How to Sell Your Home FSBO Without a Realtor – Step by Step Guide
Sander Scott, owner-broker of Net Real Estate, breaks down the ten most common mistakes FSBO sellers make: mispricing, poor staging, weak marketing, inflexible showings, oversharing, skipping legal paperwork, ignoring contingencies, bad negotiation prep, underestimating costs, and going it alone. He also covers recent changes to buyer agent compensation after a national lawsuit.
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Hey there. So we are gathering together to— I'm going to start that over. Hey there. If you're thinking about selling your home without a realtor, you want to know about these very, very common mistakes that most for sale by owner sellers make. And there's a really key one, and that has to do with buyer's agency. I'm saving that best one for last. It's best. I'm saying best because it's actually the newest one. Some of these other ones are kind of perennial mistakes that you may have heard one or two, or you maybe need a refresher on these fundamentals. But the one when it comes to buyer's agency, it's brand new and it's an outgrowth of the national lawsuit. It was a class action lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors and some really, really big box brokerages. And so then— oops, looks like my, my monitor moved there a little bit. But anyway, the, the buyer's agency thing is brand new and you really need to know how as a for sale by owner seller, how to interact with those buyer's agency, buyer's agents so that you don't just give away 2, 3% and when you're talking about a $500,000 sale, that adds up to a lot of money. So, so anyway, without further ado, let's get into it. So the first thing I want to let our participants know is that I have a Facebook mastermind group specifically for our for sale by owner sellers out there. So that's the FSBO Success Mastermind there. And then also I have a playlist, my YouTube channel called Living in Traverse City, Michigan Area covers a lot of things about the Traverse City area, a lot of different things, but specifically for for sale by owner sellers, I have a playlist so you can subscribe to the whole channel. But if you're not from the Traverse City area, you're not really interested in things around Traverse City, but you are interested in the FSBO stuff and just— you can just subscribe to the playlist. So, all right. So I already talked about buyer's agency and how that impacts you. We'll get into that later. Just a real quick little bit about me. I am a full-service realtor, owner-broker of Net Real Estate. So I'm not just a real estate agent. I am a broker. I'm a former educator, was a teacher, coach, principal, superintendent. And so I like sharing information with folks. Currently active in Rotary Lions Club. And most recently, I just stopped being a volunteer coach for Lake Leonora-St. Mary's. I am kind of a basketball guy. You might be able to pick up— barely, the camera just moved, but you might be able to pick up my basketball in the background. 6th generation Northport resident. And what's not in there is I just— I help a lot of sellers sell their homes. I also work with a lot of for sale by owner sellers when I am calling on behalf of buyers. And then I've also had a lot of for sale by owner sellers ultimately list with me as well. All right. Core values. I just want to let you know that I grew up in scouting. I am an Eagle Scout, so I take those, you know, the life of a Scout really seriously. And the biggest motto in scouting as a Boy Scout is to be prepared. And that's what this is really all about, getting you prepared to sell your home. It is— there is a lot of preparation and there can be a lot of different feelings that folks have when they get ready to sell their home. I used to teach high school psychology and You know, moving is one of the top 3 stressors that you can have in your life. Number 1, death in the family, divorce, and moving, job change. Those are the top 4. So, and because a lot of times you have a lot of really great memories in your home, you can go through a variety of different emotions. It's just really, I think, really healthy for folks to just kind of acknowledge that. And I didn't notice I matched the pictures, so that's kind of cool. All right. Before we get into the actual mistakes one by one, I did want to put a mistake number zero down, and that is just that make sure you really do want to sell before you list your property on Zillow or, you know, however you're going to market it. I wouldn't suggest just limiting it to Zillow. Facebook Marketplace, other things. We'll get into that more when we get into the marketing phase. But you'd be surprised at how many for sale by owner sellers when I'm calling on behalf of buyer clients, I can tell in relatively short order they are not serious and it's just a lot of work. And it's also just kind of disingenuous to list a home for a ridiculous price. And that's what I run into a lot. There's a particular home on Lake Leona that's been for sale for years and years and years because he's asking about twice of what it's