Friday, July 27, 2012 2:19 PM

With the media talking about the hype in the real estate market, some of you may well be thinking of selling and doing it yourself to save on the cost of commission.

Lets look at the pros and cons.
On the positive side, you may save yourself thousands of dollars that you could use to invest in another property, which is very appealing. You remain totally in control of who visits your property and the negotiation process. You control all the communication about your property with a potential purchaser, and any marketing of your property is at your discretion.

But there are pitfalls. Just like any lay person who chooses to do their own work rather than employ a professional, some early thoughts of saving money can diminish in reality. Lets look at the processes needed to sell a home and compare selling your own home or employing an agency.


Price
When you engage an agency to sell your home, they are required by law to give you an appraised value of the property. This should provide you with the latest information on sales of comparable properties in your area.
If you sell your own property, you are not necessarily up to date with the latest sales as you will probably only be able to gather information which is historical and can be many months out of date. Apart from public auctions, all sales data remains confidential until the information is available in the public domain, which can be many months after the actual sale. Knowing your homes CV is not enough to set a suitable price
If you set the price too high, the property will probably not sell, if you set the price too low, your home will sell but you may well have missed out on thousands of dollars


Marketing & Sales Method
The next step to selling your home will be marketing. Selling privately does not give you many options when deciding on the method you will use. Auctions require professional skill to manage properly and you would need to employ an independent auctioneer to conduct the auction. So while this is a desirable method of sale, it is in reality impractical for a sale by the owner.
A tender is a possibility, using your own legal advisors to draft a suitable contract, but once again unless you have experience with this type of sale process, it may well be daunting and purchasers can be suspicious of tenders run by real estate agents let alone vendors. Purchasers don’t like the lack of transparency with the process.

Unless you have a buyer wanting your property, you will need to market your home in order find a purchaser. This will involve organizing a sign, placing it on the Internet, designing ads, and booking property adverts. You will find as a casual advertiser that there are some publications that will not allow you to advertise with them as they are for the industry alone and if you can book with others the rates that you receive will be more expensive than what a real estate agency can negotiate. Most real estate companies pass on the direct cost of marketing to their vendors, if not they must declare to you that they are charging a mark up on the cost. It should be much cheaper for you to market your property with a real estate company than booking your own.


Time
Selling a home takes time; a salesperson should be working every day with the goal to achieve a sale for you. If you work yourself, the time taken to sell your own home will be quite exhausting. Arranging appointments to view, responding to enquiries and keeping your home presentable as well as working full time will be very time consuming.


Negotiations
You will need to get a contract to enable you to sell your property or you could do the negotiations verbally then have your lawyer complete the legal contract.

Negotiating with a purchaser to sell your own home is not always easy, and some purchasers dislike negotiating directly with the owner, as they feel uncomfortable with the process and prefer to have an intermediary to convey the offer. Your solicitor can always do this for you, if you don’t wish to conduct the negotiation yourself.

If you decide you want to sell your own home, good on you, it can be very satisfying when you have achieved a sale. You may well save yourself thousands, but make sure you have a plan and consider all the costs emotionally, physically and financially.  Then go for it!