As you can see, the original prospect of increasing the profit on the sale of your property by eliminating the use of a real estate professional is not a very attractive alternative. There are so many activities and requirements that must be completed, a FSBO (For Sale By Owner) course of action is usually a financial and emotional disaster. Retaining an experienced real estate broker to manage all of these items normally results in higher selling prices and higher profits to you.

Popularity: 26% [?]

How will you maintain control of your buyer and their search for financing? So you found a qualified buyer, you hope. How will you help control your buyers financing and other activities? You have two basic choices: 1) Stay out of it and just let them do whatever is necessary to get their financing and get to the closing in a timely fashion. 2) Attempt to exercise control by helping and closely monitoring their financing and closing activities. Once again, you may encounter severe resistance from your buyer, who often considers this an unwanted intrusion.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Who will prepare the Offer, Purchase Agreement and all other necessary paperwork? Are you ready to accept a hand written offer and then a homemade Purchase Agreement from your potential buyer? Are you going to prepare one? If your buyer has had the foresight to retain a Buyers Real Estate Broker, are you prepared and knowledgeable enough to review all necessary documents and verify their correctness?

Popularity: 13% [?]

Who will negotiate the final selling price for your property? Are you comfortable, experienced, and knowledgeable enough to effectively negotiate an advantageous final price for your property? This can be a very difficult and possibly costly (to you) requirement of the sale.

Popularity: 8% [?]

You need to be available for telephone calls, home showings and open houses. Are you prepared to totally change your current lifestyle during the sale period? You will need to cover the phone at all times. You must make yourself available for prospective buyer appointments for one or more viewings for each person who wants one. From one brief telephone call, are you comfortable letting someone, whom you do not know at all, into your home? Are you prepared to dedicate a number of weekend days to open houses (dont forget, you must advertise adequately [more dollars] to make this work at all) with all manner of strangers walking through your home. If the house is an investment property, you have larger problems as you must coordinate showings and open houses with your tenants.

Popularity: 5% [?]

You need to qualify a potential buyer. No owner wants to waste time with possible buyers who cannot buy their property. It happens all too often to owner-sellers. Most sellers do not even know how to qualify a potential buyer, which makes this problem even worse. Thats not all. Lets say you do know how to properly qualify a buyer and have no problem asking a possible buyer about their current financial situation in detail, including their income, expenses, assets, and credit score. Do you really believe a potential buyer will be happy to divulge their complete financial information to a seller? They most certainly will not!

Popularity: 4% [?]

You need to locate a buyer. After you tell your family, your friends, all of your co-workers, your bowling league, and everyone else you know, historical data indicates you still will not have found a buyer. You will need to spend money for advertising to let the buyer market know your property is for sale. Regardless of where your property is located (city, suburbs, rural, waterfront, etc.), advertising is expensive. Even just reasonably sized ads in the local newspaper, which is probably not sufficient, will cost you a great deal of money.

Popularity: 4% [?]

We all want to make as much money as we can when we sell our home. Whether the property is the home we have enjoyed for years with our families, or an investment property which has provided us both income and a tax shelter, we hope to maximize the profit we generate on its sale. That is both natural and admirable. The largest expense involved in selling a property is normally the fee paid to the real estate professional for arranging and orchestrating the sale. There is a strong temptation to eliminate this cost and manage the sale yourself. However, history proves this option proves to be more expensive for the seller in most cases. Remember, it is impossible to sell a property yourself without incurring significant expenses.

Popularity: 4% [?]