How I sold my condo and saved $5,000
Starting Early
Life changes fast, and when my wife started applying to graduate schools across the country, we knew we needed to be flexible with our housing situation. We started talking about selling our condo over a year in advance of when we would be moving. This extra time was invaluable because we weren’t stressed about reducing our price in order to make a quick sale. When you sell real estate in a depressed market, time is your friend.
Exploring Options
Initially, we tried selling the condo “For Sale By Owner”. The primary benefit of selling For Sale By Owner is to avoid the commissions and fees paid to real estate agents. We took digital photographs, created our own fliers to market the property, and started advertising on free sites like Craigslist and local online classifieds. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to work.
After three weeks with few prospects, we escalated our marketing attack. From my yearlong stint as a real estate agent, I learned that many buyers (especially Baby Boomers) prefer to use a real estate agent to help them purchase a property.
We needed to get our property listed on the MLS (the Multiple Listing Service). We paid a local discount brokerage $175 to list the property. This service is considered a “discount” or “flat-fee” brokerage and the fee covers the following services:
- Property is listed within 24 hours
- Six month listing period
- Property is advertised on multiple websites
- Six photo listing
But in order to really market the property, we needed to go beyond the services listed. My wife and I took the initiative and did the following:
- Adapted our flier to direct people to the MLS listing.
- Used our own pictures that highlighted all parts of the property — inside and out.
- Provided property tours to folks that called to schedule a walkthrough.
- Held two open houses and advertised with yard signs, the MLS listing, Craigslist, and other online media.
- Communicated regularly with our broker to update the MLS listing.
After another three weeks had passed, we received a low offer. We submitted a counteroffer with a price closer to our listing price and it was accepted! Property sold. Many dollars saved.
Crunch the Numbers Yourself
Conduct a simple cost-benefit analysis to see if an agent is really worth it. Typically, you pay 6% of the sales price to have an agent list your house, which is divided 50/50 between the buyer’s agent and the seller’s agent.
What this means is that the remaining 94% of what an agent can get for me better be worth more than 100% of what I can get for myself!
I listed my property at $165k, which means I would have paid 3% to the buyer’s agent ($4,950) and another 3% to the seller’s agent (another $4,950), for a combined cost to me of $9,900.
But because I used a discount broker, I paid $4,950 to the buyer’s agent and only $175 for the seller’s (our) agent.
Total savings = $4,775.
The Death of the Real Estate Agent?
Did you know there are over a million real estate professionals currently affiliated with the National Association of Realtors? (And that’s down from 1.2 million at the peak of the housing boom in 2006.) I’m bound to upset a majority of them with what I say next, but my sole intention is to educate GRS readers.
There has to be value to justify hiring a real estate agent. If my wife and I believed that a full-service real estate agent would have provided $4,950 worth of services in the following areas, then we would have hired someone to:
- help with paperwork
- help with advertising
- help with knowledge in a variety of areas
- help provide access to the property
- help to sell the property more quickly
- help fix the cosmetic changes to help the home sell
- help us to understand current market conditions and the value of comparable homes in the area
Thanks to the internet, most of these services are no longer as valuable as they once were. Every one of the topics listed above can be found with the help of an online search engine. The buyer/seller can learn about all of these topics in a matter of minutes.
In our case, it just didn’t make sense to hire a real estate agent to list our home. We live in a busy metropolitan area and we knew our buyer audience was large. We ended up selling to some parents that wanted an investment and a safe place for their two daughters in college.
The Future of Real Estate Agents
The internet continues to change the way we access information about real estate. For buyers and sellers, this is a positive change that can save us money, but for real estate sales agents and brokers, it presents new challenges to the profession.
As the quality of information on the internet improves, many of the “gatekeepers” and the “knowledge holders” will be unable to keep their expertise out of the hands of the general public. I’m not saying that doctors, lawyers, and other professionals will no longer be valuable. But believe me, getting your real estate license is not exactly the equivalent as going to law school or med school.
Don’t Believe Me?
Look around. Agents are posting properties on Craigslist and free classifieds because that’s where buyers are looking. I definitely don’t need an agent to post pictures on Craigslist — I can do that myself.
The MLS is the last stronghold that real estate agents cling to because their livelihood depends on it. But don’t be surprised when someone develops a database that is fully accessible to the public, making the MLS obsolete.
My last complaint about real estate agents is that they get paid based on the market price of your home. From the graphic above, you can see that the values of homes in the U.S. have increased (look at the red line) tenfold from 1975-2005.
Did the amount of work increase tenfold? Did it become ten times harder to sell a home? No and No. This 6% “tax” really hurts Americans because on average, people sell their home every 5-7 years. If you want to read more about the negative effect this has on the economy and how full-service brokers are working hard to eliminate discount brokers, here is a great article.
So next time you buy or sell a property: explore your options, educate yourself, and save money!
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There are 111 comments to "How I sold my condo and saved $5,000".
Nick did a great job of describing the work involved in marketing and negotiating a home sale.
It would be great if he could also talk about the work involved in getting to closing. One reason many buyer’s agents dislike working with FSBOs (for sale by owner) is that they get a partial commission but they do double the work because the owner doesn’t know how to manage all the steps to get to closing. And if you rely on an attorney to do extra work for you, that can decrease your savings on an agent commission.
I agree that the MLS is the big advantage real estate agents have. And although we’ve seen several court cases claiming that the MLS is a form of monopoly, no one has managed to dismantle it yet.
The National Board of Realtors is one of the most powerful lobbies in the U.S.
I believe that people should be paid for the work. But I wish real estate agents worked on a fee basis instead of commission. The commission is an archaic remnant of the days when every agent worked on behalf of the seller (way back in the 1980s for you youngsters).
Selling a $700,000 house for a motivated and educated seller could be a snap while selling a $125,000 house in poor shape to a first time home buyer could take hours of work. Commissions just aren’t fair and encourage agents to only work with wealthy owners and buyers.
On the other hand, just because you’re working with a realtor doesn’t mean that they know how to get to closing, either. When I bought my house a couple years ago, I had a very friendly, hard-working realtor who was very patient with me taking 6 months to find a house. He was very proficient at making offers (we made about a dozen), but turned out to be completely clueless when it came to resolving issues that came up during closing. At the end of the day, I had to ask for help from one of the people who gave me a quote on the mortgage because they knew more about the specific issues we were having. This particular agent earned his commission with sweat labor, but if I were allowed to unlock houses myself, I wouldn’t have even needed him for that.
Redfin’s business model is moving us closer to fee-based instead of commission based realtors. Their agents are all salaried which is a big difference. I’ll be interested to see how this evolves but I would bet it’s going to be extremely slow.
A similar trend is taking place in financial planning; where commissions used to be the norm, fee-based investment advice and planning services are now a major component of the market.
This story is framed as “Look, I sold my house without a real estate agent!” which is hardly true since … Nick is/was a real estate agent. That’s a far cry from an average person Googling some information and going at it.
That doesn’t take from the value of his post. He still outlined the steps that anyone can take to sell his own home without a realtor. I’ve done it twice: The first time , the buyer brought his own realtor and I paid the buyer’s agent fees. The second time there was no agent involved. I learned then how much of the actual work the Title company does.
I thought it was an excellent post and find it amazing how quickly some people attempt to minimize the accomplishment or the value of the post itself with some meaningless dribble.
Great story. Selling your own house can be a great way to save money. But you also need to ask yourself can a real estate agent sell the house for more? An experienced real estate agent could well pay off their commission by getting a better selling price for your property. Really depends on how good you are at negotiating.
In the book as well as the movie ‘Freakanomics’ they actually study real estate agents. Seems that when an agent sells your house his incentive is to sell quick. He/she only earns like $150 for getting your house sold for an extra $10k. This is no incentive. But when agents sell their own houses, they statistically get more money for them then they do for their clients. Why? Because they will hold out for the better offer.
In the end, agents work for themselves. Not for the seller or buyer.
It seems to me that the easy part is the marketing/MLS. The hard part is all the paperwork, contracts, and closing.
Regarding paperwork – You may be interested to see/know how much paperwork the agent actually does. They generally use a standard contract for the offer and at closing (in Ohio) it’s the title agency that does all the paperwork.
