Forget About Hiring a Realtor When Selling Your Home

If your situation is such that you're thinking about how to sell a home without a realtor and it's a little overwhelming, let me share some tips from my many years of buying and selling homes as an investor. A good realtor has professional skills that far exceed the average homeowner's skill set. And the truth is, most of the skills that identify a good realtor and set him or her apart from the pack are skills involving negotiating and closing a sale transaction. Conducting negotiations and overseeing buyer financing and title company activities are skills learned in the trenches, so to speak, and since most homeowners only purchase a home every few years they don't have enough experience to know how to survive the battle. So, if you choose to sell your home without a realtor you must realize that you will not personally have all the skills you will probably need, even if you manage to find your buyer on your own.

One very good solution to the dilemma I'm describing wasn't available in the past, but these days you will discover that most realtors are willing to see that a sale involves many different phases or parts, and they may very well be willing to sign an agreement with you that specifies you will be doing your own marketing and they will step in when it's time to negotiate with the buyer and to close the sale. I'm not saying that realtors are eager to participate in these "hybrid" arrangements that give the seller more flexibility, but the truth is that everyone involved in the real estate business has had to become much more flexible about business arrangements in the present housing market.

You can sell your home without a realtor by posting ads online at craigslist.com and ebayclassifieds.com as well as local posting boards. Some good places to find those boards with real estate for sale categories are local TV and radio stations, as well as newspapers and shoppers. For the most part, online classified ads are free or very low cost. You'll get emails and calls from interested buyers, and you can ask them some questions of your own in order to sift through the buyers who are serious and who are qualified for financing. This part can seem a little bit intimidating, but it's important. You want to save time and make sure you're only dealing with real buyers for your own home. When you show your home and someone is interested in making an offer, that's when you give your realtor a call to move forward with the paperwork, the negotiation and the closing details.

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