For Sale By Owner
How hard can it be? Put up a sign on your front lawn. Place a small classified ad in the paper. Sit back and wait for all the people to come stampeding to your door with fistfulls of cash offering to buy your home. Who needs a Realtor? Save the commission for yourselves.
Well, let's start with that newspaper. Take a look at the classified ad section of the paper for houses for sale. Approximately 97% of those ads are placed by brokers, and only 3% are For Sale By Owners. If you were a serious buyer, which would you shop first? You would hook up with a Realtor and check out the 97% he can show you because your chances of finding the home you want are so much greater with him. The buyers who call you are the ones shopping FSBO's to save the commissions. The same commissions that you are trying to save. So they will beat you up on the price, meaning you may not be saving much after all, plus you have to do ALL the work!
SAFETY, SAFETY, SAFETY
When selling your own home, do you realize that you are going to be letting strangers into your home? Would you let the phone guy into your home if he showed up at your door without an appointment? What about the cable guy? Of course not! What about the 5-10 people who are going to ask you to let them in to see your home?
You advertise your home in the paper and you get a call "I'd like to see your house tomorrow at 2:00." You inform the caller that 2:00 is no good as you are both at work then, but how about 6:00? "Sure, 6:00 will be fine" the caller says. At 2:00 tomorrow your home gets broken into and no one shows up at 6:00. You just gave your schedule to a burglar!
Or how about this? You get a call about your home from a fellow who saw your sign on your front lawn. After asking many questions about the house he asks if it is a safe neighborhood "Of course it's safe. In fact it is so safe that no one around here even bothers with alarm systems!" you reply. Later on the nut shows up and puts you and your whole family into a closet while he steals everything in your house.
Or you have a nice looking lady knock on your door saying that she just spotted your home and it looks like just the home she and her husband have been looking for. Could she take a quick look at the house? You let her in as you don't want to miss a chance at a sale. As she goes through the house she again says that this is the one. She says that there is only one small problem, and that is that her husband is away at work for a few weeks. She wants to make an offer but knows that he will want to see it first. She asks if it would be alright to take a few pictures to Email to him "Of course" you say. You are not losing this sale! But unknown to you she is really taking pictures of your valuables and the locations of the alarm motion detectors and key pads.
These are just a few tricks that have been, and are still being used by people who want to rob you. And I won't even go into the ones who want to hurt you and your family.
As professional Realtors, we have systems in place to help protect us and notify police if we need help. Who knows every time you show your home to strangers? Who will call the police for you if you need them?
When you work with us, professional Realtors like us, we bring you real buyers, buyers who have been qualified and are ready to buy. We also work with approximately 1500 other agents who average 5-10 buyers each at any given time, who may be interested in your home. That's somewhere between 7,500-15,000 potential buyers for your home. We have more access to buyers than you do which makes it much easier to sell your home and get you more money than you can selling your home by yourself.
Did you know that even with qualified buyers, 70% need to sell something first before they can buy your home? Another 11% can't afford the price and 15% will keep renting for some reason or another. That leaves 4% who are ready, willing and able to buy your house. This is why our access too much larger numbers of buyers is of so much benefit to you.
So why not let us get you what you want for your home without you doing any of the work? You will also be safe while getting it and not have to worry about you and your family having strangers come into the house with you. Our services include a proven marketing plan to get your home in front of as many people as possible and there is no charge for our services unless the home sells for what YOU find acceptable.
For many years, we have worked closely with homeowners choosing to "go it alone".
We
have offered support, information, and a "safety net" for the majority
who ultimately choose to have professional representation. Here are our
six best reasons not to sell "by owner":
Reason #1: The Competition is TooStrong
Reason #2: The Odds are Terrible
Reason #3: The Benefit is Elusive
Reason #4: The Risk is Too Great
Reason #5: The Cost is Too High
Reason #6: We Pay for Ourselves
The Competition is Too Strong
Institutional
advertising among the large, successful real estate companies dominates
the print media, the source of most home buyers. While we can all place
ads in the classified sections, at significant expense, those
individual "reader" ads are dwarfed by the full-color, multi-page
layouts prepared professionally by the marketing departments of real
estate firms. Advertising response appears to be proportional. Our
company gets approximately 4,000 calls per month from prospective
buyers attracted to the homes we advertise.
The MLS is still the
vehicle by which all home buyers view a home. Even in the internet age,
no competition on the internet has yet to provide to the individual
owner the leverage of the MLS. To further compound the advantage, the
MLS is now also on the internet! Information in a limited form is
available from our MLS on the web, through a number of different sites
including Realtor.com, which contains over 1.4 million listings as of
this date. When a home buyer visits a home, not only has he or she
likely been attracted by effective advertising like ours, but they
likely are seeing the home through the MLS.
The Odds are Terrible
Over
90% of "for sale by owners" fail to sell their homes; most end up
listing with a real estate agent immediately afterward. The odds of
finding a buyer are slim, given the advertising budgets of successful
real estate firms, and the incredible marketing reach of the MLS and
the internet.
There is a simple explanation for this statistic:
nearly all buyers work with real estate agents. Buyers who need to
purchase immediately, including relocation buyers, work with Realtors –
they simply do not have time to research neighborhoods, and find houses
themselves. They need the services of an expert.
Much
of our business is from referrals from past clients, neighbors, and
others aware of our reputation. Many of other home-buying clients are
also our current sellers.