Same for Texas. The title company truly does all of the work as well as the mortgage company. The real estate agent acts more like a gate keeper than anything else.
There are good real estate agents out there. There’s also those who would be better suited to selling cosmetics from a case or used cars from a dirt parking lot. Some of the horror stories I’ve heard from friends make me wish we could get rid of the real estate agent all together.
I wish real estate agents were paid on an hourly basis rather than commission. When compensation is commission based they have no fiduciary responsibility. I also feel like since many people do much of the search themselves via trulia, redfin etc, agents are getting paid for doing less than they used to.
@twiggers…. I agree and yet as someone who checks listings on a daily basis I am appalled at how poorly marketed many homes are. I cringe to think of handing thousands of dollars over to someone who couldn’t bother to take proper photo’s. If they can’t do the easier part correctly, I question their commitment to doing the harder part (paperwork, closing etc)
Hourly doesn’t make sense at all. People wouldn’t be able to sell in a down market b/c the closing costs would be formidable. Loans can fail, the agents would encourage endless counteroffers, and you’d question every additional house they wanted to show you (or open house they wanted to hold). The commission is the perfect incentive for the seller’s agent. The buyer’s agent might work better with a flat rate, but definitely not an hourly one.
Maybe I am misunderstanding, can you explain?
If a 400k home is sold, the buyers/sellers agents split 24k? And if a 200k home is sold, they split 12k? In my mind they should be doing the same amount of work for both homes. Why should they get twice as much money for the 400k home? Wouldn’t they both benefit from having the buyer pay more? Who is looking out for the buyer? This is why I was thinking hourly.
Like another poster said, not wanting to pay these commissions is part of why we added on instead of moving.
We too are building an addition rather than lose a large portion buying/selling…
If the seller’s agent’s interests are aligned with the seller’s, then the seller’s agent should want to sell the house for as much as possible. Hence, it makes sense that the commission should be pegged to the price of the home. Otherwise, the seller’s agent has a huge incentive to convince the seller that the house isn’t worth that much just so the deal can be closed more quickly. (This incentive already exists to some extent and has been measured; it’s explained in Freakonomics.)
As I said, it seems the buyer’s agent might work better with a fixed price. But hourly still doesn’t make sense here, because the agent would have an incentive to protract the process of searching for homes, inspecting homes, securing financing, etc. A flat rate might be more appropriate.
As a buyer, I would have been really angry if we’d been paying by the hour. It was bad enough that we wasted hours of our time looking at properties that didn’t fit the parameters we’d given the agent but she thought would be “great if we only saw them!”
Finally after weeks of saying no, no, no we gave you these parameters because they’re important to us, she showed us a house that fit all of them (and exceeded some – it was cheaper than our max). And we bought it. But man it seemed like the hardest part of the whole process was convincing the agent we meant what we said.
I think you mean look at the blue line. And the blue line is irrelevant. The red line is what matters. And the red line is pretty much flat, especially if you look past 2005.
I largely agree with this article. When I bought my first home and therefore wasn’t involved in paying commissions, I of course thought my buyer’s agent was worth every penny. Now I’m not so sure. She didn’t even do the research to find us our home, since she just put the parameters in the computer and had automated e-mails sent to us with houses for sale. That took her a few minutes. It’s not like it is on HGTV or wherever when the agent previews homes first and then shows them to you. Okay, maybe they do this if you are buying a really expensive home. But overall, you do the legwork yourself. With our agent, we would call her with a list of houses we wanted to see, and she would take us. That took perhaps two or three hours total. She was fantastic during the negotiation and closing process, and for that I do think she should be paid good money. I’m just not sure that the 3% fee is justified in all cases. It might have been in a non-internet world in which they did all the legwork. I know, though, that I am not factoring in advertising costs, which I imagine are high. Perhaps a seller’s agent should charge more than a buyer’s agent, since they have to take out ads and have open houses?
Now that we are thinking of selling our home in the next five years, it is painful to contemplate handing over approx. $6,000 or so dollars to agents. That is not to say that we wouldn’t end up doing it, but the high cost of a realtor is one reason why we opted to add on to the back of our house instead of moving. Once you add in the fees and commissions, it is cheaper for us to hire a contractor and add on.
One thing you have to contend with if you do FSBO is the impression, to be frank, that for sale by owners are cheap bastards and overall hard to deal with. I know this isn’t always the case, but I certainly know that my realtor was hesitant to deal with FSBO homes, largely because of bad experiences in the past. I went to one recently, and on her flyer she said, “Buyer’s agents to receive 2.8% commission.” Really? Why didn’t you just give the normal 3%? That just makes you look ridiculous. And I often don’t find that FSBO homes are priced competitively, especially considering that they don’t have to pay commissions. That just leads me to conclude that the sellers are unreasonable, and therefore I just won’t even bother going to an open house. Oh, and if you have an open house, PLEASE get a friend to be there and make it clear that it is a friend. Otherwise, it is just awkward to walk through a house when the owner is there. That also can hinder selling your home.
It’s not quite true that you didn’t pay a commission as a buyer. The commissions for both agents come out of the house proceeds which you are financing. So, in a sense, you are paying a commission.
Years ago, when my husband and I were looking at our first (and to date only) house, it was pre-internet and we just walked into a real estate office in a town we liked. A woman took us to a few houses and then asked if we wanted to have an exclusive buyer’s agent. She handed us a contract, we thanked her and said we’d consider it. When we read the contract it was clear that she’d be representing the person selling the house and it was also clear the more paid, the more she’d benefit.
We figured out then that the system was screwed up. At that point we began driving around neighborhoods we liked and calling the listing agent to find out the price of the houses we liked (and looked to be in our price range) from the outside. If the house was affordable to us we set up an appointment with the listing agent to walk through it.
We believe that’s how we got such a great deal on our house – the agent who listed our house had a vested interest in taking 6% of a lower price than 3% of a higher one.
Yes, I am saying that. In Pennsylvania at the time (mid 90’s), according to the contract language, the buyer’s agent was representing the seller so even if we’d have had an agent, we’d have not had representation in the contract.
However, we did have a real estate attorney look over and adjust our contract according to our interests. We did all our own negotiating.
This works for some people, but we moved to another state *before* our condo went on the market (about an hour’s drive away) and we both have full time jobs. It was enough of a hassle taking time off or going on weekends to do the painting and meeting the carpet installation guys (and one UPS delivery thanks to a very slow internet order). I couldn’t imagine trying to take on the hassle of managing open houses, meeting the inspector/appraiser, dealing with the condo association, etc as well. I consider my time and energy to be well worth the 3% that is going to our real estate agent this month.
Yup, same for me. I had already moved a month before I was able to list my condo for sale. I would not have been able to do all of that myself. Plus, the buyer ended up being a (jackass of a) lawyer – NOT something I wanted to deal with alone!
As to the unfairness of the ever-increasing income agents get from commission, Nick, tsk tsk, shame on you for citing the nominal numbers AND cutting off at the peak bubble prices, yelling “10-fold increase!” when the very chart you’re using lists the inflation-adjusted costs that show an increase of about 17-20% to current day.
A major factor not mentioned in the article is that the author was dealing with a very inexpensive and fungible property. It’s very easy to price cheap condos. People know exactly what they’re getting because there are usually dozens of replicates. Houses are not so easy.
I also agree that the closing paperwork is formidable and not to be botched. This alone is a good reason to use an agent. (And no, I’m not an agent or closely associated with any.)
@Mom of Five: Are you saying you opted for dual agency (the realtor represented both the buyer and the seller)? That’s a huge risk for you to take, which is why it’s illegal in some states. A good, exclusive buyer’s agent usually is the best option for buyers, i.e., they get better rates for their clients. The woman who approached you obviously wasn’t an exclusive buyer’s agent.
oops. I accidentally replied to myself (#6). See above.
This article dis isappointing and misleading. The article says it is about how to sell a property without a realtor. In reading the article, the author reveals he WAS a real eatate agent. In reality he was representing himself. The average person is not going to have the knowledge and experience he has. This includes doing all the research talked about in the article.
TOTALLY AGREE!!!
I thought I could do it all. As an above poster mentions I did all the legwork for searching for homes, driving by to see if I liked the outside. If I did I’d ask the agent my husband used previously to set up an appt. Later, when we were looking at a home she’d point out the bad parts. Things I’d NEVER have noticed.
