Selling My House - The Right Way

So after spending 18 years in the real estate business I became so tired of the constant battle I decided to do something different. One day after hearing another horror story about how someone failed to hire the right real estate agent to sell their home, I said that's enough. Someone has to do something about this and as it turned out it seems to be me.

I said I worked in the real estate industry steadily for 18 years. About 12 of those years were in Real Estate Sales and Mortgage Sales. The rest of the time I spent working for two title insurance companies, two escrow companies and developed marketing programs for real estate agents. I've participated in over 1,000 real estate transactions and I've seen them from every angle. The only thing I haven't done in this business is appraisals but that's covered by my mother. So at the risk of tooting my own horn, I'm pretty well rounded in the real estate business.

Here's my beef and then I'll tell you why it's important to you.

I remember when the market was red hot. I mean all I had to do was wave my hands in front of someone's house I just listed and offers (full priced ones) would start falling out of the sky. Good thing right? No not really. You see in my area the number of agents multiplied by 8 times in just one year. The state licensing board couldn't keep up.

So when I went on a listing appointment with 15 years experience (at the time), I was competing with 5-10 brand spanking new agents that had never sold a home ever...not once.

But you would think home sellers were smart enough to still hire only the best with so much at stake. Not true. You see, these home sellers had never felt the pain of a difficult selling market before so they weren't properly trained in how to hire the right real estate agent. They hired the new agents many times because that agent had been very well trained to do their dog and pony show. After all, home sellers are very predictable (no really you are) with the same questions and most of you fall for the same tricks. (We'll talk about that later)

This meant of course I was losing market share. (And no this isn't about me, it's about the sellers) So I did some of my own personal research in our local MLS with the information I had available to me. I found that even in a smoking hot market, people who hired the wrong agents (pretty easy to pinpoint) took a loss on average (out of 4106 transactions) of over 11% of the original list price versus less than 2% when they hired the right agent.

Let's do some math. If your home were listed at $300,000 and you took an 11% loss, then that means you finally sold at $267,000. That's $33,000 less by hiring the wrong agent. By comparison, you might only negotiate down $6,000 when working with the right real estate agent. I don't know about you but that seems like a big chunk of money. But in the red hot market people didn't care I guess. They still walked away with a healthy check in their pocket so perhaps it didn't matter how much they lost in the end.

Here's where the important part for you comes in:
Even when the wrong agent gives away $33,000 of your money
THEY STILL GET PAID A WHOLE BUNCH OF MONEY TO DO IT!

Assuming the commission negotiated at listing was 6%, by dropping the price by $33,000 they only took a loss of commission by $1980. But they still collected a check for $16,020. ($267,000 x .06)

Does that make sense to you? If you went to work every day and decided it was easier to do a lousy job and get paid a little less money versus working as hard as the people who entrusted you to do the job and get paid a little more, do you think you'd still have a job?

The path commonly taken is the easy road for just a little less money. You hear it all the time. Agent shows up, agent smiles, agent signs listing agreement. Then poof agent is gone. Don't see agent until an offer comes in or listing is due to expire.

So I've gone on a mission to share with people the right way to do one of two things:

1. Discover the right way to hire A Great Real Estate Agent
2. Sell Your Own Home Without Paying Commissions
   (and get agents to pay you instead)
   

I've put together a 3 1/2 hour recording I'm giving away at no cost to any home seller who wants it on my site at http://www.FSBOMindset.com

I've also put together a resource center that lists some of the tools you can use to get your home sold fast and get agents to pay you instead at the resource center. See the articles listed below.

Please feel free to comment, bookmark or share this page with ANY person who needs to sell their home. The readers would love to hear your stories about your real estate nightmares so do share.

AGENT TO AGENT: Ok...before all of you agents start firing off bombs at me for desecrating the sanctity of the real estate community, consider this. In my CD one thing I talk about is that a Great Agent is worth their weight in gold. The problem is in finding these Great Agents. If you don't think so, do your own experiment. Come up with the checklist of what makes up a great agent and then call agents you don't know...lots of them... and start interviewing them. You'll soon realize that most of them are using the canned answers most agents are fed in training but offer little or no substance. They are masters at evading or redirecting the truth. This doesn't mean that all agents are lousy. The ratio of good to bad is very widely skewed and not in favor of the good unfortunately for the consumer.

So before you start ranting about how you're such a good agent and I'm wrong in my general view of the industry, why don't you take this challenge. Knowing that this page will be read by home sellers, share your experiences about working with bad agents in your marketplace in order to do good and help the home seller.

If you just want to complain, then respectfully at the risk of sounding like an idiot (remember real estate agents rank just above car salesmen in trust) then do whatever you like.