There are many good reasons why homesellers hire a Realtor, including the handful of sellers who first try the ‘for sale by owner’ or ‘FSBO’ route. Here are ten of the most common reasons why homesellers hire a Realtor to get the job done right. 

1. Selling Your Home ‘By Owner’ Means Taking on a Second Job.

2. Legalese, Sometimes with Different Rules for Each County and/or Municipality.

3. More Accurate Pricing When Buying & Selling.

Armed with access to multiple listing, sales and tax data, Realtors provide significant pricing experience and real life insights, whether you want to know what the property you’re selling is worth, or once you sell, how much to offer on the home you’re buying.

Realtors must follow many rules and according to consumer satisfaction surveys, real estate agents do an overall good job. Realtors are trained to abide by applicable state and national real estate laws, follow accepted business practices and the Realtor Code of Ethics, which is considered a higher standard of duty. Yet as in other professions, sometimes agents fall short. Wrong is wrong, yet it’s also important to separate willful wrongdoing from expectations which may be misinterpreted, or where motives are misunderstood.  Today we’ll address some common consumer complaints and Realtor behaviors. 

Listen to the audio podcast version of this article here or click the below ‘play’ button.

Failure or Flying Colors? 

One reason for a ‘disappearing agent’ may also be because your lender informed the agent that you are not qualified to purchase a home. Ceasing contact simply because you are not a present customer may not be nice, but it isn’t illegal. Being human, sometimes real estate agents are unartful. But as when dealing with any professional, it’s instructive to distinguish between the unartful and activity which is unethical, or criminal.

While most Realtors are diligent, honest and hardworking, there is a broad range of Realtor behavior, ranging from ‘normal’ and reasonable, to impolite, to unethical, or even illegal. So let’s analyze some comments about Realtors. Sometimes the agent is ‘out of line,’ yet sometimes it helps to better understand differing p

Simultaneous/Consecutive Home Transactions

We’ll also examine options to help decide if simultaneous or consecutive real estate transactions may be best for you.

Timing

First Steps

Your challenges, benefits and results will largely depend upon which of these three decisions you settle upon. Here are three quick takeaways for these three usual options.

Option #1.  Selling your existing house first, then buying the next house

While there is a case to be made for homeselling in each of the four seasons, Winter is one of the most powerful times sellers can place their home on the market and for ten very good reasons. 

Hear the audio podcast version of this helpful real estate presentation by clicking here or ‘play’ below.

Regardless of the kind of market you find yourself in when buying your next home, there are key tactics buyers can use to make the process both more successful and considerably less stressful. What are these key homebuying tactics and how can they help you successfully navigate to your next purchase? Find out in this edition of the Oregon Real Estate Podcast.

How Homesellers Think

Given the significant tasks involved with selling a property, some homebuyers may understandably wonder: Aren’t all sellers motivated?  Sometimes the answer is both ‘yes’ AND  ‘no.’  Consider a divorce situation, where one spouse desperately needs money and the other does not wish to move at all. Or consider an estate, where there are multiple family members, each with varying degrees of interest in selling; One family member may greatly need proceeds from a home sale, while the others are independently wealthy and perfectly willing to wait to sell, perhaps for tax purposes.

This means it’s helpful to first realize that as when fishing, you’ll never really know what you’ll be dealing with until you have them ‘on the line.’ Looks can be deceiving and no matter how a homeseller may outwardly behave, their motivation for selling is sometimes hidden and an important factor to determine as early as possible.  The situation can be further complicated if sellers have a large mortgage on their property being sold. In such a case, they’re not really negotiating with ‘extra’ money. They simply have little price flexibility in order to pay off their home