worth. And I think his mother doesn't even really want him to sell it. He lives side by next to his mother. But anyway, make sure you really want to sell. All right, let's get into the mistakes. Mistake number 1, pricing the home wrong. Most FSBO sellers overprice their homes but they can also underprice. And I've heard FSBO sellers say, hey, you know, I had a great success in selling my home. I listed it on Zillow and sold it in a day. And, you know, if you way underprice your home, it's going to sell fast. And, you know, that can be a part of a pricing strategy to price it a little lower than— but if you don't want to, you want to be within an acceptable range and develop your pricing strategy within that range. So this kind of points out that there are a couple of different things to consider. Days on the market, those are your enemy. The longer your home sits on the market, Zillow counts, the MLS counts how many days it's been marketed. The more that number increases, the less bargaining power you ultimately have as a for sale by owner seller. Alternatively, you as a for sale by owner seller trying to sell your home yourself, probably a little bit of that has to do with not only trying to save the commission and all of that, but also kind of wondering, does the real estate agent have your best interest in mind? And according to this book, Freakonomics, by Steven Lovett and Steven Dubner. You are correct in having that suspicion because it says in there that real estate agents, when selling their own home, they kept it on the market a little bit longer and sold it for more than when they were selling their own clients' homes. So that's another thing that you are I think justified in feeling like, hey, I want to make sure no one's going to look out for your interests more than you, right? And so if you do ultimately list with an agent, that's why it's important to get one that you really, really trust and that you know is going to have your self-interest in mind and not just be looking to make a quick sale so they can move on to the next thing. All right. So then pricing strategy. This, by the way, there I have a YouTube video That's the thumbnail for the video right here about how to develop a pricing strategy, because it really does depend on your personal circumstance. Pricing strategy is going to be different if you, let's say, get a job in another state and you have to move and you don't really want to or you're not able to carry two mortgages at once. That's going to be a different pricing strategy than you inherited a home upon the passing of your folks or something. So, and you really want to maximize the price. So pricing strategy— oops, I'm going to close my door. My dog's barking. All right. So what you also want to do is obviously research comparable sales, comps as we call them in the industry. You want to— you could consider a professional appraisal, but make sure that you are in a stable market if you're going to rely on the results of an appraisal. Quick story with that is I had a client call me and say she was really, really interested in purchasing a lot on Little Traverse Lake. That was for sale by owner seller, didn't want agents involved. She was just asking my advice. She says, hey, there were two lots. My client was looking to buy one of the two. The sale price was $250,000. And my client asked me what I thought of that. And I said, snap it up immediately, get— buy it. And that's a great deal. Well, ultimately what ended up happening was at the 11th hour, the seller's sister stepped in and said, no, Nope, we're going to take it to the market with an agent. And oh, by the way, I left out that they had had an appraisal done and the appraiser said that it was $250,000 each. So 2 lots for a total of $500,000. That's what an appraiser told them, professional appraiser. They put it on the market and both ultimately went for just over $900,000. So they— that appraiser was $400,000 off. So that doesn't happen very often. That's a really extreme example. And that was an example where the appraiser— the market was— this was right after COVID when the market was going crazy and he was looking at past sales that were 6 months, you know, or longer ago. And the market had changed drastically during that time. So you want to be careful about that and you want to be strategic with pricing depending on your personal circumstance. Okay. Then the other thing is I get a lot of when's the best time to sell? People are thinking, you know, is it better to sell in the spring, summer, fall? Do I dare sell in the winter? The key here really is a hole in the market. In other words, what is your competition rather than, you know, is it what season? The best time really is when there's very, very little competition for your particular property. So not a lot of like properties for sale. I put a waterfront home on the market in February and we had great success with the sale of that because a lot of people had— a lot of buyers had missed out in the fall. We hit before all the normal spring showings came up. We, we were first in February and went under contract full