Have you ever been in a position where you HAD to sell a house and you had to sell a house FAST? There are many reasons this might happen, but most frequently it's because we lost our job. With no income it's difficult to make all those payments, isn't it? When it happened to us we promptly listed our house with a Realtor for a 60 day listing. I never sign long listing agreements. If they don't get the job done quickly they aren't worth what they want you to pay.
Not only did we not get a buyer, we also didn't get any lookers. Then we tried another agency...and another...and another until we gave up on real estate agents. We figured we didn't have much to lose. We knew we had a good house, well staged in a good neighborhood but we weren't getting lookers. Real estate agents were just not showing our house to prospective buyers.
We also did not see our house being advertised much. It seems to be the norm for real estate agents to advertise less than they did at one time. I can have sympathy for their needs because they don't get paid unless the house sells. But many of us have a pressing need to sell as quickly as possible. It's important to get the word out to as many people...potential buyers...as possible.
But real estate companies and agents are not advertising much these days. In rural areas near by where we live now there are about 100 houses for sale, about 40 more than average before the current real estate slow down. I might see 1/5 of the available properties advertised occasionally. Most lots are not advertised at all. Houses that are very dated might take years to sell even when they are exclusively listed with one of the many real estate companies in the area.
It's really depressing to try so hard to keep your house perfect and then have no lookers and no buyers. It makes you think there is something really wrong with your property. But wait! There is more to the story I was telling in the beginning. When our listing with the last "Million Dollar Realtor" expired with no buyer we gave up on "real estate professionals". They weren't doing what we needed them to do. They weren't getting the word out. We had to do it ourselves. We went for the tried and true.
We posted an advertisement "for sale by owner" in the local Sunday newspaper. A nice couple came and looked at our house, loved it and bought it for the asking price...the same price we had it listed with the real estate companies. Advertising your home, staging it well, and pricing it fairly will work for selling your home whether you pay a real estate pro or not.
The only thing we skipped was paying an incompetent and uncaring real estate agent who would have demanded we stage the house ourselves and price it carefully, too. Best of all we did not have to pay any agency 6% of our selling price.
That little advertisement was a great bargain, wasn't it? It sure got the job done and quickly, too. A lawyer took care of the legal details for a reasonable price and WE WERE DONE! A quick sale CAN happen. It did for us when the expensive option failed us.
Paula and her husband Ron have several real estate businesses including a real estate selling and buying information business. Get real home selling and buying advice (not theory) from someone who has done it successfully many times. Their websites include, sell-house-quick.net Sell House Quick and sell-house-quick.net/sellhouseyourself.htm Sell House Yourself
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