When you’re selling your home it can be tempting to try and go it alone. Maybe you don’t want to work with a real estate agent to try and save some money, or you just think it won’t make much of a difference. There are a lot of people who do try to sell their homes on their own and when you’re watching the success stories on TV or reading them online it’s easy to think there’s nothing to it.
The truth is there’s a lot that goes into selling a house you may not have considered. Depending on your level of experience with buying and selling homes you may not know even the basics of how things work. Agents do more than just bring in potential buyers and show up to have documents signed. They know all the ins and outs of both buying and selling a house.
If you’re trying to sell your home you really do need to consider all your options to make your sale a success and that includes using a real estate agent. The reasons you need an agent to sell your home are the same no matter where you go. Downtown San Diego realtors will give you the same reasons agents across the country will give you.
Having a good agent to sell your home is invaluable. Here are five things you should take into consideration when deciding to get a real estate agent to sell your home.
1. You’re Already Busy
Selling a house can be a full-time job. You’ll have to field calls from interested buyers, work out where you want to advertise any open houses you might have and about a thousand other little things that lead up to a finalized sale. You’re already busy with your life and job, so adding in everything that comes with selling a home is a lot to ask.
A real estate agent’s job is to deal with all of these exact things. They are not too busy to get back to interested buyers right away. They are not too busy to find the best places to advertise. They aren’t too busy to make sure people who express interest are actually qualified buyers. Basically, everything that would add more to your plate is already something a real estate agent just does.
The things that are extra for you are the day to day life activities of an agent. They do these things multiple times a day and they do them well. They already know how to sell a house, so they’re not learning how to do any of these things on the fly. If you’re already finding yourself busy with life, you definitely need a real estate agent to sell your home.
Interested in becoming a real estate agent? Download our Career Switch Kit guide to see what it takes to be a real estate agent in your state.
2. Real Estate Agents Have More Experience
Unless you’re selling houses every day along with whatever your normal day job is, you don’t have as much experience as an agent. Experience can make a huge difference in getting your house sold quickly, or having to drop the price because it’s been on the market too long. Real estate agents know how to navigate the market better than anyone else out there.
They’ve trained for this, they’ve taken and passed exams, and they’ve done this all before. More than once. Their experience is valuable and worth the costs involved. Your end goal is to get your house sold so it doesn’t become a hassle you have to deal with or lose money on. A real estate agent’s goal is the same as yours, they just know how to do it faster and better.
When you’re considering whether or not to use an agent you really do need to consider how their experience can help you get your house sold. They’re the ones that know everything from regulations to tiny things like the best place to look for buyers. Again, this is what they do so trusting the pros, in this case, is a great idea.
3. Real Estate Agents are Professional Negotiators
This is just another fact that goes into what a real estate agent does. Selling your house can be emotional. It’s somewhere you’ve lived your day-to-day life as a family or maybe even grown into as a family. If you’ve put a lot of work into it, you can have an extra attachment because you know the amount of sweat equity involved in that work.
An agent is removed from all of that. Their main goal is to get your house sold and if negotiations are involved they aren’t going to hold onto emotional ties that prevent them from making a good deal. They definitely aren’t going to make a deal without your approval but since they’re removed from the emotional side of things they can give you better guidance and advice.
Everyone is attached to their home in one way or another. Even if you try really hard to be objective there’s still a high likelihood that some amount of emotional attachment will creep into your negotiation skills. Having a real estate agent present to help you refocus on the bigger picture will be essential to getting your house sold without getting hung up in the negotiation phase.
4. Real Estate Agents Understand Contracts
At one point selling a home on your own may have been an easy thing to do. There wasn’t much involved on the paperwork side of things and closings were pretty simple. Now, however, that is not the case. Closing paperwork is complicated. There are state and federal regulations that have to be gone over, and closings can get overwhelming very very quickly.
Your buyer may have a real estate agent there with them during the closing, but that agent is going to be focused on the buyer’s best interests. You’re going to need someone on your side, too. Sometimes last minute things come up right as someone is about to sign on that dotted line. For someone that doesn’t deal with closings often these can be dealbreaker situations.
A real estate agent helping you sell your house is going to know about contracts and closings. They’re going to know what needs to be disclosed and what to do if something comes up as paperwork is being signed.
Contracts and disclosures are not always easy things to understand, especially if you haven’t gone through the process more than once or twice. Having an agent there to navigate the closing contract signing situations is a huge key to the successful sale of your home.
5. Real Estate Agents Can Give You Pricing Advice
Much like the negotiating, pricing your home can be something that’s hard to separate emotion from. You already know how hard you worked to get your home ready for sale, or the work you’ve put in during the past years you’ve owned the house. It’s hard to keep that out of your mind entirely while coming up with a price to list your home at.
Agents can help you because they know the neighborhoods, they know the market, and they know comparable housing prices. All of these things factor into making sure you’re pricing your home effectively. You still have the final say, and a real estate agent can’t force you to list at a certain price but their experience and knowledge should be given proper credit.
An agent can help talk through what you would like to sell the home for, and show you what other homes are selling for right now. If there’s a huge gap in what you want and what the real estate agent thinks is attainable it’s something you can talk about. There might be something you don’t know, or there might be something the agent hasn’t considered for your pricing.
As a team, you can come up with a price together. Again, this gives you someone removed from the situation emotionally that’s still on your side. They still want you to make money on the sale but they are going to have a realistic way of looking at things that you might not have if you’re very attached to your house. This is an invaluable resource to have when trying to make a sale.
Selling your house is not as easy as you might initially think it will be. There are a lot of reasons you’ll want to have a real estate agent on your side. From negotiation to fielding interested buyers there’s just a lot to consider and this is what they do day in and day out.
Hiring an agent to sell your home is likely to take a lot of stress off of your shoulders, and may even get your home listed and sold more quickly potentially being the best decision you make during the entire process.
About the author: Ashley Coblentz is a lifestyle blogger currently writing for SilverLawOffices.com and a political journalist. If you want to keep up with her and see what she’s writing next you can find her on Twitter or check out her portfolio for other fun reads.