A good agent, that doesn’t push you to buy quickly or in a higher price range than you want (even if you can afford it on paper) may to save you money in the long run.
Then I realized it’s cheaper to add on. So, we’re doing that and she didn’t charge us anything to do that.
People sell their homes through estate agents because they don’t want to spend the time marketing it, or learning how to do all the paperwork or any of the other things needed to sell the house.
I thought this was a good post because it showed us everything Nick needed to do to sell his house, how much time it took him and how much money he saved.
The article allows readers to make an informed decision on their own property sale and decided whether they want to put in the time and effort, or whether they think the saving is not large enough to justify it.
I have several major problems with this article. First, as was mentioned in passing earlier in the comments, this reads like your standard “I sold my house without an agent, and you can too!” article, but entirely neglects the skills the seller had as a result of experience as a real estate agent. Many parts of the home-buying process can be confusing to the uninitiated, and that should be acknowledged.
Second, the writer focuses on the $5,000 savings as a result of not using a seller’s agent. The first question in my mind is, could an agent have sold the property for more, and thus well earned his/her commission? There’s no mention of this possibility and it seems like quite an oversight. If they had had a seller’s agent who had gotten them $10,000 more, the writer would have netted $164,500 rather than the $159,875 indicated. (Based on the list price, because we’re not told the final selling price.) It’s entirely possible that this move cost the writer $5,000 rather than saving that amount.
Finally, the last complaint about agents being paid based on the price of the home is one that I would never have expected an economist to make. Many, many jobs have not changed substantially since the 1970’s (or even earlier!), but we still pay inflation-adjusted wages to barbers, concert musicians, lawn services, house painters, university professors, waitstaff, and so on.
Yes. I had problems with those exact same 3 things.
The savings $5k premise also presumes the seller’s time was worth nothing.
I thought the same thing at first about the author having experience as a real estate agent, but if you re read it, it looks as though it was a bit of a joke. He said his year long “stint” as a real estate agent. I read that as saying he took his time trying to sell his own home as “real estate” experience.
It makes me ask, why if the poster made so much for so little did he quit. Things have change alot since 2008, I know alot of bad agents that could not cut it now and have gotten out. One agent sold 1 property in 2010 and she was an agent for 25 years. Making 100,000 for writing stories and doing a blog, or millions for playing sports, seems kind of like a real estate agent, but know ones complaning about that and a real estate agent takes on a whole lot more financial risk for the seller.
A million dollar listing = $60,000 to be split between buying and selling brokerages.
$250k listing = $15,000 shelled out.
I see what you’re trying to say but I just don’t see how such a sum of money can be compared to that earned by a waiter or barber.
An engineering or math professor could easily earn $60k a semester, and more if they’re at a top university, tenured or doing additional publications or speaking engagements.
A concert musician could earn $15k in a week.
You might say, yes, but the real estate agent is making that in a DAY. True, but they’re getting paid for weeks or months worth of work that might never have panned out. Part of what they’re charging for is that risk.
The list of jobs I gave wasn’t sorted by salary. The unifying characteristic is that they’re all jobs where the fundamental tasks haven’t changed in 40+ years.
But Megan, what you’re failing to address here is the VOLUME of sales a realtor can do. When I was working as such, I had a minimum of TEN deals going at any one time. That equated to an easy six figure++ income. Then, as now, I didn’t enjoy the feeling that came with getting paid $5k on the sale of a lesser priced condo with that of getting paid $37.5k on a million dollar listing I had. The amount of paperwork, etc was the SAME! From reading your comment, you’re talking about one sale. A good realtor doesn’t deal in just one sale. They deal in volume. And getting paid 6% on each deal, regardless of price, doesn’t make any sense to me.
Remember, the 6% commission is based on a post WW2 business model which, today, is obsolete. Much like car dealerships…..
I think the complaint about buyers’ agents being paid according to how much the house sells for is a legitimate one. I’ll agree it makes sense if the person representing the seller is paid according to the price – the seller and his agent have the same interest – i.e. getting the most for the house. But a buyer’s agent getting paid the same way? Ridiculous.
A personal injury attorney gets a percentage of an accident victim’s settlement. Alright, that makes sense to me. But should the corporation being sued pay their attorneys a percentage of the settlement fee? I think we’d see a lot more million dollar hot coffee settlements.
But the buyer’s agent did get their commission anyway, so I don’t see how that’s relevant here.
The main thing to keep in mind (and this applies to the comment above yours as well), is that anything is only worth what people are willing to pay for it. This crops up in the current real estate market all the time: “My home is really worth $500k, but similar properties are selling for $200k.” I’m sorry, but that means your property is worth $200k. The same principle applies to labor. You and I may think that it isn’t right that a teacher makes $30k and an athlete $30m, but that’s what the market tell us each one’s labor is worth.
The market tells us that real estate agents are worth 3% commission each. If you don’t agree with that, you’re perfectly free to buy your next house from a FSBO seller and not employ a buyer’s agent.
Finally, real estate agents are just like anyone else who works on commission, like the guy selling you your TV. It seems like a ridiculous amount of money, but remember that that might represent 3-6 months worth of work with no pay. Maybe the agent didn’t do a substantial amount of work in any one sale, but how many sales fell apart through no fault of his/her own, meaning no pay at all?
I completely agree and I think that’s what’s happening. I know several people whose agents recently had to take less of a commission to make the deals happen. Sites like Redfin, etc. Agents are hurting from more than just decreased total volume of sales – they’re also hurting because people don’t want to pay 6% anymore.
My point was more to consumers and people shopping for houses. If you use a buyer’s agent and are paying them a percentage of the sale price, that agent’s interest in the transaction diverges from yours.
(Replying to Mom of five)
Then it’s a perfect example of market pressures at work.
I agree that there’s a problem with aligning interests. The seller’s agent’s interests are aligned with their client’s: higher sale means more commission, but the buyer’s agent’s interests are also for a higher sale. They’re legally obligated to work in their client’s interest, but they may be motivated to convince their client to take a higher price or buy more house than they otherwise would.
In the current state of the real estate market, I bet it would be possible to find a buyer’s agent willing to take a flat fee plus a part of the savings if you can find the house you want under a certain price. A buyer would then have more reason to deal with you if they know they’re not paying your agency fees.
‘The market tells us that real estate agents are worth 3% commission each. If you don’t agree with that, you’re perfectly free to buy your next house from a FSBO seller and not employ a buyer’s agent.’
Megan, the market doesn’t tell us any such thing. Why do you think sites such as Redfin and various discount brokerages are trying to make inroads into the NAR’s closely guarded territory? They are having mediocre success, not because they’re failing but because realtors would not show their listings! It became a real bone of contention between Redfin, NAR and agents everywhere. The NAR encourages the continuance of the 6% commission even though the death-to-6-percenters are attempting to give the public another choice. Do you work in the real estate industry? If not, you really have no idea just how much of a closed shop it is. I say, give the public a genuine choice that’s all. If you want to spend 6% of your sales price on commissions, go ahead. But, by the same token, if you want to sell your house via Redfin (for example) and pay a fraction of that and save/invest/spend the rest, you should be able to. That’s all I’m saying. The NAR will never allow the surgence of sites such as Redfin – it is going to take time for there to be a real choice in how you get to sell your house because agents do NOT show discount listings with low commissions offered. I saw it in action daily and that’s a fact.
The NAR is always touting those statistics about getting more for your house with an agent but I think numbers only tell half the story. Transactions done within families (where a house is being passed/sold to a relative after a death) are very often done without an agent so non agent prices are naturally going to skew lower.
Transactions between family members might skew the numbers. But how often does that really happen? I doubt its really that common. I don’t know anyone who’s bought a home from a family member. People inherit houses but I don’t think that registers as a sale in the same way.
Seriously? There’s at least 3 on my street. Maybe I’m just projecting something local on the whole country? In addition to my neighbors, I do actually know several adult children who bought their homes from their parents or grandparents when the retirees moved to a friendlier climate or else they died and one of the adult kids bought out their siblings. Their transactions were privately done and a bargain for the new homeowners.
