With the huge shortage of homes for sale in Silicon Valley, some home owners are tempted to sell their home by themselves or list them as FSBO.
These sellers assume that their home will sell quickly and can’t see a reason to justify spending $30,000 on Listing Commission.
However, before attempting to sell your home by owner (FSBO) you should consider the following:
- Listing Price: Most owners have a false sense of value when it comes to their homes price. So, what kind of services and reports will you use to determine your listing price?! Some free services such as Trulia and Zillow are notoriously unreliable since there is no way for the home owners to adjust for amenities and options for upgrades and remodeling done to the home. Most importantly, how will you know that you are not under-pricing your home.
- Disclosures: By California civil code, any material information about the condition of the property has to be disclosed to the buyers of your home. Neglecting to disclose this information would create legal and financial liabilities for you for at least 5 years!! So, you have to balance the savings of selling FSBO for the potential of defending yourself in Civil and Criminal court because of missing or mis-leading disclosures.
- Experience: As the property owner, you clearly don’t have the experience in selling homes. In fact, you are competing with agents who sell more than 10 homes per year.
- Qualified Buyers: Identifying qualified buyers among the offers you receive is a daunting task. You would need to ask for mortgage documents and pre-approvals from different sources. If you choose the buyer who can NOT perform, you might not have the right recourse.
- Marketing Resources: Despite the multitude of of online resources that are available to home sellers, MLS still delivers the highest prices for sold homes in US. So, selling your home as a FSBO, you will be eliminating this powerful marketing channel for your home.
But not all is lost on home sellers who want to sell their home without paying the full 3% commission. In fact, we have a 1% listing program for sellers in Silicon Valley that would avoid all the challenges outlined in this blog for home sellers while saying you 30,000 of commission.
Call us to discuss your San Jose home sale for only 1%.
[maxbutton id=”2″]
Trackbacks/Pingbacks