Almost two months ago we bought a new house at auction. Two days later we had our house listed “by owner”. I took great photos, posted it on EVERY site imaginable, took out a newspaper ad, and put brochures all over town.
Within a week we were under contract and thought we were well on our way to having our house sold. Â We made a big “By Owner” mistake and didn’t write an inspection deadline into our agreement. This meant that the buyers took a while to get the inspections done and then took as long as they wanted to sit on the inspection results. After all the waiting we couldn’t come to an agreement on a price and our deal was done. This meant 6 weeks later we were back to square 1.
So… we started the whole process over. I even stopped at every real estate office in town offering a 2.5% buyers agent commission. After showing the house about 15 times and not getting an offer we realized something we were doing just wasn’t working.
Yesterday we called our realtor and today the house is available on the MLS, by realtor. Yes… this means we are giving up 5% of our profits that we thought we’d be able to hang on to. Ultimately though it wasn’t 5% in our pockets if we never found a buyer! Our realtor also helped us realized that we were probably priced about $5,000 too high. Now our listing will have much more visibility and I pray that the right buyers see it!
The other thing I’m pretty excited about is while we are on vacation our agent can set up showings and show it away, all while I enjoy our time away. I’m also excited about just cleaning and disappearing for showings, rather than having to take calls, field questions, advertise, clean, and then find something to keep the boys occupied while I show the house.
We’re hoping to close on our new house within the next 10 days, here’s to having our current house under contract before closing!
