REAL ESTATE, selling home

Baseball_Fan

Greetings,

Curious as to the class' life experience in selling a home. Wife and I are getting ready to sell our wonderful home after 25 years...

Have found out that real estate agents are generally not worth their comission fees. None of them will help you find a home unless your budget is over a 1.5M. Then they will chauffeur you house to house to look at them. Otherwise you surf the net or they take your email and put you on an auto email with all the beat up overpriced crap homes on them, waste your time and then they unlock the door for you and walk thru the home like they are experts. Sheet.

They have this game they play, called comps. Called the shall we say Orange Fish agent, showed me chart how he gets 99% of ask price then tells me based on comps your house is worth xyz. I say really. You can't find another home for sale in my neighborhood of over 300 homes. The one's that have sold have sold in a day and sold for $10k over ask. What do I care what a home sold for 10 months ago. Can you sell me SPY ETF at the price it was 10 months ago? No, then why the freak should I go to market with an old price? I told him no wonder you gave me the 99% figure. You are selling me on my selling my home under it's current value so you can sell my house in a weekend and move onto another sucker. Then he starts telling me what I should fix up on my home as with an FHA loan you will get a high degree of inspection, don't want to fail that. Told him go freak himself, I'm not going to add onto this housing charade by selling my home to someone who can only put 3.5% down and leverage himself to the hilt. Told him this conversation is over, you can leave now, don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out, bye bye.

What has been your experience and apologies if this should be in off topic etc

Baseball Fan

LewisBraham

Worthwhile post but should be in Other Investing, not Fund Discussions. Regarding agents that depends on how hands on you are and the quality of the agent. Are you someone willing to do your own marketing of the house and staging of the property? Can you be at the property every time someone wants to check it out? Do you understand the legal paperwork involved when the house sells? If not, you probably need an agent.

bee

Related thread I started back Nov 2020 when I sold my home. Yes, an agent is probably a necessity, but that doesn't mean you can't shop for the best value. It is a seller market and inventory is scarce...that should help you set the terms.

My agent split a 4 % commission with the buyer's agent. They list and manage all of the offers and there will be multiple offers.

I will say my 36 year old house was move in ready. I spent 3 months preparing the house for sale. It sold in one week...over asking. A good realtor will guide you through the process and maximize your profit.

https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/57098/your-home-is-not-an-investment#latest

msf

Buying and selling real estate is still localized. I bought and sold a home in a market where sales are almost always above ask and time on market is measured in days or weeks. I bought a different home in a different market where sales are typically below ask and time on market is measured in months.

Two markets that were similar in housing costs and cost of living, but very different in real estate conventions and expectations. Keep that in mind when gathering people's experiences.

Real estate is not a fungible market - it's not like selling pencils where they're all pretty much the same and customers don't care whether the brand name is embossed on them. Aside from location, location, location, each home has a unique character - even tract houses do if they've been around long enough to have been remodeled a bit. There can be a distinctive home that most people hate, but a couple of potential buyers loved and bid up the price. Or a traditional home that lots of people would settle for but wound up selling for less. There's a fair amount of luck involved.

Doing comps is an art, and part of the reason why so many people contest their home assessments. (Another part of the reason is bias built into the system, but that's a whole 'nuther story.)

When I sold my home, I interviewed realtors who advocated pricing above market because you might get a buyer who loved the home and would pay the ask. The risk is longer time on the market and a black mark on the listing if you later drop the asking price. (This can be avoided by taking the home off the market for a modest period of time before relisting at a lower price - I forget how long.)

I interviewed realtors who advocated pricing below market price - to encourage a bidding war that might bid the price up above what you're hoping for. The risk here is that you might not get many competing bids and wind up declining all offers or accepting less than you'd wanted.

Staging is another question. Here too I believe it depends on market convention. If many homes are being staged, you may need to as well. I suspect this matter more for higher priced homes. I've personally sold twice - first home empty, second home staged. In terms of expectations I did better on the first home, but that was in part due to general market conditions and in part due to the fact that in the second instance there was an estate sale three houses down the block from mine.

Repairs - a good agent will be able to guide you through the major repairs that will need to be made unless you're selling "as is", and also cost effective "curb appeal" cosmetic improvements.

Baseball_Fan

Thank you all for the replies!

We're going to go with a $500 fixed fee, MLS listing and forego the selling agent. I believe this allows us more control over the potential sale. I'm also concerned that even if I receive an offer I will not emotionally be able to go thru with it..and then would have to compensate a selling agent for doing next to nothing. I'm also not sure that is a bad thing because I anticipate tremendous inflation coming soon that is NOT transitionary and the house could continue to inflate price wise...but of course I could be way wrong?

No hurry to sell the home, will use our RE attorney regardless to review contracts, etc.

Baseball Fan

msf

A couple more regional differences. In some parts of the US, attorneys are typically used to review the paperwork. In other parts of the country, real estate agents handle this. In my limited experience, the quality of service is poor either way.

My last purchase was handled by a RE legal firm. Some matter concerning dollars (taxes, perhaps?) was not computed correctly. I told my lawyers that the figures were wrong and the response was: don't worry, we'll fix that up at the closing. At the closing, they attempted to proceed as if everything were fine until I interrupted. In real time, lawyers from both sides huddled in private for the better part of an hour before coming back with adjusted figures. Still wrong, but closer and not worth my effort to deconstruct further.

A different property sale in another part of the country had real estate agents handling the paperwork. Because of circumstances suggesting I might have had an ownership interest in the property being sold (I didn't), they insisted that I co-sign the grant ("normal") deed that the seller was signing. That was problematic because the deed required me to attest that I had an interest in the property, which wasn't true.

I offered to sign a quitclaim deed (relinquishing any rights I might have had), something designed for this very situation. But the agents deemed this unacceptable. They were wrong, but as in the first situation, it wasn't worth pressing further.

The other regional difference that came to mind is whether purchases are paid for via mortgages or promissory notes coupled with deeds of trust.

Some states are "mortgage states" that do not use deeds of trust. In other states, state law requires the use of a deed of trust whenever the buyer is borrowing some or all of the money needed to finance their purchase of real estate. In approximately 15 states, either a mortgage or a deed of trust may be used to secure the lender's interest in a real property transaction.

https://www.legalnature.com/guides/understanding-when-and-how-to-use-a-deed-of-trust