value of using a professional real estate specialist m ust never be overlooked

            The “Do It Yourself” spirit typifies plenty of well-intentioned people, but real estate is one arena where it’s best to leave things to the experts. Here’s why.

            Selling your home is far more complex than it might first appear. If you think it’s merely a matter of putting a For Sale By Owner sign on your front lawn, chatting with a few prospects, then closing the sale – all while avoiding a commission – you need a great deal more information about the realities of the process.

            In fact, that process involves so many details, it’s hard to decide where to begin. Consider, for starters, the numerous rules and regulations that continue to increase when it comes to selling in today’s residential real estate market. There are now very specific requirements imposed at state, county, and township levels.

            Take the matter of smoke detectors, for example. Different municipalities have different requirements. Regulations have changed in recent years, and it’s important to know what the precise requirements are in your particular location.

            Likewise, drainage is another issue whose requirements can vary from one locality to the next. In addition, different towns and cities have their own specific requirements pertaining to carbon monoxide detectors, sump pumps, and other systems that may need to comply with any number of regulatory codes before a property can have its closing.

            These are just some of the issues a New York State licensed real estate professional is familiar with, since it’s our job to be kept apprised of all official and pending regulations. That is part of what we do.

            Now consider the sheer amount of work involved – the time, effort, and know-how – to properly handle the sale of your home. While you’re focused on saving that commission, what may not be clear at first sight is all the work you’re in for, with no training and experience.

            For instance, you need to determine who the prospective buyer is. How do you qualify him or her? You should know something about their financial position, credit worthiness, and to some extent, something about them personally. After all, there may be comfort level and safety issues involved when having strangers come through your home.

            Then there’s appointment setting, which takes time and coordination of schedules – yours and theirs. Do you really know who you’ll be allowing into your home?

Agents Bring an Objective Eye to Things

            Once inside, what you say about your house can make or break the deal. In fact, what you say can actually discourage a prospective buyer. That’s one of the reasons we as professional agents ask the seller to leave while we show their property. We bring an objective eye to things, whereas the home owner is frankly too close, often too emotionally involved to effectively show and describe their own residence.

            Likewise, during open houses, the do-it-yourself seller is simply not trained to field the many and varied questions that are likely to be asked. This can frustrate the seller and, more importantly, turn off the potential buyer. Plus, there’s the issue of follow-up calls generated from an open house. At best, these can be awkward to handle without proper experience.

            By contrast, real estate professionals often recognize potential problems before they happen. We’re trained to be proactive, to be problem-solvers and coordinators.

            Then things only get more complicated from here. We call it the domino effect. This is where there are a multitude of individuals and contingencies involved in such transactions, and it can generate a lot of anxiety. For example, if a prospective buyer of your property has his or her own house to sell, then their property faces an overabundance of transactions, too.

            In the case where a prospective buyer may be relocating from out of the area and they themselves are attempting to sell their home on their own, that typically involves a great deal of time and money caught up in trips back and forth. It almost always ends up in offers that are not effective, because they hinge on the sale of the prospective buyer’s own home, out of the area – a sale not handled by a qualified agent.

            It’s not hard to see the complexity, confusion and counter-productiveness of such scenarios.

Consider All these Issues, Too . . .

§   There are seller’s disclosure issues. Non-professionals simply are unlikely to know what must be disclosed, by law, in today’s home-selling environment.

§   Agents have at their convenient disposal a data base of buyers, spanning leads that include relocation referrals, plus access to network organizations locally and nationally.

§   Real estate agents tap into the Multiple Listing service network, putting us in touch with nearly 2,500 local agents who are working with customers.

§   Agents are trained and motivated to keep all parties in such transactions moving forward – and are experts at negotiating. This is crucial – whether representing the buyer or seller – and there are several areas within the transaction that need to be negotiated. This is not the seller’s attorney’s job!

§   Professional agents have the statistics to show the range of home values in a given locality. Sellers are often too biased, too close to the matter, to set reasonable, priced-to-sell values on their own property. It’s yet another example of how third-party objectivity can pay dividends.

§   As agents, we’re trained to handle mortgage financing, attorneys, inspectors, insurance companies, and other service providers…is the do-it-yourselfer so trained?

Let a specialist do the job. You do so with financial planning. You do so with major home repair. You do so with the education of your children. Why, then, would you take chances with the single most valuable asset most people will ever own?

The bottom line is that you get what you pay for. Trying to sell your house without an agent is likely to leave you spinning your wheels in frustration. Worse is the very real prospect of not only having gained nothing, but actually losing money in the process, while now, finally, having to turn to the real estate professional you would have been wise to go to from the start.