price. Very quickly. So, and my sellers were very happy with that. So think about that. All right. Mistake number 2, failing to prepare for your home showings. I see this much more in for sale by owners than I do in— I see it sometimes with real estate agents and I just shake my head. I see it in pictures where the room's messy like it, like this one. Shows here. But you really want to make sure that your home is show ready. And one of my future slides here, it's going to jump in about the importance of lighting. Just turn on all the lights. Don't, don't penny pinch when you're trying to sell your home. Lighting is very important. Make sure the home is bright and clean. Okay. And be prepared for those showings. Get ready to show your home a lot or have your house be shown a lot. It's You know, selling your home is a lot of work, whether you use an agent or not. It's, it's a ton of work. The thing I left out of my introduction is that my wife and I, my job, my— when I was in education, I moved around quite a bit. And, and so we bought and sold a lot of homes and each one was a, was a ton of work. My wife's got an interior design architecture background that I'll get into a little bit later. She always enjoyed that process, but keeping the house show ready was a little bit of a challenge. And getting it ready to show, you want to declutter and clean. Those are the most important things. A lot of people focus on repairs or improvements. You know, I usually talk through my clients on a case-by-case basis. Obviously, if something's glaring If, if there's chips painting on the front door, let's say, or in this case, you know, this is a picture of my son Sawyer right here. He's a professional house painter. There was one particular area in one of my listings that was the kids like jumped up and hit the ceiling. And so it was all stained and he just came in, did a quick paint job in that one particular area, made it look much, much different. So focus on— you don't want to really make many improvements. Repairing broken things is pretty important. But you definitely want to declutter, subtract. You'll hear a lot of people say that you should take down all the personal photographs. I'd say, you know, it depends on how many you have. But you really do want to have, have it be a little more depersonalized than it normally is so that you want, you want a buyer to be able to see themselves in the home and not, not feel like they're tiptoeing around in someone else's house. You want them to feel like this could be their house and they could see them in it. And the deep cleaning kind of goes without saying. Okay, so— oops. Okay. Got to make him be quiet. But those, those two slides were staging your home and lighting. And, you know, that guy's kind of a social media influencer. He owns a bunch of apartment buildings, so he's talking about renting. But the principle remains the same, that lights— I can't tell you how many times I've gotten feedback from other agents saying the house just seemed dark, you know, because my seller didn't want to have the lights turned on or they were very conscious, you know, or my buyers, when I'm showing my buyers through, you know, I— what I typically try to do as a buyer's agent is I show up and if the lights are all off, I go around the house, turn them all on before the showing, and then I go back through and turn them all off when, when we're done. But you as a for sale sell-by-owner seller, you really want to just have your house be bright. Okay. If it's clean, there's no reason to not have it really lit up and be bright. And then staging your home was the other thing that you want to be thoughtful about what you do there. If you're moving, I would recommend leaving some furniture behind. It's, it's good. You know, my wife having— and by the way, this slide is about her— she's got this, that this picture right here is her. We were married with child in college, and that's her finishing her interior design drawing with my oldest son Samuel sleeping. But, you know, she can look at a house plan and walk through the home in her mind. I can't do that. But a lot of buyers, when they look at totally a vacant house, they can do that. Other buyers can't. I think it's, I think it's easier if someone's capable of being able to see where furniture would go. They can also see where to rearrange what you already have. I think it's better to leave some things behind, but I don't think it's necessary to do a ton of, you certainly don't need to bring stuff in. Um, you just want to be more thoughtful if you're moving or in your process of moving, be thoughtful about what items to leave behind and leave some sort of look like it's still being lived in. Okay. And, you know, the reason I have this slide is that my wife provides— part of the service that I provide to my clients is she comes in and provides the kind of a consultation. And she really just has that artistic eye and that interior design and architecture background and does consultations with sellers to really help prepare their home for sale. It's kind of an added benefit that I can