Real Estate Agent vs. For Sale By Owner (FSBO) 

When selling a house, there are two main routes you can take; using a real estate listing agent or selling the house yourself. The second route is called “for sale by owner” or “FSBO”. According to the National Association of Realtors, NAR, FSBOs only accounted for 7% of home sales in 2020. The real estate market has been a hot seller’s market recently which has more homeowners thinking about selling their house themselves in order to avoid paying a commission to a listing agent.

Here are the top five reasons you should consider hiring a real estate listing agent instead of doing a FSBO when selling a home in Huntsville, Alabama: 

#1 - Marketing

What do you think will help you sell your home more, having a $1,000,000 marketing budget or staking a ‘For Sale’ sign in the yard? 

At Matt Curtis Real Estate we've been investing over $1,000,000 a year for several years which has accumulated a database of over 100,000 potential buyers. That gives us a marketing database to help find buyers for your homes, which will help generate more showings. More showings will help generate more offers, more offers can help generate a higher sales price for you.

Going the FSBO route means you will have to dedicate time to marketing your home and finding potential buyers. This can lead to fewer offers which may mean a lower sales price than you were originally expecting when you first listed your home. In a tough, competitive market this can mean the difference between selling your home and not selling your home.

#2 - Paperwork Issues

As a FSBO seller, you will have to pay an attorney to get a contract done. Worse, using a contract off of the internet may not satisfy your needs and could leave you vulnerable to real estate scams. There are also many real estate scams that go along with FSBO sales. Real estate laws vary significantly from state to state and the paperwork that the Board of Realtors uses has been used in thousands of contracts.

#3 - Cost of Not Closing on Time

If there are delays in closing on the sale due to paperwork issues or not having the experience to put a transaction together, there are holding costs associated with that. What’s it going to cost you to have an extra mortgage payment, an extra utility bill, an extra insurance payment, an extra tax payment, or an extra HOA payment?

Extra costs can quickly and expensively add up by not hiring the right expert.

#4 - Cost of YOUR Time

It’s going to be your job to do everything involved in selling your home. You’ll have to put the ‘For Sale’ sign up, do the marketing, do the showings, take the phone calls, schedule the inspections, and negotiate the contracts; what is the cost of your time in associating that into the transaction?

#5 - Expected Reduction of House Price

The reality is that a lot of buyers who shop for FSBOs know that you're not paying a real estate commission so they expect an additional price reduction on your home. So you go and do all of this work, probably don't get the highest price, and then they even hit you up for another reduction because there's not a buyer's agent or that listing agent involved.

In conclusion, is it worth going through all of the headaches, hassles, and time spent with selling your home FSBO when you can instead hire a real estate listing agent to get you a higher price and more importantly net you more money?