So it may well be I just think it’s common because I’ve seen so much of it? DH and I each have a sibling who are now living in the house their spouse grew up in.
I agree. Re: the point about whether a real estate agent could have sold it for more because of his/her skills, the real question is: could the author have sold it for more if they weren’t doing a FSBO? When we tried to sell our last condo FSBO, people lowballed us SO BADLY. Potential buyers outright told us that since we were saving on real estate commission, they should pay us less. We eventually went with a broker, and she got us a much better price, even with commission.
I’m not sure if the author said he was a real estate agent, or merely played one for the year they were doing their sale.
That said, the scariest part (for me) of buying/selling houses is all the legal stuff, and our situation was more than worth the $300/hour we paid for legal fees.
I don’t see any mention of legal representation in the article, but if you’re not using a realtor you really should have one, IMO. (even if you are using a realtor)
Congrats on selling your condo yourselves! So many people think they MUST have a realtor to help them to sell a property when in reality they don’t. A good friend of mine tried to sell her house via Redfin which seemed like an excellent idea to me at the time. I am not sure how Redfin may have changed their model since then but, at that time, what we found is that the realtors literally IGNORED her listing in the MLS because they knew that she was using an online brokerage and thus hoping to save on commissions. This is a common complaint if you research it online. The ‘information holders’ are gripping on to their jobs and panties with both hands and one of the ways in which they are doing this is to ignore those listings that haven’t been listed by an actual realtor with a 6% listing. As a result, her Redfin listed home sat and sat and sat with barely any action. The moment she listed it with a realtor in town ~ and signed a 6% exclusive listing agreement ~ the increase in activity was mind boggling. Talk about closing ranks.
I am already looking at ways to market and sell my house myself when the time is right. I just cannot justify giving 6% of my money to someone who does little more than stick my listing on the MLS. I can do that myself! I also had a big problem with the sloppy work that was done for my friend by agents that could never be reached or hadn’t even filled the contracts out properly, not to mention spelling errors and other crap. I don’t want to denigrate an entire profession but my feeling is this: Charge a flat rate to list and sell my house, say $1000 max. Split the grand between the buying and selling agents. 6% is way, way overpriced IMO. I believe this to be true because I too used to be a realtor some time ago and the amount of work I did for a $100k condo was really no more than that for a million dollar listing. In fact, I used to feel guilty for charging someone so much money for so little work (really) that I felt more than a little skeevy and quit the job. I got tired of being pressured by my broker to pressure the client. That’s my personal opinion based on personal experience.
Being a Realtor yourself, you know that the commission is just as negotiable as the price of the home/condo/whatever. Sellers who feel that 6% commission is too high can ask for it to be lower. Also, the spilt between the buyer’s and seller’s agent can be arranged in the listing agreement.
Many Realtors, especially in this market, are open to lower commissions for more expensive homes. Many people are acting like 6% is a must for selling their home.
Also, since your were a Realtor, you know as a buyer’s agent that you can spend months showing buyers homes that “just looked so cute in the pictures.” If being a buyer’s agent meant showing 2-3 homes and then followed by a smooth transaction, I would understand a smaller fee.
In my experience, FSBOs are just oblivious to the market and are way overpriced. Also, trying to get inside to look at the home is a nightmare. If my buyers want to see your property, you should try to make an effort to get out of the house for a few minutes.
Sorry this turned into a rant. I just wanted to point out that the commission is always negotiable.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. It keeps life interesting 🙂
To address your points:
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The broker I worked for would never allow a commission lower than 6% for any of our listings. Occasionally, he would go to 5% but he made his sales staff feel like losers in the process. At every weekly meeting, the ‘6% rule’ was enforced. I’m not talking about a rinky dink brokerage here. It was a leading national brokerage and following the 6% rule was cultish.
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To go to 5%, the listing had to be million dollar plus at the brokerage I worked for. Anything lower than that was 6% across the board.
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FYI, I never spent ‘months’ showing homes. I was very good at prequalifying my buyers to make sure they weren’t flakes, sitting down with them to find out exactly what their tastes were and what they wanted and, in almost every case, I found the house they wanted right away. But that’s just me. I weeded out the time wasters real quick. And my transactions were always smooth. I didn’t lose one escrow.
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Agreed. However, I found that most FSBOs were rational people, willing to look at facts and discuss. I sold a couple of those without any problems whatsoever.
Going back to commissions, they are only negotiable if the broker is willing to negotiate. Otherwise, as a salesperson, you are at the mercy of your broker’s dictates. That is how the whole system is set up and the NAR enforces/reinforces that.
This article seems more like an anti-realtor editorial than a reader story.
I do think the industry could use some improvement but I also think good realtors add a lot of value and FSBO isn’t any walk in the park.
I generally understand the argument against the 6% commissions. Its a lot of money. Especially in pricey areas. Try watching ‘Selling New York’ on cable for examples of some shocking commissions. So yeah for the seller the prospect of saving $5,000 or $10,000 or $42,000 if you do without a realtor is pretty compelling. But its not as if those realtors are useless or that selling homes is a simplistic endeavor anyone can do easily. (especially if you don’t have 1 years experience in the profession like Nick)
I wonder how many people try to sell their homes on their own and fail. Probably happens a lot. I’ve seen homes go from FSBO to listed by a Realtor, so it does happen. Maybe they didn’t fail but took longer to sell and that lost time could potentially cost someone more than the commissions. Or worst yet a ignorant home owner may underprice their home and lose more money that way. Honestly underpriced homes probably happen less, sellers seem to overprice almost all the time. Good agents should be able to negotiate better than most individuals, and the negotiation can matter a lot. Then at the end you have to deal with all the legal paper work which realtors are trained for. If you go FSBO and do that alone you’re risking big mistakes or you could pay a real estate attorney to handle it but thats an extra cost too.
It also seems to me that as a buyer it makes total sense to use a buyers agent. The buyers agent does all the work for me, negotiates, knows the market and I don’t have to pay them. Thats a no lose option for me. Sellers who try to do it on their own either end up paying buyers agents or they cut themselves out of the portion of the market of buyers who use buyers agents.
The biggest reasons why FSBOs end up being listed by realtors is (a) the seller doesn’t know how to price real estate (that’s the seller’s problem) and (b) agents avoid FSBOs like the plague unless forced to deal with it by a buyer who really wants to see the inside of the property and make an offer because most agents look at FSBOs as diddling them out of commissions!
I have seen 2-3 homes just in my neighborhood go from FSBO to realtor represented in the last few months. It’s incredibly common, in my opinion, and reflects the majority of people who try to FSBO to save a few bucks but who don’t really know what they are doing.
I include myself in that category, by the way. I own several properties, but I am not an expert on buying and selling. That’s why I use a realtor.
For someone who truly has the knowledge and experience, FSBO can be a good option. But it’s not for everyone, and it’s for fewer people than this article might imply. I can’t imagine trying to sell a house FSBO to save $5K. A good realtor could get me much more than that in higher sale price, not to mention, my time is worth money too.
What would happen to the industry if the buyers paid for their own agents and the sellers paid for theirs? I think EVERYTHING would change at that point – there is no way MOST buyers would pay their agents 3% just to be able to go into a house. I suspect many buyers would be willing to pay for someone to do the negotiating, but 3%? Doubt it. The scam is that the sellers have to pay for EVERYTHING…which in turn causes buyers to go ahead and get an agent – I mean, why wouldn’t they?…they don’t have to pay for it. (directly)
We have exactly that system in Australia. There are only sellers agents. As a buyer, I get in contact with the selling agent myself and can see just about any house I want. About 90% of all property on the market will have an “open for inspection” where you can just turn up and look, or it is very easy to get an appointment as well. I don’t need a buyer’s agent to get me access to any listings. Buyers negotiate directly with the buying agent. Occasionally a buyer will use a “buyer’s advocate” who will find listings and negotiate, but this very much the exception, no the norm.
When it comes to the legal and contractual part, people usually hire a conveyancer who sorted out the contracts, but even this can be done yourself.
The idea that I would pay two agents commission if I sell is mind blowing. What a horrible system!
We have gone through the buying-selling-buying process more than a few times this year, and I am still ambivalent about the act as your own agent trend.
On one hand, I find it hard to believe that our agent really did enough work – despite being a good agent, a friend, and an overall good guy – to earn a 25k commission. My frugal mind cringes if I think about that too hard.