provide. Okay. Mistake number 3: not maximizing marketing. Okay. There is— without proper marketing, your pool of potential buyers shrinks significantly, reducing your chances of a timely sale at the most desirable price. You want to have more than one interested buyer. Okay. You can see, you know, this slide sort of represents the idea that, you know, when there are— there's more than one right now kid interested in this teddy bear. Okay. And that means the teddy bear is being viewed more— has a higher value right now because someone else wants it. And that's really what, what you want to be in that position when you're selling your home. So you want to attract as many eyeballs as possible. And that really is what marketing is all about. Okay, so how do you do that? Professional images. And here I'm not just talking about photos. Okay, definitely you want to do professional, high-quality photos, but you also want to think about 360 virtual tours, drone videos, that sort of thing. 360 interactive tours. Get 87% more views and people spend about 300% more time on your listing. These are stats from Zillow, by the way. Professional photos get 118% more views than amateur photos. Drone— having drone photos and videography gets 68% more views and a whopping 403% more inquiries. So drone is, is really valuable. It's kind of a feature I began using as I use a GoPro also, especially, you know, I really— there's usually one thing about a house that really stands out. And certainly if it's a waterfront property, then I really try to highlight that for my folks and You know, I'll do— if it's a sandy beach, sandy bottom, I just don't want to put that in the description. I want to show that visually. And I do that sometimes with a GoPro. So this is something not to skimp on. I see a lot of for sale by owner sellers don't do a very good job with their photos and with their, with their marketing. I see terrible photos on Zillow. And you are giving up a serious percentage. You know, you're going to get— you're going to attract the wrong kind of buyer if you don't have great photos. You're going to attract the kind of buyer who thinks he's getting a deal. You know, you're going to attract the shark or the deal hunter who thinks he's dealing with an unsophisticated seller. And they're going to, they're going to want a discount. Okay. Then you want to obviously do a really nice listing description, highlight the aspects of the property. You have to be careful with this a little bit, making sure that you're not violating Fair Housing Act laws. There are some nuances around that. I've shot a separate video that you should check out to raise your awareness about violating Fair Housing Act laws. It can be a lot of— there's a lot of legalistic things. In fact, when I advertise for this webinar, Facebook and Google put some restrictions because it's housing related and that has to do with the Fair Housing Act laws. Okay. For example, you're really not supposed to say it's a short walk to downtown because that could be interpreted as as language that's not conducive to people with disabilities. You know, somebody in a wheelchair, it's not a short walk for them, right? So you want to say a short distance to downtown. Great for family gatherings. You wouldn't want to really— you're not really supposed to say that versus saying something like great for entertaining. So there's some, you know, things to consider. You definitely want to highlight the very positive things. One of the things I often do when I'm preparing, when I'm working with a seller and they're using me as their agent, I ask them to write what they love about the house, and that makes its way into my narrative that I'm creating that compelling listing description. Okay. You want to utilize social media. You know, you may want to consider You may want to consider advertising on social media as well, but you definitely want to enlist your friends and have them share, share it. Get as many shares on Facebook and Instagram as you possibly can. Use your personal network. You may want to consider targeting ads. You know, you want to think about, you know, I, I had a client and we really, really wanted to target. We knew at that time there was quite an influx of interest at that time from Chicago and even Los Angeles. And we really targeted people in that and that video got 21,000 views. So we really got a lot of eyeballs on that waterfront listing. And that's the one that we ultimately sold in February. There, you're definitely going to want to make sure that it gets listed on major platforms if you're listing it on Zillow, Sometimes you can't— if you— this is more of a hybrid. You can't really get on some of these without listing it on the MLS. And that's where you could, you could work with a flat fee, a flat fee MLS listing service provider, reach more buyers' agents out there. But Zillow, you know, gets good traffic. So there's nothing wrong. With advertising on Zillow. But you, you know, I can't understate it enough, the importance of getting as many— you know, I think when I list for my clients, the MLS is a very, very powerful