Strategy to Sell Your Home

Great News but HURRY!  The home selling market is changing rapidly!  Nearly 1/2 of our recent sales have come from buyers who are not working with an agent.  They report that they are looking on Realtor.com, studying homes with interior photos, driving the neighborhood, taking a flyer from the tube on the sign in front of the home and then making an appointment with our owners to see the home.  Don't miss the opportunity to use Realtor.com as your best selling tool.  Your home can only be seen on Realtor.com after you have listed with a real estate broker.  So even if you are not really anxious to sell your property through a buyer's agent, you must get on Realtor.com.  We can list your property with a low buyer's agent commission and you can change the commission to a higher rate when you are ready and at any time.

See what your buyer will see on Realtor.com: go to Realtor.com, put in a search criteria that matches your home and see what the competition to your home looks like.  Notice how many homes do not have interior photos!  According to the multiple listing service, only 30% of the listings have more than 1 photo.  Yet, buyers report they don't spend time looking at listings without interior photos.  You must hurry and advertise your home on Realtor.com because obviously there are a lot of homes that are not being marketed properly!

The Perfect Selling Strategy

People ask me, “What is the perfect selling strategy to market my home?” My answer, “Cover all of your bases.” That means getting into the multiple listing services, advertise as a For Sale By Owner and most important, keep your costs down so that when an offer comes in, you can actually sell the home without losing your profit by paying high commissions. So, I developed a plan that helps you do just that.

It is important to add the multiple listing service to your strategy AND stay a “For Sale By Owner.” There are only 4 types of buyers in the marketplace: 2 come from agents and 2 look for you as a “For Sale By Owner”. The 2 types of buyers that come from agents are usually first time buyers and out-of-area re-locators. The 2 types of buyers that look for you without an agent are the local house changers and the investor. If you are marketing as a For Sale By Owner only, you are only attracting the first half of the buyer market and if you “list” with an exclusive agent agreement, you are then only attracting the other half. That’s why it is important that you have all areas of the market covered. And, it makes sense that if you have your home marketed with all buyers in mind, that if there is a buyer for your home, you will find them.

With Mills Realty of California, you are able to accomplish both advertising strategies, thus “covering your bases” while saving yourself thousands. It is really a no-brainer! Being listed in the Multiple Listing Services (listing with an agent) has always been the #1 way to get your house sold that is why the term “agents protected” is often used by For Sale By Owners to attract agents and their buyers. Unfortunately, the public has rarely had the option of marketing their property on their own and being listed with an agent at the same time. Traditional agencies prohibit this type of real estate (called an open listing) with their “broker rules”. I have eliminated those rules by opening my own company, allowing you to have a profitable and innovative, yet proven way to sell your home.

Why agents don’t come to your house with their buyers when you are a For Sale By Owner?

The first half of my career as a real estate professional, I was an agent and then the manager of the largest For Sale By Owner franchise in the country. We helped thousands of people market their homes. I had a passion for that business.

In my career with that company, I met the leading Re/Max agent and was offered a partnership with her. She handled all the listings and I handled all of the buyers. In the course of our 5-year partnership, we still remained number one from our office for our area.

My intent as an exclusive buyer’s agent was to show all of my old client’s homes from my other company. It never happened. Looking for properties to show my buyer, I would go to the multiple listing service and pull the listings that fit their criteria. I then mapped the listings and courtesy-called the owners to tell them when I would be showing the home. Then I went and showed the listings to my buyer client. I did not have time to look thru the newspaper, or even drive the neighborhoods before hand to see if there were any For Sale By Owners to show my client. The truth is, there were so many houses in the MLS, that my clients would almost always find something in that list to buy and there was no need to look at other properties.

When we would run across a home that was a For Sale By Owner that had a sign out, we would pull over and call the home. If the owner was not home, I would leave a message and then ask them to call me as soon as they got home so that we could see the house. Sometimes they would call, unfortunately most of the time it was when we were already in another area with houses to see and owners that had already been called and told when we would be there. Rarely did we have time to go back to the For Sale By Owner and more importantly, with very few exceptions, most of my clients purchased a home they had seen from the MLS.

The other problem that an agent faces when they are attempting to show a For Sale By Owner, is their own client. Many agents have not had their client sign a Buyer’s Agency Agreement, wherein they get paid no matter what house their client buys. They are afraid that their client, who has legal rights not to pay the agent, will go behind their back and buy the For Sale By Owner house that they showed them and not pay them for their time.

I think that the concept of For Sale By Owners offering “agents protected” is great. It just doesn’t work as well as listing your home in the MLS. With the MLS, an agent knows that they are going to get paid because the listing agent has a binding agreement with the seller wherein the commission was set.

The Bottom Line

In today’s market, the MLS still holds the power to get a home sold. Most likely that power will fade in the future with new technology becoming available to the public. We have already seen a shift in power due to the Internet, but for now, the bottom line is, as long as buyer’s agents who only search the MLS to find homes are successful (at no cost to their buyer client), the MLS will reign supreme as the best search tool for anyone who purchases a home.

We hope that you are able to sell your home as a For Sale By Owner, even while using our program, but to be “seriously” on the market, we know that you will need the MLS and all of its internet exposure incorporated into your marketing strategy. Thanks for letting me share my insights on the real estate industry with you. I really love what I do and I hope that it shows…

Rhonda Duffy, Legendary Broker of Duffy Realty and creator of the marketing system used by Mills Realty of California.