers that can be supplied, the higher a price you can demand.

The absolute number one tip we can give you to help you get the most money possible for your home is this: make sure you get full Multiple Listing Service (MLS) coverage.

Don’t look at any offers until you are sure your home is on the MLS system. Again, just to be sure - don’t look at any offers until you are sure your home is listed on MLS. This gets your property in front of every real estate agent in your area. An army of realtors at your disposal just can’t be beat.

Dump any realtor that tries to tell you to list your house exclusively (only his/her company) or wants you to negotiate offers before it gets on MLS. Dump any realtor that wants to list your house on a Friday and have a public open house the following Sunday. There is not enough time to get your home on the system.

We do not care how good a realtor’s marketing plan is (or appears to be), it is worthless compared to the value of having your home on the MLS system. Think of it this way: realtor = home on MLS = more realtors = more buyers = more money.

Is the first offer the best offer?

There is a saying in real estate. The first offer is usually the best one. This is only true if everyone knows it’s for sale. We have had many situations where the first offer IS the best offer, but there have been instances where that was not true. In fact, when we have sold our own properties, the first offer was never the best. But different situations have different outcomes.

MLS Comes First

Ask any realtor you are contemplating dealing with what the order of their marketing plan is. If submitting to the Multiple Listing Service is not the first thing they are going to do, look for another realtor. Ads and signs and open houses are nice, they make you feel that your real estate agent is DOING something for you… but that is not always the case.

Most people who call on ads end up buying a different property, experience has shown this to be true. And to be honest (our fellow realtors are going to kill us for this one), signs and open houses mainly generate leads for the listing real estate agent. Most people who call on signs usually cannot afford the property they call on. Same with open houses, everyone who comes through leaves with your agent’s card, generally buying someone else’s house afterwards.

If you took away every selling tool we have and said we could only have one of them back - we would choose the MLS service. Seriously. This is not a commercial for MLS. It is just the best weapon realtors and the public have for getting maximum exposure on a property.

If you are selling a property, listing with a realtor who uses the MLS service means your property gets maximum marketing exposure to all other members of the local Board. You’ll have realtors everywhere trying to find a buyer for your property.

And with all those realtors working for you, how can you lose?

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416-388-1960

Many sellers consider selling their homes privately rather than listing with a traditional real estate agent. It has been estimated that private sellers account for up to 20% of the total resale home market. However, statistically MLS listings get 8-12% more cash return on the sale of their property. Some American studies have shown the difference to be as high as 16%!
The obvious reason for a seller to sell privately is to save the cost of real estate commissions that can be as high as 5% of the selling price of a home. Often private sellers (commonly referred to as For Sale By Owner or FSBO) offer commissions to real estate agents working with buyers to encourage these real estate agents to show their homes.

For Sale By Owner properties do not have the benefit of exposure on the local real estate board Multiple Listing Service (MLS) or on the real estate industry internet websites like mls.ca and realtor.com. A private seller can only expose their home for sale to potential buyers by newspaper advertising and marketing efforts which are extremely costly. Hundreds and even thousands of dollars can be expended without ever coming close to the exposure that a home for sale receives when listed on MLS.

Private sellers do not receive any assistance that a real estate agent could provide including coordination of the process and any ongoing advice.

A seller cannot not have their home listed on MLS without engaging the services of a real estate agent. Many potential private sellers end up listing their home with a real estate agent to simply ensure MLS exposure.

The choice is of course, up to you. But consider the commission of your sale price - take your asking price and multiply it by 5%. That is your average commission going to be split by the selling and listing agents and their brokerages. Now start calling to see how much it costs to advertise in local papers, major papers and any other marketing costs. Think about the personal time you’ll need to devote to this if you sell on your own. Consider the fact that most buyers of FSBO homes are in fact “looking for a deal” and investors that usually know what they are doing and are good negotiators. Do you need that headache?

If you choose that you can handle it then, more power to you and I wish you the best of luck. If you realize that this may be too much for you, then please give us a call and we’ll give you a free market evaluation and then we’ll list it on MLS.

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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416-388-1960