For Sale By Owner Power Hour – Hiring a REALTOR or Selling Your Home Yourself?

So you decided to sell your home. One of the first things to do now is to decide whether you should hire a professional real estate agent to help you sell your home, or should you try to do it yourself. As in anything in life you need to understand the pros and cons of each approach and decide which one will work best for you. Contrary to what most real estate professionals will tell you, there is no single answer that will be right for everybody.

And to help you make a decision, I put together the following list of things to consider:

1. How much time do you have to sell your home? Are you in a hurry? The more time you have the better. One option is to try to sell your home yourself first and if it doesn’t work you can always hire someone down the road.

2. Where is your home located? Homes closer to major streets are easier to advertise and sell. More people will pass in front of the home and see the For Sale sign on the yard. More secluded homes don’t get the same level of exposure from the yard sign.

3. How much time do you have to dedicate to selling your home? If you work full-time and has very little time to dedicate to marketing your home, you may be better off hiring someone to do that on your behalf. In the other hand, if you do have the time and inclination, you can do a lot of the marketing yourself.

4. How comfortable are you about negotiating the sale of your home with potential buyers and their agents? Some people love the negotiation process and thrive on it. Those are the folks that have a “can do” attitude and are always trying to find a win-win solution, even when it seems impossible to reach an agreement. If you are not comfortable negotiating the sale, then you should probably hire a professional to help. In the other hand if you are comfortable with the negotiation process, than you will probably be better of doing it yourself.

5. How comfortable are you with the paperwork required to close a real estate transaction in your state? Most states have standard forms and contracts that were created by the local Association of REALTORS. Those are the standard documents that are used in the vast majority of real estate transactions in your state. If you decide to sell your home yourself, you should get a copy of those documents and familiarize yourself with them. They are not rocket science, but you should have a good comprehension of their content. An option may be to spend an hour or so with a REALTOR or a Real Estate attorney to review those documents and ask questions.

And remember that although most people thing it is an all or nothing proposition, you can always go half-way. You can hire a REALTOR to help you with some parts of the process, and do the rest yourself. For example, you could hire a REALTOR to negotiate and do the paperwork on your behalf, but do the marketing yourself. Or you could hire a REALTOR to keep you updated on the local real estate market trends while you manage the marketing and negotiation yourself.

In the end of the day, selling a home is time-consuming and can be stressful, but it is not rocket science. REALTORS are trained to do that and most do it on a daily basis. However an engaged and dedicated homeowner can be successful selling his own home.