On the other, as buyers, we saw a lot of the same mistakes being made by people selling without an agent, particular through our local for sale by owner website, Grapevine.
The first was pricing. People’s own valuations of those homes were almost inevitably completely out of whack. I suspect it was a math problem: rather than using comparables to see what their home was likely worth, they mentally said:
We paid 200,000 for our home in 2007.
We put 20k of renovations in.
Market’s been pretty good since then, so let’s say 4% a year, so 8k a year for added 3 years.
We need pay a buyer’s commission of 3%’ off of the total price, so added another 8k.
We’re up to 252k but we need to make some cash off this deal, so how about we sell it for 260k even?
Trouble is, comparable units are selling for 215 or 220, and sellers who have done the above math don’t want to budge since they feel they “deserve” 260k for their property. So it languishes on the market, buyers get scared off by the fact that it’s now been on the market. 8, 9, 10 months, and the sellers become less inclined o sell at a comparable price since now they have 10 months extra mortgage payments on the books.
The others that since you don’t have an agent to do the showings, you have to be there for each one. This became a problem if the sellers worked, and weren’t sure they could get the time off to show you the house. In one case, we had to wait over a week to see a house because the seller was trying to wrangle time off from her boss for an hour to show us the house. Or, another time, a neighbor agreed to show it, but kept comparing it to her own house! (clearly not caring about their money as much as they did!)
Finally, having no idea of what it takes to actually get a house from the nominally sold point to actual closing and handing over of the keys. It requires a huge amount of legwork, a good (but not impossible) amount of knowledge, and a lawyer you know and trust. I won’t speculate on th number of for sale by owner sellers who also decide to do the legal stuff themselves as well, but as a buyer, that would scare me right off.
When buying/selling a home, a talented real estate agent is worth their weight in gold (well, maybe bronze). I agree with the comments above which mention that it’s unclear what positive impact a listing agent could have had on the author’s selling price. What we do know is that, for most people, there is no more complex and expensive transaction that ever takes place in one’s lifetime than purchasing or selling real estate. Real estate law is complex, so hiring an attorney makes sense in most instances – when a buyer isn’t handy, bringing in a trusted professional for a home inspection makes sense – and don’t forget the mortgage broker and loan officer, in many cases. That’s a lot of people to coordinate, and an experienced real estate agent can be invaluable in managing them (in addition to helping ensure a fair price on the transaction).
So I guess my point is yes, in my experience (and I would think in general) working with a real estate agent can make sense on both the buying side and the selling side.
And a couple of quick thoughts on that graph: (1) If you take out the real estate bubble in the early part of the last decade, I think that house prices (and therefore agent commissions) have increased fairly modestly… and any good economist should know to remove the outliers before making the conclusion.
(2) To support my earlier point, the recession of 2008 did a “fantastic” job of culling the ranks of real estate agents, particularly in parts of the country w/distressed markets. So those who remain tend to be experienced and motivated and, quite frankly, talented enough to prove their value even in horrible market conditions.
I would also like to add that the general public will never be able to publicly access their local MLS for as long as the NAR is a hard lobbying cartel. There is too much money at stake.
I disagree. If you live in the Washington DC area (or possibly even Maryland or Virginia) you can use FranklyMLS.com to search the mls just like a real estate agent.
Here in California, the local MLS guards its info like gold. Information is not instantly available as it would be if the public could access the actual MLS database. For example, my neighbor’s house has been for sale for two weeks and I have yet to see it pop up anywhere on any of the MLS feeds. The only reason for this is to give agents the jump on the listing and to prevent the general public from making their own arrangements with a sale. In order to know that this house is for sale right now is to literally drive past it and see the sign. It’s not even on Zillow.
I am disappointed that this article did not estimate the number of hours of work it took to sell the property. Marketing the property combined with the time involved with showing the house and doing 2 open houses doesn’t sound like a quick sell. If they spent > 200 hrs over the course of a year to sell the house they might have been better off with an agent.
Also, if someone without a year of experience was trying to follow their footsteps they would have to spend a lot more time on reasearch.
I am an agent, actually a successful one. Been selling for almost 8 years, will close over 100 homes in ’11, 75 last year, 52 in ’09. I work my tail off, am an expert in what I do. Not all are. I will agree with the writer that barriers of entry into RE are very low (I wish it were tougher) Part time and hobbiest agents are one of the toughest parts of the job, those are the ones that give my indusry a bad rap. I can promise you, if you hire the right professional agent, you will get your moneys worth 90% of the time. Sure, there are houses that we’ve stuck the sign in the yard and closed 2-3 weeks later but it’s rare. The general public has no idea the work that happens behind the scenes in a deal and it’s easy to sugar coat it on TV or in a blog.
All of that being said, 6% is a lot of $, no doubt. But our job is all about the 80/20 rule, we get paid for 20% of our work and the other time seems wasted most days. Before I got myself to a level of being able to hire staff, etc I would’ve worked for an hourly or flat rate in a heartbeat!
Honestly, I felt bad for my agent. I bought my first home about a year and a half ago. We looked at almost 100 homes. I never guessed it would take me that long to find something I liked, in my price range (very modest price range). I put an offer on one house that had another, better offer (I still think fondly of that house). The home I ended up buying, was almost 30k less than most of the other houses we’d looked at. lol, she might have been relieved just to stop the process, even though her commission was lower.
Anyway, she still turned a profit on the deal even after all the gas, lunches out and time spent working on it – just not as much profit as I’m sure she would have liked. She was super friendly, pleasant to work with and instructive. I’ll almost certainly call her to sell this house and if my next house is in this same metro area, I’ll probably have her help me look again.
I think depending on the situation, you can certainly go without an agent with no real harm but a lot of time an agent is worth the money. Just the convenience and time factor alone can be worth it.
I’m just saying: If I was a real estate agent and you had to see 100 homes before you chose one that came close to your likes, I would have dropped you as a client on number 5. Something is wrong if you’re viewing that many homes — obviously, you’re not be “filtered” on your preferences. At any rate, there’s either something obsessive about you or a mental deficiency in the realtor.
Interesting comment re: agents using Craig’s list and other public websites themselves. Three years ago we were trying to rent an investment property we own. We had the help of a friend who is an agent to place the rental in the MLS. We also placed ads in the paper and on Craig’s list. Any referring agent would receive the typical commission of 1/2 month’s rent.
A week or so after placing our ads I was perusing Craig’s list to compare our asking rent to comparable properties in the area when I found a remarkable ad. It was our house with details and pictures listed right off of the MLS placed by an agent who obviously had time on his hands.
He was re marketing MLS listings which were not his own on Craig’s list. Unbelievable.
Not just unbelievable, but illegal.
I had an even worse CL experience. We listed our home for sale on CL, and predictably, our local realtors closed ranks and would not even show it. (We had priced it after a good deal of market research, the house was in good shape with recent renovations, we had a housekeeper come in regularly so it would always be spotless and ready to show — we were not delusional FSBOs, in other words.)
About 2 weeks later, my voicemail was filled up with people dying to come look at our house. Why? Because some !@#$!@#$$@ “listed” our high-end home on CL as an $800/month rental. (Just for comparison, that amount of rent would get you either a ranch in Cracktown or a medium-range student apartment in the relevant community.)
I still don’t get why somebody would do that and list our actual phone #, if they were trying to pull the old “I live out of town, so you send me the deposit and I’ll send you the keys” scam. Am I the only person something like this has happened to?
So now we’re being a good boy and girl and using a “professional” property management company to market the home for rental (we recently moved overseas). The ONLY thing they have done? Put it on Craigslist! For a delusionally high monthly rate at first (that they recommended and we said from the beginning was way too high), which wasted an entire month during the busiest part of the rental season. And failed to return phone calls and emails.
My husband and I purchased our condo directly from the previous owners, without using any realtors on either end. It worked out great for us, and we think we got the best deal possible.
The sellers in this case also started trying to sell FSBO about a year before they would be moving out. They were actually just about to give up and list with a realtor, when I happened to overhear one of them telling a friend that they were going to give up (they were grad students at the same school as us)-we hadn’t started really looking for a place to buy just then, but were planning on starting the process soon, so we went to take a look at the place, liked it, and started comparing to other places.