tool and it does 80% of the work, of the marketing work for me as an agent. However, that remaining 20% can be really, really important. And all it— all we have to do is have one additional buyer. Whoops, zoomed in. I got to learn my hand signals on this thing. All it needs is one additional buyer. And, and that really changes your dynamic of— let's see if it'll go back now. It really changed. Having that one additional buyer really changes the dynamic of your your negotiation. Okay. You want to make use of signage, signage, flyers. Okay. Consider postcards with a QR code. That's something that I do for my clients. You really want to maximize everything, everything to get the word out. All right. Mistake number 4, not making your house available for showings. I see this a lot more with for sale by owner sellers that it's very, very difficult to make an appointment for my client when I'm calling as an agent on their behalf. Inflexibility can lead to missed opportunities. Buyers move on if they can't see the home when it's convenient for them. This is a especially important now that we're not in this crazy, crazy seller's market like we were. You definitely want to make your home available for showings. So make sure that you can have flexible scheduling. Keep your home in show-ready condition. This is the biggest thing. You're getting ready to sell your home. Keep it in show-ready, get it all deep cleaned, and then keep it clean. Keep it ready. Consider using a lockbox so you can leave that combination for, for an agent if the agent's showing up. Okay. All right. Mistake number 5: oversharing during showings. I see sellers make this mistake all the time. If you as a seller reveal too much information, it can weaken your negotiating position, or inadvertently you could disclose issues that deter buyers. So now, you know, that's— I'll get into what your obligations are under the Michigan Seller's Disclosure Act. If you're selling in Michigan, you must disclose known defects in the property and there's a form that you fill out. This really is talking about you could, you could kind of overshare little annoyances or things that you're not necessarily obligated to share. But the biggest thing is, is you don't want to be sharing like, you know, the most often asked question is, why are you selling? And if you were to say, well, I just got this job in, you know, Phoenix that I have to start next week, you know, the buyer is going to be, hmm, okay, they probably are going to be a little more flexible on price. So you just have to be careful. Okay. So my suggestion is prepare a script, okay, that you're going to— if you're doing your own showings in this case, prepare a script really stick to the property, have a— have some answers to the question like, why are you selling? You could just say, you know, it just seems like a good time for us to sell. We have another, you know, they ask, where are you going? Where's your place to live? We've got all that set, you know, The— this is where I see most— it's hard not to answer honestly with some of these, but the honest answers about what's going on in your life can put you in a negotiation, a negative negotiating position. Okay. You want to also avoid emotional attachment. That's also hard for some folks. You want to stay, you know, as distant. You're showing the house. You want them to see themselves in the house. You don't want to be talking about, going into too much detail about the memories you had in the house. You know, right here, don't discuss personal circumstances. All right. Mistake number 6: neglecting legal and financial aspects. Real estate transactions are complex. They involve legal documents and financial considerations, and mistakes can lead to delays, law sales, and the big one, legal disputes. So how do you avoid that? Well, you can hire a real estate attorney. This is a picture of a real estate attorney that I use here, Shanna Pop. An attorney can help you with the necessary paperwork, that sort of thing. Also, you could make sure that you get set with a title company ahead of time, have the title company do preliminary title work for you, that sort of thing. About 1 to 2% of all real estate sales end in litigation. You know, so simple, straightforward cases cost $5,000 to $15,000. And more complicated cases can be, you know, $10,000 to $30,000 and can escalate very, very quickly. And so you want to avoid these mistakes if you can. Okay. All right. Make— also make sure— be careful about how you represent the property. Okay. You know, one of the things that I do on behalf of my buyer clients is I want to make sure I'm checking local zoning, if there are HOA rules, those kinds of things. A lot of people will ask, well, can I do this? I can't tell you how many homes I sell people living in an HOA and they don't know the rules. Okay. And sometimes they'll say they can do things because the HOA hasn't been really enforcing things. So they could be under the impression that they're allowed to do something and they're really not. And that can turn into a lawsuit. That happened in Northport, Northport, Northport, Cherry