Amid a real estate boom that is arming vendors with bargaining power, Margaret Blondin is selling her deceased parents’ riverfront condominium without the help of a real estate agent.
“I’d always used an agent,” said Blondin. “This time, when we found out how much we’d have to pay in commissions, we thought we could be saving a lot of money by going it alone.”
Five common mistakes
Pricing incorrectly. Don’t base prices on insufficient information and emotions. The best way to price any home for sale is through a licensed appraiser.
Failing to showcase your home. First impressions matter, so make sure your home looks its best.
Using poor quality photos. Buyers go through several different mediums, including online listings and photos, newspaper ads, virtual tours and feature sheets. Hiring professional photographers could help attract potential buyers.
Failing to obtain legal advice. When selling privately, the role of a lawyer is critical. Lawyers draw up the purchase and sale agreement, hold deposits and ensure the transaction runs smoothly.
Failing to disclose your property’s imperfections. You could face a lawsuit by not disclosing defects that aren’t obvious or discovered during a home inspection.
Windsor and Essex County’s real estate market is on a tear, and depending on the neighbourhood, listings are not only getting snapped up in days but generating multiple bids.
The do-it-yourself trend isn’t new, spawning such services as Private Exchange and ComFree. But with expectations that the region’s real estate market will favour sellers for the rest of the year, more vendors are willing to sell privately, said Randall Weese, broker of record at ComFree Commonsense Network Brokerage.
“Absolutely, it’s a great time for sellers,” said Weese. “We’ve seen an increase in the number of listings from the Windsor area over the last few weeks compared to previous years.”
With the exception of showing your home, ComFree will do everything from writing up the listing, shooting photos, negotiating the price to drawing up legal documents, said Weese. Since ComFree also is a real estate broker, its properties are listed on the Canadian Real Estate Associations MLS listings as well as its website, he added.
Residential sellers who list with an agent typically pay five to six per cent of the sale price, split between the listing agent and buyer’s agent. The money is deducted from the seller’s proceeds when the deal closes. For Blondin, commission fees would subtract almost $20,000 from the $389,900 asking price of the 1,600-square-foot, two-bedroom condo.
She decided to deal with ComFree, which charges a flat fee ranging from $300 to $2,200.
“I don’t want to come off as complaining about agents,” she said. “This is not about them, it’s about trying to make the most money for our family.”
The Canadian Real Estate Association, however, has launched an advertising campaign warning of the pitfalls of selling on your own.
“Every day, realtors help Canadians with one of the most important financial decisions of their lives — the buying and selling of a home or property,” said Pierre Leduc, spokesman for CREA. “Realtors offer a wide range of professional services, from the simple posting of property information to a board/association MLS system, to handling every element of the transaction, including market analysis, pricing advice, advertising, making and receiving offers and much more.”
Realtors and their proprietary MLS systems helped Canadians sell more than 536,000 properties in 2015; more than 511,000 properties in 2014; more than 487,000 properties in 2013 and more than 483,000 properties in 2012, Leduc added.
Local ReMax broker Goran Todorovic said reasons against selling privately range from misreading the market, negotiating price and multiple offers to legal mistakes and security concerns stemming from exposing your property to strangers.
“I’ve heard horror stories about people who thought they had sold their home to a buyer who wasn’t qualified or didn’t have the resolve to close the deal,” said Todorovic, a 28-year real estate veteran. “Some sellers who thought they had sold their home and purchased another property ended up getting sued or stuck with two mortgages.”
Todorovic also pointed to a National Association of Realtors study showing that real estate agents secure prices that are on average 13 per cent higher than private sales.
Such concerns aren’t dissuading Marie and Bruce Pottle from selling their South Windsor home privately. Over the course of almost 50 years of marriage, the couple has sold about half of 10 properties on their own.
“We’ve worked with many good agents,” said Marie. But the couple opted to go it alone this time around to save money on commission fees that would amount to more than $14,000.
“Selling on your own puts more stress on you,” admitted Marie, who is using online ads to promote her McKay Avenue home. “But if we didn’t we couldn’t afford to move and it would have put the asking price of our house out of range for potential buyers.”
Advancing age and health problems have prompted the couple to consider moving to a home that requires less maintenance, she said.
“We are not people who buy properties and resell them for profit,” said Marie. “Everything we ever bought was with intention of staying there.”
Selling privately, she stressed, isn’t for everyone.
“Some aren’t capable,” she said. “You have to be personable, you can’t be overbearing, and most of all you have to be prepared,” said Marie, who has drawn up information sheets on the house for potential buyers planning to tour the property or who inquire by phone.
Computers and the Internet, she added, have facilitated the process for the novice home seller.
“The main thing is you have to have some knowledge of the process, and a comfort zone with the whole thing,” she said. “We’ve always had a positive outlook. Even in a slow market, you have to be patient. For every five people who see your home and hate it, one comes in an says: ‘It’s the house I’ve always wanted.'”
gmacaluso@postmedia.com
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