I think what really helped in our case was a combination of the internet resources and (more importantly) the extensive notes the seller had taken when she was buying the condo, as well as her having kept a copy of every single piece of paperwork. We used the internet to make sure that nothing had changed, but having such great notes from someone who had just bought the place 5 years prior was a really big help in the process.
I’m not sure what we’ll do when we move out. We’ll probably test the waters on Craigslist and around the school first (it seems like there are always grad students looking to buy/sell a condo in our area), but we’ll be willing to go with a realtor if things aren’t moving quickly enough. I also think about all the time I spent on the phone to keep things moving, and think I would pay at least something to have someone else do that for me!
I just bought a house from the previous property owner without either of us using an agent. It wasn’t particularly hard, no harder than I imagine it would have been if we had used agents.
There would have been $33,000 paid out in real estate commissions at the standard rate. $33,000.
I know that as a buyer, I don’t necessarily see any of that money, but the price was lower than I believe it would have been if we factored in paying real estate agents.
The whole real estate industry is full of scammy people and parasites. They keep a tight hold on their MLS database (because they really offer almost nothing else of value) and then charge you ridiculous rates to use it. Seriously, there’s absolutely no way a pair of real estate agents could have done $33k worth of work on this sale.
I’ll be happy when the internet finally kills this industry and these people have to go actually *earn* their living rather than just demanding it from you in exchange for almost nothing but access to a database they have monopolistic control over.
When I bought the house I currently live in, I did so through an internet auction site. The house had been listed by the bank both with a local realtor and with the online auction site. The realtor was unbelievable ~ told me not to bother submitting an offer because he already had a pile on offers on his desk. Illegal! Anyway, I put the address of this house into Google’s search box and lo and behold up comes the auction house’s listing at THOUSANDS below what the local realtor was listing it for. I jumped on it. Submitted an easy offer form online to the auction house, immediately received a call back from a live person who personally dealt with the bank for me and got an acceptance on my offer within hours. It was fantastic. No realtors involved to screw things up in other words. It was up to me to inspect the following, which I did:
Roof, Air conditioning/furnace unit, plumbing, electrical, termite situation and foundation condition. Easy. Meanwhile, the local realtor wouldn’t return phone calls and didn’t have a clue even that the house sold! One month after I moved in, he comes knocking at the door wondering (a) how I moved in without him coming to unlock the door for me (duh) and (b) could he have his lock box back. The bank did actually have to pay him a commission of about $4000 for doing absolutely nothing other than holding a foreclosed listing for the perusal of his contractor friends who wanted to flip the place. Yours truly slipped completely under his radar LOL
Sounds like you’re savvy about such things (in ways I’d like to be.) What internet auction site did you use…and how did you figure out where to look? (Sorry if this is a stupid question…. I’ve intermittently tried to figure out how to get the inside info on foreclosures and have never been terribly successful). Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.
When we bought our first (and only) house, we were looking for a fixer, so we spotted houses we were interested in (some not on the market), and we contacted the owners (by looking up public property tax records at the county). We contacted the owners directly, made a deal, and used a lawyer for closing. It worked great for us, and I cringe to think about how much we’ll have to turn over to an agent when (if) we sell, after we’ve put in endless sweat equity and cash to fix up the house (and neighborhood). Obviously our strategy probably wouldn’t work so well for people buying “normal / livable” houses, but it worked for us, and we got pretty incredible deal.
@Laura ~ I just input the address of the house I wanted to buy into Google’s search engine. Back came a list of sites that contained the address. Some search results were IDX MLS feeds but one result in particular was the auction house’s data for the house. I was able to see the minimum that the lender was willing to accept as compared to that which the local agent was listing the house for. I got lucky because no one knew that the bank was also trying to sell the house via online auction and, therefore, I was the only bidder and (of course) I made that minimum bid. As soon as my offer was accepted just hours later, the house was off the market even though the local agent continued to list it for sale. Just try entering into Google search the address of any house you are interested in and see what comes back.
Yes, there are lots of jobs that if I think about them, I figure I could do them pretty well. However, I don’t really know all that’s involved, and I’m not well trained enough to do some of it without having to spend hours learning what I need to know.
One disadvantage to the internet (which I love dearly, of course!) is that there is a tendency to want more and more things for free. Again, I love free as much as the next person, but as more and more jobs pay at part-time rates or come without benefits or you are expected to spend months or years doing unpaid internships, it’s not clear how low we can go and maintain a society.
We need middle income earners with benefits and the ability to support a family — not a bunch of young hipsters sleeping on couches, eating happy hour food, and trying not to get sick at one end and highly paid hedge fund managers and CEOs at the other end with only those that have service jobs for the very wealthy coming close to anything resembling a middle class.
I’ve bought and sold FSBO, used a buyer’s agent a couple of times and sold once using a realtor (the same one we used to buy the house). The only reason I used a realtor to sell the house was that we moved out-of-state. She was definitely worth the commission. However, when we sell our current house, I’m pretty sure we’ll use the discount broker to pay for the MLS service and market the house ourselves like the writer did. While I don’t have experience in the real estate field like he did, I know that I can’t take what I paid for the house, add in the money I’ve spent improving the house and use that as my sales price. Certainly wish I could!
My advice would be to hire an appraiser and get a written appraisal report. That way you know exactly what you need to ask. Rule of thumb, if you want a quick sale, is to price 1 or 2% below the appraisal. Here in California, I would open an escrow to handle all the legal paperwork. A good escrow agent will tell you exactly what other paperwork you need to provide to the buyer on your end, in addition to the paperwork escrow will do for you. You could also ask an attorney because you will have to deal with DISCLOSURES. Very important. Educate yourself a bit, it’s easy 🙂
I live in England where I’ve bought and sold plenty of real estate (or ‘property’ as we call it) and have looked at places in the US but have never bought.
Here, only the seller has an agent. The seller pays them 2% to 3% (It’s perfectly possible to negotiate a fixed fee) usually and each side has a lawyer (around 1% costs) whose job it is to handle the contractual paperwork. It is up to buyers to locate the property they want and negotiate it with the ‘estate agent’ (a profession considered somewhere below journalists for ethics). A savvy buyer understands the market and when to drive a hard bargain. We seem to manage without a buyer’s agent.
“(a profession considered somewhere below journalists for ethics).”
UK journalists have a much worse public perception. Journalists aren’t really considered unethical here in the USA. They are kind of in the middle of ethical rankings based on public perceptions. I think a better analogy for the USA would be used car salesmen.
Jethro Tull had a song about estate agents, “Down At The End Of Yoir Road”, a good listen.
I bought a couple of houses while I lived in England and it seemed to be a lot less hassle than buying here in the US although I will say that on one of my purchases the lawyer was inept LOL
@Pamela: I really didn’t do much work to sell the unit. I spent two full days hosting Open Houses for the property, I produced my own PDF fliers to send electronically and print, I used my local online classifieds and Craigslist, and I tried to get my property in front of as many people as possible. Total time: ~35 hours.
@Dee: I should have done a better job framing the story. Yes, I did work as a realtor for 1 year. But my point with this article is that the internet now provides ALMOST all of the information a person needs to market and sell a home.
The MLS is the last information stronghold, and the public MLS is NOT the same as the version realtors can see. The realtor version allows them to see how long a property has been on the market, how many times the price has been reduced, as well as a history of past sales so that comparable prices can be determined. If only the public had that information!
Selling your own home is should be something you consider – I don’t recommend it for everyone. If your house is unique or the market is volatile, a real estate agent might prove invaluable.
Thank you for reading, and just like every article on GRS, I hope this one adds to your arsenal of knowledge so you can make wise decisions about your money.
-Nick, SelfTaughtEconomist.com
When I search Trulia I see how long a property has been on the market, every price reduction and past sales. I think it may also link to the state tax records. Trulia is a consumer site, how does realtor MLS differ?
I see the same thing on Zillow…
just an FYI about Zillow…. they are grossly inaccurate in my neighborhood. My tax records are tagged on another street altogether, my neighbor across the street is tagged on my property, square footage is incorrect etc. Maybe this is just in my area but for those reasons I tend to stick with trulia and redfin.
