CHAPTER 14
WHY HIRE AN AGENT? This book is full of information on how to sell your home. You have a basic knowledge of setting a listing price, online marketing, staging, and negotiation. Isn’t this enough to do the job yourself? Homeowners wonder if they could buy or sell a home through online or traditional marketing and advertising channels without a real estate agent. Try this analogy. You were given a book on investment strategy for your birthday and read it. The stock market is at all-time highs, but there are political and business factors that roil the markets. There are weeks of 300-point gains and of 400-point losses. The question: Are you ready to handle your own Individual Retirement Account (IRA) or stock market investing? Do you have the expertise necessary, and can you handle the emotional roller-coaster of seeing thousands of dollars of your money come and go? In today’s realty market, the selling and purchasing of a residential property involves more than 100 people with different skills and expertise who participate in the transaction from start to finish. Whether it’s for a home inspection or a title search, it takes more than 20 steps to finalize the sale of your home. For sellers, it can seem overwhelming to know how to anticipate and coordinate every step necessary to prepare your home to show, list, market, and sell. An experienced real estate professional knowledgeable in all phases of real estate can make the process much easier. You do not need real estate expertise if you engage a professional who has it. No matter how long you have lived in your home, a real estate professional in the local area will know considerably more about the sale price history and market trends than you do. Since real estate agents are paid a percentage of your selling price, it’s in their best interest to
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