Home Shores subdivision. It was explicitly written in the HOA that short-term rentals were not allowed, and yet lots of residents were doing that. So ultimately, a group of homeowners took their own HOA to court and said, you need to enforce the rules of the HOA. And so there were people that had bought property under the impression that they could use short-term rentals. You don't want to be as a seller making representations that turn out not to be true because now you could be on the hook. Legally. Okay. Okay. So as far as the disclosure requirements, this right here, I've shot a separate— I've shot a video on the Michigan Disclosure Act and what that disclosure statement looks like. You are required all— whether you're selling a home for sale by owner, seller, or using an agent, every seller is required to fill out a seller's disclosure statement. And share that with any prospective buyer, you need to do that. Okay. And then I've also shot a video on Fair Housing Act laws to kind of help you get familiar with that. Both of those are on my YouTube channel in that playlist that's specifically designed for for sale by owner sellers. Mistake number 7: neglecting buyer contingencies. So failing to address the contingencies can cause sales to fall through or leave you unprepared for the negotiation. So what are the contingencies? So some common contingencies are like, it's contingent upon me getting financing, it's contingent upon a home inspection, it's contingent upon an appraisal, which is really connected with the financing contingency. Um, and so, you know, you want to be prepared for, um, how, um, how to deal with these contingencies and be prepared for the fact that, um, you know, somebody wants 10 days to inspect, um, that, um, you know, this is one, one reason why I would suggest to some sellers to go ahead and get an inspection done by a third-party inspector and just provide that to a buyer prior to them making an offer. I actually did that, recommended that strategy to my brother when I helped sell his home. We got a home inspection. We had 2 interested buyers who were actually 3 interested buyers, ultimately ended up being 2 that bid against one another. And we gave them both the home inspection and said, now make an offer that's not contingent upon a home inspection. A lot of buyers will use that home inspection for a second bite at the negotiation apple. They'll use that to reopen negotiations. So you want to try to keep them— keep that timeline tight if you're going to allow them to do an inspection. If you're going to— you don't— you don't have to grant an inspection contingency, but a way to get ahead of that is just to do your own. Okay. Okay. Right here. Prepare for post-inspection renegotiation. I mentioned that they're going to use the results of the inspection a lot of times to try to get another chunk off. Okay. All right. Mistake number 8, being underprepared. For negotiations. If you're not prepared for negotiation, that can lead to accepting unfavorable terms, losing potential buyers, and most importantly, leaving a lot of money on the table. So how to avoid it? Know your bottom line. And by the way, I've shot a whole separate video on negotiations. It's in the For Sale by Owner Seller playlist. Know your bottom line, research negotiation tactics, and be prepared to walk away. There's nothing more powerful than being prepared to walk away. And it's a lot easier to walk away if you know your bottom line. Okay. And if they haven't met the bottom line, you know that you have to meet a certain amount, then it's easier to walk away. Okay. Confidence is key in negotiations. Okay. Mistake number 9: ignoring the costs of selling. Overlooking the expenses and tax implications can eat into your profits and leave you unprepared financially. So you're avoiding a commission by doing it, you know, a real estate commission to a real estate agent if you're selling for sale by owner seller. But there are lots of other expenses involved with selling your home. And so you need to know what those are, what to expect. I have shot a video on this as well where I go through a seller net sheet. It's one of the reasons I call my— has to do with basketball. And let's see if the camera will move back. It has to do with my affinity for basketball when I was a kid, but also the fact that when I'm working with sellers, I'm looking to help them net as much as possible. So anyway, the seller net sheet really walks through all the state transfer tax, you know, the tax prorations, all the different closing costs, the title insurance that you'll need to provide to the buyer, all those kinds of things. So you want to budget for those ahead of time and kind of build that in. That helps you in the previous step of knowing your bottom line, right? And so you factor those costs into your pricing strategy as well. And that's why maybe you want to consider the flat fee services as well. Okay. Mistake number 10, not seeking professional advice when needed. Attempting to handle everything yourself can lead to mistakes that a professional could have prevented. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to do things myself. Whether it's a home improvement project or whatever, and made mistakes that cost me several hundred dollars. The difference with, you know, with that is that those are not going to hit you nearly as hard as the mistakes that you can make with a— with, with what is most of the time the greatest value asset that most people have, and that is their home. You know, you only get one shot. To sell your home. So you want to make sure you do it right. And that could mean I'm not just talking about real estate professionals here. I'm talking about, you know, just know when to call a— whether it's know that to get a tax advisor, by the way, get— make sure you're talking to your tax advisor prior. Understand capital gains. You know, you may have friends that have been through it. You can call and get advice. I'm not talking about, you know, I'm not selling real estate agents at this point, but you want to be able to consult those tax experts, legal experts, and even, you know, a lot of people have friends that are real estate agents. You could, you can ask them for their advice as well. Okay. Final thoughts. Balancing the you know, do-it-yourself with professional support, just to find balance there. Certainly, um, it's something, um, you know, this is, by the way, buyer's agency things coming up here, so I'm still going to get to that. But, um, but yeah, you just— there's a, there's a balance I think that you need to think about, um, trying to strike between doing it yourself and, um, a professional and what that would what that would really cost and the benefit that you'd get from that. So think about the pros and cons. Okay. And here, by the way, you can consider hybrid approaches like that flat fee MLS. You can go to some discount brokers. You know, I just I don't— I'm not necessarily recommending that. I just worked with a buyer who bought a home from a seller who was represented by a discount broker, and we got one heck of a deal on that home. That discount broker, you know, all he did was listed on the MLS. That's it. And that, that home went, I think, for about 15% below what it would have otherwise gotten had it been marketed properly. But, but that is a solution for some people. You can also, you know, you don't have to use an agent, for example, to get those high-quality photos, drone. That's something you can find lots. There are lots of different agencies or businesses out there that do those, that agents use. I, some, My wife does some photography. I've got a Giraffe 360. It does the 3D virtual tours, but there are lots of times where I'll use— and I am actually my own drone operator, but depending on the listing, I also have a network of people that I'll bring in to do drone and professional photography. So that's where that speaks to that à la carte service, or if you need a particular thing, you know, that's where a handyman can come in or a professional painter to do painting versus trying to do it yourself. You have to be the judge of how good of a painter you are. Okay, so those are the 10 mistakes. Now let's get to buyer's agency. Okay. The bonus. Okay. Buyers— how buyer's agency— the changes in buyer's agency have absolutely changed the game for sellers. Every buyer represented by a buyer's agent must have a buyer agreement in place with that agent that determines how their agent will be paid. Okay. So this is a new rule that came out of this nationwide lawsuit. A lot of drama. And then, but then the rules for realtors now. So if you're contacted by a buyer's agent and they're representing a buyer, they have already sat down with that buyer and agreed with their buyer how much they will be compensated when they successfully help their client buy a house. And so they're going to be calling you and asking you, are you offering a buyer's agent commission? Right. The thing is, is that most, most for sale by owner sellers say, yeah, I'm offering 2.5% or I'm offering 3%. The thing is, is that you don't know what they've already agreed to. So that's the key here. So let me repeat now, buyer's agents have already agreed upon a compensation. From their buyer. Now, often they'll say, I'll do it for 2.5% and we're going to ask the seller to pay that 2.5%. Okay. But you don't know what's in there. They may have agreed to do it for 1%. And then if, if the buyer's agent calls you and says, are you offering a buyer's agent commission? You say, yeah, I'm offering 3%. They're like, oh great, they just made 2% more. Right. So you have to consider that it's, it's, it's better to answer that question when they're asked, are you offering a buyer's agent commission? You can just say, hey, it's going to come down to the totality of the offer. I'm willing to work with a buyer's agent on that, but it's going to really come down to what I'll net as a seller at the end of the day. Okay. That's, that's the best answer that I would say that you could give a buyer's agent. Leave the door open to working with them. Them because, you know, I mean, shoot, pay them if they're going to get you— if that buyer's agent's