Why You Should Not Sell Your House Online

Despite the awful advice from Marshall Loeb, of Marketwatch, in a recent article posted to the RealEstateJournal.com site, How to Save by SellingYour House Online, most people selling their homes should enlist the help of someone experienced in the ability of valuing the property, listing it, staging it, marketing it, negotiating the contract and negotiating concessions. Yes, that usually will mean a top quality agent. Hey, that's an oxymoron. I guarantee emotions will screw up more deals than will numbers.

Mr Loeb suggests three seemingly easy steps:

1. Find out what your home is worth.
2. Market your property.
3. Transfer the title.

First of all determining your home's value is very difficult for a novice because how do you know that your numbers are accurate and then how do you know how to use those numbers to determine a "pricing strategy"? How do you know the condition and circumstances of each of your price comparables? Even appraisers don't fully know them all. Usually, an experienced realtor, who works and knows the area/neighborhood would have the most knowledge on selected comparables.

Second, marketing your property means listing it on your local MLS. If you don't "cooperate" with buyer's agents to the tune of 3%, then that army of (the most important) potential marketers of your property go away. Rememeber, they have pre-qualified buyers in their control who will buy only that which they have seen.

Third, you don't do anything with title or with the property profile. I mean, are you even qualified to read a preliminary report? That's why you hire a third party title & escrow company to handle the monies and transfer title. Never do this outside of escrow.

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