Does hiring a Realtor to sell your house make sense?

Often I get a question to my inbox, and that is “Does it make sense to hire a realtor if buyers are fighting over every house?”

In short, the answer is longer than just yes. Let me explain:

We all see that homes are selling quickly and getting bids higher than listing price, however this doesn’t happen due to the low inventory entirely. Yes, that is helpful and yes it is making things slightly easier in the way of getting showings and offers but where the real value comes in is leveraging these offers, marketing the home to the widest audience, and getting your home in tip top shape so that buyers zero in on your home being the perfect home for them! Do you know how to leverage these offers against each other? Encourage buyers to get ultra competitive with their terms? How does this impact your repair negotiation and are you aware of what is a routine request vs. a request that is unreasonable?

Lets unpack this!

Marketing is a word that is thrown around by folks very loosely. To many, marketing involves taking photos of your home, putting them on Zillow and waiting around by the phone for it to ring. If you’ve attempted or even succeeded in selling your home yourself, you know that at least 60% of these inbound calls are going to be coming from agents that don’t have buyers, and are simply hoping you’re too tired and will list your home with them. It’s an unfortunate reality of the real estate industry where, especially when there are less houses than there are agents in the state.

When I’m asked to market a home, my first step is an initial walk through - what can be done, if anything, to improve the home for as little money as possible? What changes will yielded the highest result? This initial walk through is crucial in developing the marketing plan. After changes are made, bringing in professional, high quality photographers, videographers and drone pilots are the next steps.

I am an expert in the purchase and sale of real estate, not photography, videography, etc. My favorite phrase is “Stay in your lane” and this is no exception. I leverage my skills and delegate the areas that I’m not an expert in. This is not to say that an iPhone photo isn’t great for family vacation, or that perfect shot of your beautiful dinner, but it is to say that this camera isn’t equip to yield you the best results with your homes sale. Trust me, it makes sense to utilize the skill of a professional.

After photos, my marketing continues with a lot of networking. I share your home with all of the top industry professionals — these are the folks, like myself, that have ready and able buyers. Notice the last part — able! I do a lot of work vetting folks before they even step foot in your home. No time for tire kicking and just looking — we’re here to accomplish a goal and that goal is getting your home sold for as much money as possible.

Now, we’ve marketed your home, offers come in: what value does an agent bring past that?

The knowledge of negotiation and leveraging! Once the first offer comes in, it gives me a starting point to leverage more offers, and ultimately the best shot of creating a bidding war. This bidding war is what will lead to the highest purchase price for your home. Offers are complex contracts that are more than just page 1 where you’ll find the offer price and closing date. As you dig deeper, you’ll find that the real value is in the terms — Inspection waivers, appraisal waivers, closing cost credits, etc are all buried in the contract and you won't know where to find them unless you know how to look for them.

Lastly, how do we get your home to the closing table? The closing table is where everyone signs to make this an official transaction. This is where the buyer pays and the seller receives. My favorite day is closing day and the moment of elation when that bank account balance grows substantially. 90% of my work is done during offer acceptance to closing. This is where most for sale by owners fail — they’re simply not equip to navigate the transaction without fumbling, losing out or killing the deal all together. Having 15 offers is fantastic but means nothing if none of them come to term.

How can I help you achieve your goals? What do you look for in a real estate agent?

Let me know in the comments! I’d love to be of assistance!