going to really get you a great deal, which I can't imagine them doing because they're under an obligation to get the very best deal for their client, which is going to come out of your pocket. Right. But I'm going to pause here because my dogs are going crazy. Okay, we'll have to edit that out. My dog's crazy there, but buyer's agents have already agreed upon a compensation, so you don't want to just get ahead of that. Okay. You think about this strategically and don't show all your cards. Okay. That's my recommendation. So key, a key consideration for you to find out is if the buyer is using an agent and then, then you also think about you'll be paying an agent, a professional negotiator to negotiate against you. Okay. So when you're offering, I mean, I can't tell you how many times When I'm calling on behalf of buyers and I ask, are you offering buyer's agent commission? Yeah, no problem. We'll offer 2.5%, you know, and I'm like, wow, okay, you know, and they're, you know, I sold a house in a neighborhood in Lake Ann and, and a seller I sold it. I represented the buyer. About 6 months later, another house went up for sale and they did for sale by owner seller. Another agent came in and got their client one heck of a deal. I mean, it was probably $30,000 less than what it would have been had they gone, taken it to the market. So, and they paid that buyer's agent to get that buyer a great deal and it came out of their pocket. So that's just something you're really going to want to pay attention to, is that if you're, if you're offering 2.5% to a buyer's agent, maybe consider whether that money would be better spent having somebody represent you and negotiate on your behalf and just don't offer a buyer's agent commission. Have that come out of the the— have the buyer compensate their own agent. So let's go through specifically how to answer this question. Okay. And that is they'll, they'll call agents. When they call, they're going to ask at some point, are you offering a buyer's agent commission? So you want to use those right words back. Okay. And you'll, you'll say So this is where maybe take notes. Okay. You'll say it really is going to come down to the totality of the offer and what I will— what my net proceeds will be. We're certainly willing to work with a buyer's agent in the sale of the home if ultimately the bottom, you know, the net proceeds and what I will get free and clear on the sale of my home is satisfactory to me. Something along those lines. Now, what can happen is, you know, some, some buyer's agents are still learning. You know, they're not— there's a lot of confusion among agents. I don't necessarily understand why. It's pretty easy for me to understand. You know, I worked as a school superintendent, though, and I worked with a lot of legal matters. And so I tend to be able to understand this stuff a little bit better, I think. But, but then, you know, what I've, what I've said on behalf of my sellers is I just said, you know, just if you want to just write that in the offer, write what you're seeking as far as a buyer's agent, just write it in the offer. And they don't know how to do that. Okay. And this is where the language right here that I would then recommend. Buyer— buyers have entered into an exclusive representation agreement with buyer's broker. Pursuant to that contract, the buyer is obligated to pay the broker whatever percentage— in this case, it was 2.5% of the purchase price. Seller shall pay the buyer's monetary obligations of the exclusive buyer representation agreement and pay the full 2.5% do as part of the specific transaction. So you may have to coach up, strangely enough, the agent on this because some buyers' agents, like I said, are not really as up to speed with this as they really should be. So this is language that you may have to give your— this is language you may have to give your the agent, that's the buyer's agent who is working with the buyer. Okay. All right. So I really encourage you, scan that QR code, follow us on YouTube. We do have quite a— building quite a following on YouTube. And by the way, the screenshot is saying that I have 311 subscribers. I'm, I'm 100 over that now. So I've just built that at the time, 100 subscribers since creating these slides. So, um, uh, um, also it's available to you for those folks that go through the webinar. Um, you can book a one-on-one consultation with me. Sometimes we're going to do, we, you know, there will be a Q&A at the end of the live webinar if you're watching this live. I will. Hi, Cha, you're back. If you're watching this live, we'll do a live Q&A. I probably won't include that on the recording. But if you want to book a free one-on-one consultation with me, I'll have that in the link in the description as well. That really allows more, more nuance to be explored with each client, you know, because I can learn more about your specific situation and provide you with a little bit more value specific to your situation. So, all right, do you have any questions for me? All right, Cha, that's it. Okay, I just turned off my— I'll stop recording first. Okay.