These are the buyers every seller
needs in order to be successful, yet all of these buyer profiles choose
to work with an agent for the knowledge, expertise, and exposure to
homes for sale that the agent can provide.
The Benefit is Elusive
If
the most of the buyers are purchasing homes with a Realtor, what about
the remainder? If they are not immediate need buyers, or relocation
buyers, or referrals, or the Realtor’s seller, what is their profile?
Often
times, it is exactly the buyer profile the "for sale by owner" seller
is looking to avoid: the bargain hunter. For the same reason that the
seller seeks to avoid working with a Realtor, to save the commision of
the cost, the buyer seeking to buy only a home "by owner" is looking
for the savings at the expense of the seller. As agents, we can
routinely follow up with interested buyers, but when a seller pursues a
buyer for feedback or decision, a buyer can misconstrue a seller’s
level of motivation. This appearance of desparation or anxiety can lead
to disappointing, low offers and unsuccessful negotiations.
Professional
athletes, successful entertainers, seek the assistance of agents to
help them negotiate favorable terms. When we purchase a property
outside of the state or our normal area of expertise, we use the
services of a local agent. We believe that you should as well. In our
opinion, the value of the agent far exceeds the cost.
The Risk is Too Great
While
Illinois is known as the "Land of Lincoln", California had earned its
reputation as a land mine of litigation. Disclosure requirements change
constantly, as laws pass to add stricter requirements on sellers and to
protect buyers from unwise or uneducated purchases. Home buyers seek
out the expertise of Realtors to wade through the legal and disclosure
issues. Since most of the risk, and most of the burden, is on a home
seller in a transaction, should not the seller seek the same
professional representation?
Realtors abide by a Code of Ethics
imposed by the State of California, and by our own rules set down by
the local, state, and national Realtor Associations. No such
obligations or rules bind a buyer in his dealings with a home seller.
The Cost is Too High
In
our two-earner, fast-paced 21st century family lives, should anyone be
willing to give up precious family time to hold their own open houses?
To write ads, place ads, purchase signs, set and keep appointments with
buyers, all for no wage?
That’s the job of the Realtor. Families
in these crazy times need weekends for normalcy, hard-working adults
need regeneration and recreation. So much time could be wasted in
pursuit of an elusive goal: appointments with unqualified buyers, time
spent with buyers unaware of costs, unfamiliar with and indecisive
about a home purchase.
False expectations lead to an emotional
roller coaster. We have noticed an inclination towards verbal
negotiations between buyers and sellers when agents aren’t involved,
dangerous from a legal perspective, but generally unsuccessful due to
at least two reasons: the transaction falls apart when the details are
put on paper, and the lack of commitment involved when parties won’t
take the proper care, time, and forethought required of a written offer.
Lack
of experience in handling transactional issues has lead to double
moves, delayed escrows, disappointment and inconvenience for buyers and
sellers. Objectivity is replaced by emotion when things go wrong.
We Pay for Ourselves
In
addition to all the previous reasons for not "flying solo", let us
highlight related reasons why you, the "for sale by owner" would hire
us to sell your home.
Part of our job as Realtors is to assist
our buyers and sellers with the many concerns that arise in advance of
and during a real estate purchase. On some issues, like arranging
personal property sales of furnishings, we are confident that buyers
and sellers can work well together without any help from us. But there
are times when buyers won’t ask or answer questions of a seller, or
vice versa. Our experience gives us the credibility to ask the tough
questions and provide the straight answers, which ultimately save time
and save transactions from failure.
Honest, open communication
is essential in our business. We talk to our sellers about their
motives, their objectives, and honestly propose consistent strategies
with their needs in minds.
Another important duty is to
prequalify our buyers for their purchase. No one likes to waste
valuable time, not sellers, not us, and not anxious home buyers. By
understanding our buyers’ and sellers’ preferences and needs, by asking
the right questions, through experience and knowledge of our
marketplace, we have amassed a track record of successes for our
customers.
Delegation, on the other hand, we have not mastered,
nor will we. We’re there in the beginning, the middle, and to the end
and beyond. That’s what you hired us for! We do have a suite of able,
reliable service providers we depend upon to provide our customers with
superior real estate transactions. Our lender, escrow officer, office
manager, and a full complement of skilled contractors are integral to
our ability to serve our buyers and sellers.
We work hard, we
work smart, and we work well. Selling homes is our livelihood, our
occupation, and our focus. We are confident that by being
"customer-centric", by focusing on the needs of our clients, and by
watching their bottom line and not our own, our successes and those of
our customers are assured. That is no surprise to us.
We have
been pleased and surprised, however, by the acclaim we have received,
including not only our clients’ testimonials, but by others. Pat Veling
wrote in a recent South County News, "When I am asked by consumers to
help them choose an agent to sell their home, my answer is almost
always the same. You want an agent that is doing business in today’s
market...somebody who is selling enough homes to be acutely aware of
market values...there are some agents in the county who have
demonstrated exceptional skills at getting their sellers a much higher
percentage of their first list price."
"Blanca Portillo gets their sellers 97.6% of their original listing
price (97.9% of final list price). And they do so with an average sale
price...well above the county's median price."
Call me for a free market analysis. I’ve been licensed since 1997. As a proven real estate professional, I have the skills, dedication and knowledge needed to handle all aspects of selling your home. Please call if I can be of assistance.
Blanca Portillo
(951) 515-1463
