Drawbacks of Selling Your Home on Your Own

As you will see, most people who try selling their home on their own fail because they lack the necessary expertise and knowledge of a real estate agent.

Whether you should try selling your home on your own or not depends on a couple of things. Do you have the expertise? Can you drive the buyers? Do you know how to price your home correctly? Do you have expert knowledge of the paperwork?

Sadly, most FSBOs do not. Every year, the National Association of Realtors puts out what they call their “Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers,” where they survey lots of different buyers and sellers at closing and ask them questions about their transactions. Here’s what they found:

• FOSBO transactions only made up 9% of all residential transactions
• 45% of those people already knew the buyer before they put their house up for sale.
• 89% of buyers said that they found their house through a real estate agent.
• 86% of those people said that the agent was the one who brought the home to their attention.

FSBOs on average sell for 17% less than those who list their homes with real estate agents. There are a couple of reasons we can identify why this happens. For one thing, FSBOs tend to attract a lower quality of buyer. Another reason is they lack the knowledge and expertise of what’s going on in the market. They don’t have the network needed to find buyers, the marketing to expose their home to the market, and lack the knowledge of paperwork needed or how to even use that paperwork. Lastly, they lack the knowledge of how to price their property in the market.

FSBOs on average sell for 17% less than those who listed with an agent.

Lots of times we see FSBOs drastically overprice their property. Overpricing your property ends up helping you shoot yourself in the foot. You end up selling for much less than what the house could have sold for in the beginning.

If you’re thinking about going the route of FSBO, you certainly can. There are success stories every day; however, the majority of FSBOs fail miserably. A real estate agent can help you with that. They’re there so that you can get the most amount of money for your property in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of hassles. Even after you’ve paid them their commission, they’ll net you more money than if you tried selling your home on your own.

If you’re thinking about selling your home, talk to us first. Just give us a call or send us an email and we’d be happy to help you.

What Happens if Your Dallas Home Is Not Selling?

It’s no secret that we are in the hottest seller’s market that Dallas has ever seen. In fact, Dallas is one of the top 10 seller’s markets in the United States. That said, there are still people who have a difficult time selling their homes. What happens if your home is not selling?

There are four fundamental pillars of selling your home:

1. Location of the property.
2. Condition and showability of the home.
3. Marketing the home.
4. The price of the home.

Now, you can’t just rely on one pillar to sell your home. Each of them has to be working in order for you to be successful. You need to examine these areas and see if there is anything you can improve on if your home is still sitting on the market.

Unfortunately, you cannot do anything about the location of your home. You can’t pick up your home and move it into a different neighborhood or off the busy street corner; it is what it is.

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You cannot change the location of your home, but you can change its condition, marketing, or price.

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However, you can improve the condition and showability of your home. We recommend doing a pre-listing inspection so that you can fix any issues before your home goes on the market. We also recommend staging your home. A staged home sells 50% faster and for 7% more money than an unstaged home. 

As for marketing, real estate professionals handle that. We are expert marketers. We hire professional photographers, shoot videos, and put your home on every website out there. We do a lot of social media marketing and we have a database of more than 12,000 people we can market to. We are very proactive about dealing with other agents, running open houses, and more. We do everything we can to expose your home to the highest number of qualified buyers out there.

If everything else is working — your home is in its best condition, it’s showing well, and your agent has implemented a great, proven marketing strategy — then you may have to look at price. No one wants to go through a price reduction but sometimes it’s what you have to do in order to sell your home.

If you have any questions about selling or your home or about real estate in general, please don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email.  My team and I would be happy to help you!

The Latest Trends in the Dallas Real Estate Market

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So far this year, things in the real estate market have been going gangbusters. Remember, the real estate market really started to turn around in the second quarter of 2012, so we have had four great years in Dallas Fort Worth. In fact, just this past June we were ranked as the third hottest market in the United States.

For the pre-owned, residential resale market, the median price is $205,000 - a 9.3% increase from this time last year. That number gets even higher when you factor in townhomes, condos, and new construction, but most people tend to focus on the resale market.

Whether you are buying or selling a home, you should be concerned about the days on market. The average days on market gives you an idea of how long it will take to sell your home or how quickly you need to make an offer. Right now, the average days on market for the resale market is 38 days, a 30% drop from this time last year. The median number is way less than that, at 16 days on market. That means half of all properties go under contract within two weeks of hitting the market.

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There are more buyers than
there are homes on the market.

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Closed sales for the year are up by about 7%. This year, 89,000 homes have been sold.

The supply of homes on the market is a key economic indicator of how the market is doing. Right now, we have an inventory of 2.5 months, which is a 14% drop year over year. If you’re a buyer and you’ve been wondering why it’s so hard to find a home, it’s because of that low inventory level. Ultimately, there are more buyers than there are homes on the market.

If you’re thinking of buying a home, you need to get connected with a really good agent who knows the market and can set up the right offer for the seller. We even have access to off-market properties so that you have a few more options to look at in this hot seller’s market.

If you have any questions, please give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!