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 Hi, this is Gina Mullen with Gina Mullen Realty and today we're going to talk about for-sale-by-owners versus hiring a real estate agent. 

So, a lot of for-sale-by-owners think that they're going to put their house on the market. This is going to be great, they're going to save all of this real estate commission. I'm not really sure for-sale-by-owners fully understand how much work goes into marketing their home. A for-sale-by-owner has to be available when there are showings. They have to be at the house to let the people in, they have to tour the house with the potential buyer, and if your house is a very desirable home, you could have many showings in a day or a showing in the middle of the workday that you would need to run home for. So that gets to be pretty inconvenient for a for-sale-by-owner.

When we're talking about pricing, we talk about how for-sale-by-owners don't have access to the information to help them properly price their home and that can go either way. Sometimes a for-sale-by-owner can leave money on the table. A lot of times a for-sale-by-owner, due to an emotional attachment to the house and/or the amount of money that's put into upgrades in a home, will overprice the home which then creates what we call chasing the market, which is never a good place to be. We want to make sure that the price is right when we first go out because the most amount of traffic is during the first two weeks and we want to make sure that we get it out there at the right price so we can get an offer and as soon as possible.

So the National Association of Realtors States that a home sold by a real estate agent on average will net more than 33% more than a home sold by a for-sale-by-owner. This is usually because a real estate agent is doing full time marketing of the home. We know how to market the homes, we know where to market the homes. That's our job. That's what we're trained to do. That's what we learn how to do, and so we get it exposed to a lot more people. In addition to that, we also know other agents and we know how to network with other agents to get that sold. We also get it into the MLS, which is where a lot of clients find their homes. Because even if the agent does not provide them the home, when a property is put in the MLS, it feeds across 42 different websites and that is how a lot of people today find their home, they find it on a website and then they will contact an agent to go in and, and see that home. 

In addition, there are many documents that need to be provided, such as a seller's disclosure. A lot of times a for-sale-by-owner is not aware of that, by state, even if there's selling their own home, they're required to provide a seller's disclosure. There are other documents as well that need to be provided. Some of those are to protect you, the seller. Some of those are for the transaction to go through as a smooth transaction. So we want to make sure that they're filled out properly. I hear more often than not, with people who have not used real estate agents before, that it's just filling in the blanks that real estate agents just fill in the blanks on a contract. If those blanks are not filled in properly, that could mean disaster for a seller or even disaster for a buyer. So a for-sale-by-owner opens himself up to a lot of liability without knowing how those documents need to be filled out and a real estate agent really has all the tools that you will need to properly market your home, properly price your home, and get it sold as soon as possible.