List on the MLS for less
Don’t pay a 6% commission when you sell your Orlando area home. I will list your home for 4.5%. The commission is less, but the full service remains the same. See my marketing plan for selling your home which includes professional photography.
At a 4.5% commission, I would receive 1.5% commission as the listing agent, and the buyer agent would receive the standard 3% commission. To be honest, buyer agents work their butts off giving up their weekends driving people all over town, often for months. Sometimes circumstances change and they never even see a commission after spending hours of their time away from their families while feeding the gas tank and toll booths.
The only time I couldn’t offer the 4.5% commission is if you owe more on the home than you can sell it for. In this case, I could list your home as a short-sale if you meet certain criteria. I work with short-sale specialists to increase your chances of selling your home as a short-sale. Due to the labor intensity involved, I would charge the normal 6% commission on a short-sale.
Why using a Realtor makes sense
Some people may still be resistant to paying a 4.5% commission and choose to try to sell their home themselves. It can be done, but more often than not this is a bad idea. People who see a home for sale by owner often expect to find a discounted priced or a desperate home owner, and often try to make low ball offers. In the end the home owner usually ends up netting less money and taking longer to sell than had they listed the home with a Realtor. Also, they don’t have the professional guidance of a Realtor that can be extremely valuable in navigating the process and helping to avoid costly mistakes.
You might also be temped to get offers from an iBuyer. I encourage you to get offers from them, but don’t accept any offers until you understand the truth about iBuyers.
As a cost conscious (some may say frugal) person, I understand the desire to make your hard-earned money stretch as far as possible. When my husband and I got married, we both owned a home. We decided to live in mine and rent out his house. We decided to save money and paint the exterior of the rental home ourselves in the middle of the hot Florida summer. After two coats of paint and two months of working on the weekends, we were finished. Then we realized, if we had hired professionals to paint the home it would have been ready for rent a month or two earlier which would have more than covered the cost of hiring a professional painter. In the end we saved nothing, and lost all that time. The only positive is I probably lost some weight from all the sweating I did.
The MLS is a powerful tool
Besides having the expertise of a Realtor working for you, the main reason you should list with a Realtor is the exposure you get on the MLS. If you were to sell your home yourself, you could spend a lot of time and money on advertising and still not match the advertising power of the MLS. When a Realtor lists your home on the MLS, it automatically appears on other national websites like Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, and many more. More exposure means more competition and likely a higher sales price for your home.
Contact me to inquire about listing your home for 4.5%:
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