Jan

19

Consumer Warning

Filed Under Sellers |

So you’re considering paying $500 for a full year to be on the Multiple Listing Service? You’re actually going to pay only $500 to get on the websites that Realtors use to sell homes. Good for you. You’re going to “save” $1000’s of dollars in real estate commissions right?

WRONG!

Think about this for a second. Why do BMW’s cost four times as much as an economy car? Both get you to the same place right? Sure. But which one will get you from point A to point B faster, safer, with more fuel efficiency, not to mention with more style. More people will notice the BMW.

That’s the difference between internet companies that offer to list For Sale By Owner homes on Multiple Listing Services and full service real estate professional brokerages. When you pay a real estate broker to sell your home, you’re paying for faster, safer and more efficient service.

Now of course not every real estate broker office is built the same. Not every agent who works at the brokerage works the same, puts in the same amount of time and effort. But this article is not about those differences. This article is for the homeowner who is actually considering using an internet company to list their home for a fee on their website and have it uploaded to the multiple listing service.

Now I’m going to list just a few of the responsibilities that a full service real estate agent provides. Then we’ll compare this to the low cost internet company.

These are just the basic explanations of what I know I do when I get hired for the job of selling someone home - and it’s not even half of what goes into making a deal close. Most importantly, think about this, if professional real estate agents didn’t sell homes, the business wouldn’t exist. We sell homes, move families, and can be a great source of information.

Now the “low cost” internet company that puts your ad on their site and the local Multiple Listing Service.

That’s it.

Okay so you, the homeowner, must take over all the responsibilities above. And if you say to yourself, “well I’d rather do that then pay someone else $20,000 to do it,” that is certainly a valid point. However, statisics show that 8 in 10 (average) homeowners who try to sell their home on their own, end up listing with a real estate broker in order to actually sell their home. That’s 80%. Selling a home is not like selling a used car.

In my professional opinion, listing your home on the multiple listing service via a “low cost” internet company posing themselves as the “ultimate alternative to big real estate commissions” is a waste of time and huge amounts of money. How? In this market - if you list your house with one of these “low cost” internet companies and then you don’t sell it for 6 months to a year, you’ve already lost about 12% equity in your home and over the course of the next year (2008), you’re going to lose another 12% to 20%.

I’m not smiling. I’m a homeowner myself. So you’re not necessarily spending just $500 to get your house on MLS or on some silly For Sale By Owner website, you’re actually losing 10’s of 1000’s of dollars in selling margins as the value of your home drops out from under you. So these online “low cost” websites are not “low cost” at all. They’re costing you thousands of dollars!

The next thing many sellers will do after they’ve tried these “low cost” internet companies out for a while is, list with a “low cost” or “1.5% commission” real estate brokerage. Sigh….

That’s another article. Bottom line, remember the old saying, “You get what you pay for.”

WARNING: Beware of the “low cost” internet company posing as a viable alternative to full service real estate brokerage services. The Coldwell Banker business has been around for over 100 years. We must be doing something right!

For a Comprehensive Market Analysis of your home’s value, please call me at (631)587-1700, ext. 51. If you live in another state and have just read this article and want to get in touch with a qualified real estate professional in your area, please call me as well - Coldwell Banker has the larget referral network of qualified and reputable real estate brokerages in the world!

(c) Copyright 2008

By Tom McGiveron


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