BLOG: Sell your own home - Why not?

Selling your home involves a lot of decisions, and perhaps the most major amongst them is choosing whether to use an agent or sell it yourself.

While selling your home yourself isn’t a practical option for everyone, for some it is an option well worth considering. Yep, that’s right, someone whose company makes its living selling homes for people is telling you to consider doing it on your own.

 And why not? It’s your home, your investment and your money. Why shouldn’t you consider everything you can to maximize your return on investment? In fact, on our Web site (www.listinghousesforless.com/for-sale-by-owner) we provide anyone wishing to sell their own home with a free informational packet with all kinds of helpful information.

There’s a lot to think about when making this decision, but I want to use this space today to tell you why you should take the time to weigh this option. And the biggest reason is saving more of your own money.

The brokerage commission you can expect to pay for the sale of your home – though technically open to negotiation – can be up to 6 percent. To put that into terms of real money, that’s $6,000 per every $100,000 of your home’s sale price. Think about what that could mean to you as you’re moving into your new home: $6,000 is a new living room set; $12,000 is a week in London for a family of four; $18,000 is a new kitchen for your new home … and so on.

Even a company like mine, which discounts brokerage commissions up to 25%, is still going to require a relatively substantial sum at closing. I’m not saying real estate companies and the agents don’t earn that cut (I’ll discuss this more in the next article on this topic), but by putting the work into selling your home you’re going to put more money into your pocket.

The truth is the effort to it takes sell your own home can exhausting and the process can be overwhelming, but the financial rewards can be huge. And I would never begrudge anyone who wanted to try being a “for sale by owner” (FSBO). In fact, I would encourage any of you who have or know someone who has done it to share that experience here. Or, if you are thinking of trying it, feel free to shoot me your questions.

In the next installment, I’m going to discuss what you need to consider when you’re a FSBO.