Everything A Real Estate Agent Doesn't
Want A Home Seller To Know! Part-2
By Jim Hart
Are you planning on selling a home? If so you may want to
read this article. As a home seller you have to make a decision
whether you will sell your home through a real estate company,
for sale by owner or a combination of both. Not many sellers
know they can do both—it all stems around the language of
the listing agreement (contract) you enter into with the real
estate agent and their company. If you are a smart negotiator
you can have the ability to sell both ways expressed in the
listing contract in a way that basically creates a “race”
to sell the property between you and the agent. The concept
is easy to do but hard to explain within the space limitations
of this article—any real estate attorney can help you negotiate
and write the face of the listing contract to reflect your
dual selling option during the listing contract period. Actually,
it’s a good idea to have your attorney review ALL listing
contracts you are considering BEFORE you sign them. And if
you ignore that advice then at least use these 5 Magic words
to help protect yourself before you sign any listing contract--write
the following words right ABOVE you signature:
"Subject To Sellers Attorney Approval"
Then sign the listing agreement. This way if you have a change
of mind for good reasons or the listing contract is not in
your best interest, you can weasel your way out of a deal
with the help of your attorney.
Speaking of listing agreements—do you realize that when you
contact a real estate agent to sell your home that you are
basically hiring a salesperson to sell your product? That
makes you an employer. I constantly preach that home buying
and selling is a BIG business deal. Have you ever been interviewed
for a job? Have you ever interviewed anybody for a job? If
you have participated in either of those scenarios you know
that you are asked (or ask) some tough questions before the
employer “hires you”…and the job you are seeking is competitive—other
people want the same job right? Well, the same holds true
for hiring an agent. If you have a decent home, most every
agent wants to list it for sale…there’s competition to get
your listing. Knowing this basic information don’t you think
you have the right to ask some tough questions of your real
estate agent? Don’t you want to see a resume? Don’t you want
to know there business background? What is their selling background?
To many times agents are part timers with one toe in the tub
and from my experience as a mortgage lender, many agents,
especially new or part-time agents basically throw as many
offers-from-buyers-as-possible on the wall and hope they stick—costing
sellers time, opportunity and money. This is NOT a blanket
indictment against real estate agents—there are full time
professional agents in the market who have business degrees
and marketing and sales experience—the top producers— but
finding them is a different story.
The point of this article is to bring to your attention as
a home seller that YOU are the one that has to make a hiring
decision when retaining the services of a real estate agent.
Many sellers choose people they know…their friends…especially
in small towns…and sometimes that works okay. Sometimes it
ruins friendships. The key is to treat your home like a business
deal and to make sure you do everything in your power to give
it the best representation in the market with a full time,
knowledgeable agent who has a business background. Agents
hate you hearing this kind of stuff but let me put it this
way: Lawyers go to school for seven (7) years to learn the
law so they can write a fifty dollar ($50.00) will. Real estate
agents on the other hand, go to crash-course-training programs
for 30-90 days or so and represent sellers in transactions
in excess of $100,000.00! What’s wrong with THAT picture?
You get the drift…
We have just upgraded our site and we have a free real estate
report you can download called 101 tips for home buyers, sellers
and money borrowers—it’s powerful and it's free. We have a
bunch of money saving stuff you can download in the freebies
section. An Ezine Article Exclusive! Until next time…
Copyright © 2006
James W. Hart, IV
All Rights reserved
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