[M03/S01] Why You Should Use a Real Estate Agent to Sell Your House

So why should you seriously consider hiring a real estate agent for the job of selling your home? There are many reasons for it, so let’s go over a few.

Most real estate agents have a lot more experience than you do when it comes to selling a home. Thanks to Reality TV, many consumers are given a false impression of the real estate business – it looks easy. The true reality is, it’s not. It’s a tough job. There are a lot of ins-and-outs to the business, and a thousand things you might need to know along the way.

When you use an agent, you’re buying that agents transactional experience, which can be priceless. You’re going to put plenty of time and energy into getting your house sold, but most of it will be spent preparing your home for sale. Your real estate agent can help you with a lot of this, but once your home is on the market, a lot more work will be required, and most of that will be done by the agent.

You will save a lot of time and energy, and avoid a lot of stress, by working with an agent during the marketing and closing process. A good, experienced agent will have seen a lot of purchase offers. He’ll know the good banks and loan officers, other top agents, and know what specifically to look for in an offer that makes it great, or one that has red flags. It can cost you a lot of time and money to go into contract with a weak buyer represented by a poor agent and a lender who may not be able to get the loan funded.

When you have an offer on the table – or hopefully, multiple offers – a good agent will be able to work with the offers and turn a good offer into a great one, always looking out to protect you and make sure that you get the most money for your home as you can.

Most real estate agents who have been in the business a while know people. Not only will your agent be marketing your home to buyers, but your agent should also be marketing your home to other local area agents – and that’s important, as other agents will help spread the word about your home, and focus more buyers on it. Remember, 88% of buyers work with real estate agents – so go where the buyers go!

An agent will also know a variety of other quality professionals to refer you to as the need arises. These include lawyers, landscapers, surveyors, contractors, inspectors – the list goes on. The agent’s professional network of contacts may prove invaluable during the sale of your home. Ask any agent out there – they’ll tell you, real estate is a people business. And selling a home – that’s a stressful business. It’s hard to put a dollar figure on stress relief, but just having someone there who you can call on, to take care of a hundred details regarding the sale of your home – that can be priceless.

Ultimately, what it comes down to is that using an agent should get you a higher sales price. In fact, that’s one prime reason that there even is such a thing as real estate agents – after all, if it turned out that homeowners could consistently get more money for their homes by selling them on their own, why would agents even exist? But more than just a higher sales price – a good will end up netting you more money on the sale of your home than you could do yourself, by guiding you through the home preparation process, marketing, negotiating offers, and providing a smooth closing.

Ready? Get It Sold.