What You Need To Know About Fsbos And Buyer Brokers
Saturday, February 18th, 2012
When you sell your home as a for sale by owner or FSBO, you can get annoyed when real estate brokers call you. That’s a reasonable response when you’re doing all the work to market your property to save thousands of dollars in broker commissions. But you might want to listen when a buyer broker does call.
Why Listen
Doing this will help us understand what exactly are the functions of listing brokers and buyer brokers. Real estate brokers can and do serve both functions, though some specialize.
There are brokers who are interested in listing your home when they call you. What they want to do is market your home for you. For a commission of 6 percent of the sales price, most brokers would list their homes and the amount of commission charged for this service will vary. When the home sells, then the listing broker pays the selling broker half or 3 percent if another brokerage firm has brought the buyer to the deal.
You are probably getting folks to come and look at your house, or condo, or whatever, and you don’t need a listing agent when you are successfully operating as an FSBO. But there may be times when you’ve been doing this for a while and none of the lookers has been converted to a buyer? What happens then?
If ever a broker calls you and says that he or she is working with buyers and that they would like to be able to show your home, then considering it would be a good idea. They probably only expect about half the typical listing commission. Still, that will allow you to save serious money. Perhaps you can even negotiate down a bit from half. This is true especially if your home is appropriately priced above the average price for a home in your area.
A bonus in that situation would be you get to have someone who is knowledgeable about the process with an interest in getting the deal to settlement. True, they don’t represent you. They represent the buyer, but the buyer wants your home and the broker wants a payday. In short, the buyer broker has incentive to put an oar in when problems arise.
Be sure you don’t misunderstand. Not for one second are we suggesting that you pay more than is necessary to sell your home. The first thing you should do is take names and phone numbers of “buyer brokers” who call you. If ever you find that you need to, then you should call back the ones who impressed you.
There is a middle ground between going it alone and listing with a broker. If you find that you need to, then it is likely that this middle ground can be worth exploring through buyer brokers.
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