Yeah, Zillow is all over the place. When I sold my last house (in a huge West Coast city), it went for WAY over what Zillow estimated its market value as. The market value it gives for my current (vacant! ugh!) house in Oregon, on the other hand — well, let’s just say I WISH somebody would buy it for that! I would guess Zillow comes in about 50K higher than anybody could ever get for that place, and I stay pretty on top of the market there because I can’t stand living in one country and dealing with owning a house in another. I don’t know if it’s big city versus not-so-big city, if the difference is because I sold my old place about 30 seconds before the housing bubble burst, or what.
Interesting. I’ve been endlessly frustrated by Zillow’s ‘Zestimates’ but for everything I’ve looked at in our neighborhood and nearby neighborhood, and friends houses (hey, I’m curious) the factual information seems to be about 95% correct. The only error I’ve ever knowingly seen is that it thinks our condo has a fireplace.
I know! The factual information for the homes in our Oregon neighborhood (we knew all our neighbors and had been inside most of their homes) all seemed to be basically correct. It was the Zestimates that were really wacky.
We’re able to access a lot of free MLS info through our public library – anyone else?
You’re absolutely correct. The public MLS is NOT the same as the actual MLS database itself. Also, the public has to wait a lot longer for the MLS feed to spit out the property info, at least that is the case with our local MLS. My neighbor’s house has been for sale with Century 21 for a couple of weeks and has yet to surface anywhere online via the public MLS feeds. My theory for that is that it gives the agents the jump on the listing over the general public which just goes to show that the MLS database information is gold to realtors. Once that’s gone, what do they have? And I speak as an ex-realtor.
great article. we had a terrible (lengthy) experience with a series of incompetent realtors when selling our last home. we tried to sell it ourselves but didn’t have the time or energy to devote to doing it right.
I am grossly disappointed in my agent right now. My site on Zillow looks 100 times better than her official site. She has typos in the description of our home that I’ve asked her to fix multiple times and I spent hours staging the home for pictures and none of hers “turned out” so she came back two days later when it was messier and not staged. I will definitely get a different agent in the spring (I don’t foresee us selling this fall). For 6% of $185K, I would be working a lot harder than she is, and in this market, my listings would be perfect (no typos, and great pictures).
Getting paid over $11000 for pushing a few sheets of paper around is sweet. As me how I know. /sarcasm
This is the biggest reason why I got out of real estate. I felt that I was being forced to charge my clients too much money for so little (in my eyes) value. Every single time I showed a house, it sold itself. I was very good at zeroing in on what my clients wanted and, as a result, I would only show a couple of houses before finding them exactly what they wanted. I guess that’s a skill? Whatever it is, it isn’t worth thousands of dollars.
Congrats on having a successful experience selling your home. It could have turned out much differently if your buyer had been unqualified to make the purchase, as frequently happens in FSBO. Realtors (I am not one) are professionals knowledgeable in their field. There are many things we, as homeowners, can do on our own, but in the end it’s a choice of how you wish to spend your time. It seems that many hours went into your home sale, which you gladly put in to save $5,000, but there are many who do not have the time, knowledge or inclination to sell their own home, and gladly would pay to have someone take over.
The first thing any seller does is to check the buyer’s credibility. That means providing a local lender name and phone number and getting a commitment to lend in writing from the lender. Before accepting ANY offer, the seller needs to check that the buyer can actually buy!! Anyone who doesn’t have the sense to do that should pay a realtor 6% to sell the house for them.
A friend of mine sent this to me and I read every one of your letters. Yes, I am writing this at midnight since this is one of the only times I have to do this.
I am a second generation Realtor that has been in residential real estate for over 24 years. When I started we had no personal computers, no cell phones and no fax machines.
My how times change.
We offer our MLS information to the public through IDX sites that can be accessed by any member of the public. We gave up control of our information a long time ago. Yes, our information, that we spend a lot of time collecting. If there are mistakes with this information it is our responsibilty. We help and shield our clients in a number of ways.
I wish more people would try to sell their own home so they know the many hours that we spend… days, evenings, weekends, including Sundays. Many times we don’t get paid at all. There are so many things that we do during a transaction that it would be hard to list them all. We save people time, money and risk. I have caught numerous items during a transaction that would cost a seller or buyer undue time, money and risk if not discovered. Most people do not know the questions to ask let alone the answers.
One thing to understand with rising prices all around is that I have not raised my fee in those 24 years. Yes, home values go up and down but I charge the same rate. It is important to know that you get what you pay for in life, most of the time. Please consider the amount of time an agent or broker has been in the business. Why should I get paid the same as a brand new agent?
Another thing to consider is that a person may sell properties several times in their lifetime. However, you can loose all that you “saved” with just one tranaction that goes bad, and be sued. I see things in the marketplace that most people have never even heard of before and they loose big money. I had a guy loose $40K once because he did not follow one small piece of advice I gave him.
Please remember that when you are out there performing self surgery that you may be negotiating with a person that does it every day, day in and day out, over and over again, for years. That’s what we get paid for, not the MLS information, it’s about what we do with the MLS and other information. Realtors get paid for their good advice.
I fight tooth and nail for my clients.
Do you want to try your skills against mine?
Make my day.
Your post applies to those people who haven’t educated themselves or those who are just too plain scared, due to lack of transparency within the real estate industry, to even think that they can tackle the ‘extremely difficult’ job of selling their home FSBO.
I feel very strongly about the 6% commission. I feel that most if not all real estate transactions should be conducted on a flat fee basis. I would gladly pay $1000 to be split between two agents for the sale of my house. Here in California, I can easily check with a potential buyer’s lender to see if he/she has the wherewithal to buy my house. I can also open escrow to handle all the legalese. It is up to the buyer to perform a house inspection. Check the roof, air conditioning/furnace unit, plumbing, electrical, termite situation and foundation condition. Notify the buyer of any and all disclosures concerning the condition of the home and the neighborhood. Pay an attorney $100 to sit down and find out what you as a seller should provide to the buyer. Any way you cut it, a seller with good sense can save thousands of dollars!! I bought my house online at a foreclosure auction and saved literally tens of thousands of dollars over the local agent’s listing. It was easy. The biggest problem with real estate is the total lack of TRANSPARENCY and information hoarding via the MLS. Take those two things away and what do you have left?
Pay an attorney $100??? What year are you living in, 1955?
No, Andrew. In my town, a local real estate attorney will charge $100 per hour in order to sit down with him and just ask “What paperwork do I need to provide to my buyer, here in this particular region?”
It takes about 15 minutes to get that info. He has a list of disclosures that are needed that he hands off, printed on a sheet of paper. If you are unable to find the forms, he provides them to you at extra cost or will represent you at even more cost.
if you think real estate agents are making too much money, how about your 401k manager who rakes in 1% of BILLIONS of dollars. Does he do more work for a portfolio of 10 million versus 10 billion?
They of course didn’t mention a ton of benefits of listing your home with a professional.
First and foremost. SAFETY of your family. When a Realtor lists your home we put a supra electronic lock box on your home which only licensed agents background checked can access the home and monitor the buyers who are roaming around the residence. Furthermore, the supra box sends the listing agent a text message and email letting them know which Realtor just opened their lock box on a certain property seconds ago. The for sale by owners tend to get stuff stolen or have subsequent break ins from shady buyers they found from craigslist who are scoping places out.
Pricing. Most people don’t have the luxury of waiting like the person who wrote the article therefore the property MUST be priced right. Realtors look at comps all day long and are familiar with what homes are selling for in the area. Pricing a home wrong can waist valuable time on the market and by the time they do the price reduction, it is too late and their property is old news. The first 30 days is most crucial!
It is HUGE for the buyers to NOT have the homeowner home during a showing. It is extremely effective for the buyer to be able to picture the home as their own. When their agent is the only other person in the home, they can say what they like and don’t like about the home freely.
Errors in essential paperwork and lack of caring. Those “175.00” brokerages list the property on the MLS and take 6 crappy pictures have no incentive to help the home sell once they have received their small payment of 175.00. They have no incentive to negotiate hard to get their client the best price on their home. I only know this because I have worked with the brokerages that do these cheap listings and they are terrible to work with. It is like pulling teeth to get them to do anything.
