Home Selling – The Secret that Realtor’s Don’t Tell You!

My wife and I are selling our house and I realized a secret that a Realtor won’t tell you.

What’s the Secret?

It’s not the Realtor’s job to get maximum value (read highest price) for your home. Getting maximum value is your job!

So what is your Realtor’s job?

The Realtor’s job is to sell your house – quickly, even if that means sacrificing the value of your home. Your home is most people’s greatest asset but most people listen to their realtor and crave into reducing the price of their home. Of course, your realtor will give plenty of reasons – “It’s a poor market” … “You need to sell it before the Day on the Market makes it stale”.

The Reason for this trend

Look at it from a money aspect. Your realtor, if only one side of the transaction, get 3% or less of the sell. The longer your house is on the market the more work it creates for them.

We own a beautiful townhouse worth about $400,000 in a very desirable area. My wife and I staged our house like a pro with fresh paint, immaculately clean, and removing extras. My realtor wanted us to reduce our house price by $10,000 because we had it on the market for two months.

$10,000 reduction in price equals a straight $10,000 loss to our net worth.

What does it mean to the realtor?

Well, a $10,000 loss for us only means a $300 loss for the realtor at 3%. Oh yeah, we negotiated a 2.5% rate so it’s only a $250 loss. This loss for the realtor is off of about a possible $10,000 to 12,000 commission. It’s even more if one of his clients buy your home.

Tips for gaining maximum value for your home

Traffic is King – The more people that see your home the better. Never say no to a showing if at all possible. Marketing guru, Dan Kennedy, would say that you want to find the buyer who your house features resonate to. Don’t worry about the all the buyer who say no, because it only takes that one yes.

On a side note: Is cleaning your home for these extra visitors worth it? Yes. Think about it. For an extra $10,000 dollars, how many hours would you need to work at you job to make $10,000. If you make $50,000 per year, that’s about $24 per hour. Oh yeah, after taxes, $50,000 equals 33% less or $16.08 per hour. That $10,000 dollars is worth 621 work hours.

Staging your Home - My wife and I visited plenty of houses in a search for our next home. Wow, I could not believe how poorly some houses show. Staging your home helps achieve maximum value for your home.

When we put our home on the market, I found and followed the tips at HGTV website. Click the following link to check it out:
HGTV Design Tips and Techniques

Statistics show staging helps homes sell significantly faster and gains equity increase of almost 5.8% (see home buying statistics). Another interesting point is these advantages are true even in a down market.

Make Realtors Love to Show Your Home – By say yes to all requests for showing and staging your home, Realtors will see your house as an easy possible sell and will love showing your home. That’s what you want don’t you.