The Downside of Selling Your Home Yourself

The Downside of Selling Your Home Yourself


0 Flares Facebook 0 Google+ 0 LinkedIn 0 Twitter 0 0 Flares ×

Hiring a real estate agent to help you sell your house can have many unforeseeable difficulties that will have you regretting your decision. Selling it yourself is also not such a great idea as shown by the stats below.

According to the National Association of Realtors’ 2015 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, just 7 percent of all home sales last year were for sale by owner (FSBO). And 2 in 5 of those sales were by sellers who already knew their home buyers before the transaction.

While the idea of pocketing the 5-7 percent realtor commission by selling your home yourself may seem very enticing, especially if you live in a seller’s market, it’s really not that straightforward.

Before you can get to the alternative, let’s take a look at why it might be a bad idea to sell the home FSBO.

Lower sales price

You could very easily sell your home for a lot less than it is worth.

According to the National Association of Realtors’ 2015 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, the average FSBO sales price was $184,000.

Legal and financial risk

You could also very easily end up in legal trouble – real estate sales contracts are usually dozens of pages long which leaves plenty of room for potentially disastrous mistakes especially with taxes.

The onus of preparing all of the legal documents such as disclosures falls on you and if like most, you are unfamiliar with exactly how to set them up, the resulting financial and legal risk is on you.

Lots of time and effort

Another downside to FSBO is that it requires a whole lot of time.

Arranging and executing showings and handling all the phone calls from potential buyers are just a tip of the iceberg of tasks you will have to keep up with for all the months your home is on market.

You will also have to spend a lot of time educating yourself on the ins and outs of the home sale process, the current state of your local market and how to deal with potential buyers.

What’s the best alternative then?

To do away with all these shortcomings, one can easily approach a home-buying entity like Local Motive Properties who will offer cash for the home and deal with all the nitty gritty involved in the process.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Top
0 Flares Facebook 0 Google+ 0 LinkedIn 0 Twitter 0 0 Flares ×