Most people don’t pay 6% anymore. I negotiate each listing differently. If they sign an agreement to buy with me afterward I will do the listing for as little as 1 to 1.5%. And of course the buyers agent needs to be compensated about 2.5 to 3%. If I locate the buyer and do both ends of the deal, I will do the deal for a total of 2.5 to 3% total.
Error and omissions. If I screw something up during the transaction, or something is discovered after the deal closes the finger will most likely not be pointed at the sellers….it will be pointed at me. In this case I will usually be covered by my insurance unless it was fraudulent.
Home warranty’s. Home warranty companies have special relationships with Realtors. We are able to give free home warranties to cover the home for FREE while the home is listed with an agent and the homeowner only pays for the home warranty if the home sells. This gives homeowners some peace of mind that during this time while the home is listed that if anything breaks it will be covered.
Helping with the negotiations once an offer is presented. I have seen some shady stuff come across my desk by way of offers which I KNOW an untrained person would not know to look for. I.e. whats included and not included in the deal, how much closing costs is the seller really paying. Also, typed sentences sneakily added to the contract. Once offer is received knowing what questions to ask buyer to know if they are going to waste our time or not. Financing is VERY tough right now and just by asking a few questions I can pre qualify them without even seeing a prequal letter. For example, certain condos and townhomes are unable to be financed because lenders don’t like the ratios of owner occupied vs. rented. I know which banks and what loan programs will flag that…..3 weeks after the home as been off the market under contract then the deal falls apart. These things are tough for the average for sale by owner to recognize. These mistakes can cost them.
Another important consideration is that realtors will lure you into picking them to sell your property by selling YOU on a higher starting price than the other guy or by selling yourself. Then if the price is too high they push you to reduce the price, and repeat as necessary. It doesnt affect their commission nearly as much as your bottom line. On a $100,000 price, a price reduction of $10,000 is only a reduction of $600 in commission (100k x .06 = $6000 vs 90k x .06 = $5,400). So you lose $10,000 while the realtors only lose $300 each.
As a realtor and an avid reader of get rich slowly I disagree mostly because this article lacks research and logic ( i know big surprise)
First of all, the writer of this article was a previously a real estate agent! That is far from the typical homeowner or typical reader of GRS. Even if he didn’t close one home he knew the language he knew the game and now he claims immaculate knowledge of what realtors do.
What sort of logic and on what authority does the writer claim that there are problems presented to realtors because of FSBO’s???
How is the MLS the last stronghold of the realtor if he could list his home on it for $300.
The logic used for the income to home prices ratio is bad. It’s called inflation! Everyone is affected by it, not just realtors. Median income in 1974 was $11,000 dollars…
I personally love fsbo’s and I love that people are getting to understand the industry better. It’s getting rid of a lot of shady play. A lot of the times fsbo’s approach me once they get tired of dealing with the hairy side of things. For every FSBO success story there is a scary one.
Most importantly the Realtors last stronghold is themselves. Thats why i love my job. I am an expert in my area. I treat people with unprecedented respect. I typically don’t need to market properties because I have a vast list of buyers.
The writer is right, realtors do need to change. The barrier of entry is too easy to become a realtor. The quality of work that new realtors put in is bad and it gives us a bad name.
The reason you get a realtor is because most of us understand people better than real estate.
FSBO”S wont affect the industry…
I have purchased and sold over 35 homes and have always used a real estate agent. I know that my agent has saved me alot of money when I purchased and Made me alot when I sold them and has taught me alot about the art of real estate investing. Could I do it on my own? YES!!! Would I NO!!! My agent has called me several times with properties that she felt were very underpriced by FSBO’s and I have purchased them and flip them for a great profit, because she knew the market and the poor FSBO who was trying to save money under priced the home. THANKS YOU FOR THE LAST 30,000 PROFIT, so go ahead and sell on your own. I have used the same agent for 20 years till she retired 3 years ago, did I make her alot of money, YES, but she made me alot more. When she retired I took all the classes and passed the test to recieve my real estate license and now help the same group of clients do the same thing that my agent did for me. We have learned to love FSBO’s, Thanks to my agent of 20 years.
If people knew exactly what they needed to do in order to sell a house, in general they would. It is precisely because of the purposeful lack of transparency within the real estate industry that they do not. Keeping the information secret is the only way that realtors can hang on to their jobs. It’s an industry!! If all of those forms were readily available online with a list by state of all the disclosures and other paperwork needed to make a sale, with another list of other things needed like specific inspections (roof, septic, natural hazards, etc) it wouldn’t be so mystifying. The problem is that people can be lazy and realtors capitalize on that.
Real Estate Agents have to take 12 hours of class every two years and these are the things that they learn and are required to study. All of you can take the same classes to learn how its done, if you want to spend the money and take the time required. That is why the person in the story knew what to do. The reason there is no check list is because the laws are always changing and even some agents cannot keep up with the changes.
We did this when we sold our house in 2002. I went a step farther and created a webpage with TONS of pictures.
Also, we paid a realtor to do a market analysis for us. That was money well spent. I realize that realtors will do this for “free”, but that is because they want your business. It seemed unethical to take advantage of a realtor that way. Also, we live in a small community, and we wanted the realtors out there excited about our property, not ticked off. We did not use an MLS listing, but instead I made flyers up and hand-delivered them to all the local realtor offices. The realtors representing buyers were great to work with.
One problem we had was with looky-loos: People who had NO intention of buying our house, but just wanted to see it. Annoying.
We saved about $4K. Not bad for a little work and dealing with some annoying people.
Great job getting your home sold!
There is also another alternative for consumers that lets you anonymously find, interview and negotiate with real estate agents so as to avoid paying for any services you don’t want to lessen your expenses.
Three service levels are available to users of Sundaybell, all of them free for consumers. Those who already know which agents they’d like to correspond with can choose Sundaybell’s SelectAnAgent service, for example, which will contact those agents and enable anonymous communication with them, allowing consumers to negotiate commission rates, buyers’ rebates or à la carte services ahead of time. Sundaybell’s AgentBlasters service, meanwhile, does something similar for consumers who don’t already have particular agents in mind. Finally, buyers can also tap the BuyerBlasters service to tell agents what type of property they’re looking for and communicate anonymously until they’re ready to meet in person. Sundaybell’s “Classroom” section, on the other hand, offers a wealth yf information to help consumers educate themselves about buying and selling a home. For real estate agents, a profile on Sundaybell is free, as is correspondence with potential customers.
So for saving your money and letting a professional do the work, Sundaybell is worth a visit.
Nobody has mentioned that the REAL money is made off your home purchase by the mortgage holder. Makes the real estate agent’s take look paltry! Truth-in-lending documents mean that you get to see how much money they are making (unlike the real estate agent), but that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow!… A $350,000 home costs you more like $800,000 by the time you’ve paid off all the interest (depending, of course on your mortgage.) That’s $450,000 in interest paid to the mortgage holder. While the real estate agent(s) is(are) making $21,000 @ 6%. Of course, the real estate agent doesn’t have to wait 30 years to collect, or have massive upfront capital to fund the house in the first place, but still….
Agreed, SOME agents may be worth their salt. Maybe. But what’s their incentive to sell the house for a better price? On a $200k house, they’re going to get $6k for selling it. What’s their incentive to work hard to get it sold for $210k, another $300?
Last use of an agent, they were one of the highest sellers in our area, but just out of the odds game, the agent had “open houses” where their representative was clueless and totally unprepared, the agent was NEVER proactive throughout the whole process. We ended up taking the house off the market and renting.
So yes, an agent CAN help, but there’s little incentive to put in work on a particular house, rather than putting work into having MORE houses…
Thanks nick for that info..really makes me think about selling my dad’s condo the same way you and your wife did..just a little nervous though!
There are some crummy agents and good ones. A good one is worth every penny. I sold my house in 2 days with an agent. There is no way that would have happened on my own.
awesome story, a friend just went through a terrible experience with a real estate agent. The issue was the contract signed between the RE and friend (seller). She networked and found a buyer for the house before the house was ever listed or photos were taken. Since she had already signed the contract, the RE was paid a commission despite not doing any additional work. She was devastated.
Nice story. Its a learning information to save money in a great way from selling your own house. As a buyer, I would have been really angry if we’d been paying by the hour.