Should you hire a Realtor when you buy a home?

<<>> Realtors understand how to properly fill in the purchase and sales agreement and make sure all of the paperwork gets to the correct place. This is a big relieve to me, because I do not want to hire a lawyer or run around and setting up escrow account because I don’t know how and I don’t want to learn how. If this is the case with you, you may want to make the call.

A Realtor will list your home in the local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) which will bring buyers to look at your home. The main reason that I hired an agent is because my home will get listed in the local MLS (multiple listing Service). This is basically a computer database of the homes for sale. This is normally how the realtor finds a home for their buyer. Once my home gets listed, there are 10’s if not 100’s of realtors that may have buyers that are looking for a property like mine. All of these realtors are constantly looking through the MLS and getting emails of new homes that have been listed within the MLS system. This means that there is a high probability of selling my property.

It’s kind of like deciding where you want your lemonade stand. Do you want your lemonade stand on a county dirt road that dead ends or do you want your lemonade stand next to Wal-mart? The more qualified traffic, the more money you’ll make or in this case, the faster you’ll sell your home.

Your realtor will work with qualified buyers and strangers and they’ll work when you’re working. This will assure that I’m not inviting strangers into my home and asking my wife to show the home to strangers when these people may jeopardize her safety and may not even be qualified to buy the home. It may not bother you, but this bothers many people and especially women. The women appraisers in our office worried about there safety much more than I even thought about.

Three main disadvantage of hiring a Realtor

High commission checks

I’ve spoke to many disappointed home owners that claim that they will never hire a realtor to sell their home again. Simply put, the real estate commissions are paid for by the buyer. It shows on your real estate contract that the seller is paying for the commissions, but the loan is paying for these commissions. Regardless of who is paying these commission checks, the seller does not see the value of the paid commissions.

Not aggressive when marketing the home

The number one complaint that I hear is that the realtor did not market their home properly. Ironically, this is one of the main reasons why the owner wants to hire the realtor. As it turns out, the realtor didn’t make sure that there is a sign out front or that the listing paper box was not kept full. They did not set up open houses. They do not use any other methods besides the bare minimum to sell the home. They ask the buyer to basically do their job for them.

Realtors do not provide services and advise that they were hired for.

The realtor did not explain offers or back up offers or provide suggestions on how to sell their home. In fact my realtor didn’t even help me fill out the contracts when I was selling my home and this is one of the main reasons that I needed him.

Many home owners understand that they will be paying the full commission and they don’t understand why the commissions are so high with such little time spent earning that commission. The realtor will call the tell you to show your own home. They will have the owner schedule a time for the appraiser, schedule a time for the home inspector, have the owners’ fill out their own paperwork and still want their full commission check. What’s the point? If you’ve experiences service like this, I completely understand. I’ve been there.