Why Use A Realtor Today?

918-470-9876 dweddle@kw.com dweddle.kw.com

It is not the dawn of a new day its the age of technology breaking into all areas of our life, including real estate. Buyers and Sellers now have Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin, Property Shark, at their fingertips or in the palm of their hand. Real estate companies over the last few years have been behind the times however with companies aggressively recruiting new agents they have heard the call to upgrade. Thanks for the feedback from agents and customers almost all national brand brokerages have invested in mobile apps for their brand. The #1 company of real estate Keller Williams has developed an app that each agent brands to themselves were allowing them to share their app with clients, family, and friends. The app uses the GPS on your phone to identify the home your setting outside of, it then pulls from the MLS to give the user details about the property. Including price, square footage, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms and so on. The app is new to the marketplace, and companies continue to improve it. Some mortgage companies have even got in the business creating apps that primarily offer the same service. The question remains why to use a realtor when buying or selling a home? I mean most consumers say they can look up the price of the house and its information from the internet, so why do you need an agent? This is precisely my point as to why a buyer would require the agent. If merely looking up the property information is all that realtors provide the consumer is not familiar with the process of buying and selling and should let the professionals handle it. Facts show that a home purchase many times are the most substantial single investment most people will make. I mean think about it when you need surgery do you say oh I can look that up on Youtube and do it myself. I suppose you might want to rethink that or get a second opinion. The right realtor for you should be one that communicates effectively, uses their network to promote your property, almost all use social media today, and most brokers do their due diligence when reviewing contracts by having a compliance officer on their staff for quality control. The next part I would like to dive into is the actual process of selling your home on your own. I will not get into buying a home without a realtor because that is just plain silly. The seller pays the cost of the realtor, not the buyer. I have heard buyers say if I don’t use a realtor the seller will discount the house for me, think again. Back to the process of selling your house, the first step is you look at your home compared to the ones for sale in your neighborhood, how does it compare in size, style, year built, features and so on. After spending hours going through different online apps driving the neighborhood you finally come up with your price. Uh oh, you have a mortgage that is also going to play a role in setting that price or so you think. Now you go to the store and buy for sale signs to place in the yard. You place the sign in your yard and you are now an FSBO, right? Yes, you are FSBO however you are possibly now in litigation problems. What? Most FSBO don’t know they are still required to do all the disclosures that a realtor would assist them with. So let’s assume they have searched the internet and realize the number of disclosures required and they have printed off the forms and filled them out correctly. So the price is set the sign is in the yard they are armed with disclosures let the customers come. If they are lucky they will find them on a drive-by if not someone will tell them to put it on craigslist and Zillow. Some might even place the FSBO in the newspaper classified ads. The smart one will even post it on Facebook once. They have it advertised now and customers are showing interest in the home at all hours of the day and evening, the phone rings while you’re at work, at home with your kids, at the movies, or even worse a graduation or wedding. So you answer your phone or maybe you don’t, let’s say you do and they want to look inside the home. Ok, so you don’t know this person are you comfortable letting people look through your home that you have no idea who they are? You let them view it they like it and want to make you an offer. The next step is the negotiation yes negotiation hardly will any customer offer asking price and let’s not forget that not always is the negotiation just over the price. They want this fixed or maybe even want you to pay for their closing cost. Closing cost? Yes, now you have an offer that you have negotiated it is time to take your contract to a title company and start Escrow. Wait what contract did you use? Did you have a lawyer write one up? Not the least expensive way to do it but ok you wanted to do it without a realtor. The closing office now has the paperwork and begins the title search. The buyer wants to have inspections done and the inspector calls while you are at work and needs in right now. So you ask your boss for a couple of hours off work to go set with the house during the inspection. Great, the report has issues that need addressing, the negotiation skills are needed again. You have now completed that process and the lender is needing an appraisal so you already know where I’m going with this yet another call to you at work and another couple hours sitting at the house during an appraisal. You have your fingers crossed because if the appraisal doesn’t meet the required dollar amount the deal may go bust? Lets for your peace of mind say the appraisal comes back to meet the needs of the lender only to find out the buyer went to a furniture store and bought all new furniture for the home and they financed it. The lender runs the final credit check the day before closing and because of their recent purchase they are no longer eligible for the loan. Deals go bust just this easy if you don’t have a detail-oriented realtor who is walking the buyer hand in hand all the way through the process. For you, it is time to start all this over or you can hire a realtor and let them handle it all. What many people do not know is that a quality realtor will not show your home without the potential buyer being pre-qualified with a mortgage lender. What does that mean? They will have to give personal information to the officer including ID, address, workplace, phone number, social security number and so on. Do you think the people who want to view your home are going to give you all that information before you let them see it? Now think about the hours you spent with phone calls and allowing people in and out of the house. The realtor will spend those hours sitting in the home for hours during inspections and appraisal. As far as the contract they use a document wrote by the real estate commission and approved by lawyers. The closing process is straightforward when a realtor assists you, they might call you for documents the closing officer needs, in most cases, it’s merely showing up to sign the papers and get your check. Hey, why use a realtor? Because your time is money right? Time is everything you can’t make more of it, but you can always make more money.