Selling my house

Should I try to sell my house myself or should I hire an agent. I know an agent means I lose 6% off the top but I can not afford to hold the house for very long. Houses tend to move pretty quickly in my neighborhood.

 

my agent is doing a ton of stuff for me I wouldn't want to have anything to do with

it's a no brainer as far as I am concerned to have an agent

 

Other than advertising and a potentially quicker sale what do you get when you hire an agent?

 

I have an agent I work with (she send me mortgage business)...she's awesome. Agents do a LOT of shit you'd never do. Not to mention, most people use an agent when they are buying and those agents will avoid For Sale By Owner properties. This is true.

 

she gets my yard taken care of when I am out of town
she brings in the mail
she deals with the offers & tells me whats fishy about them
she knows the laws (it's her ass on the line not mine)
she knows realestate attorney and deals with him for closing
she keeps the flyers next to the sign full
she puts together the marketing packets that go in the house
she knows the agents representing the buyers
she knows what is going on with other things for sale in the neighborhood
she lists it on her site and puts it up on her agency office storefront window and took care of getting it listed with MLS

 

Having an agent just makes things easier. Coming home in the middle of a work day just to show a house to someone just looking around would suck.

 

I know it is easier but 6% of the sales price is a good chunk of change to me.

 

Was to me too. I tend to travel quite a bit and an agent was the way to go, at least for me.

 

On a $400,000 house, that's $12,000 for that (figuring you're pretty likely to have to pay 3% to the buying agent). I can get neighbors to bring in mail, pay a lawn service for the yard, you need an attorney for closing anyway and that's easy, marketing packets are pretty generic and easy to do yourself in an hour, and MLS is very easy for $100-200 (let alone other for-sale places on the net). So, knowing what else is going on (talk to your neighbors) and knowing other agents (so what) seem to be the big value-adds, not sure if it's worth that much...

Holding open-houses and 1-1 walk-throughts when you're out and traveling is valuable, but I'd sure think you could pay less for that.

This is an industry that needs to die. They are WAY overpriced, especially for more expensive houses. 1% makes sense for what they do, and even that is questionable since several independent studies (not done by real estate companies) show that the sale price for FSBO is often higher than with an agent...they are BIG time incented to sell your house REALLY fast for less than the market will bear, while you may very well be willing to wait a few months and make that extra $10-20k...to them that's peanuts, $10k * 1.5% maybe goes in their pocket extra, they'd rather close another house instead of do that much more work on yours...

 

The most valuable tool in selling your house these days is getting it in the mls system because that is how most home buyers search. You can do this without listing with an agent. You can pay a small fee and your house will show up in every internet real estate web site.

That is the way to go if you go FSBO.