Should You Hire A Real Estate Agent?

Should you use a real estate agent to manage the selling of your home?  Up until fairly recently, this was the "modus operandi" for selling any house.  But more folks are opting to sell a home on their own nowadays.
 

Which works best?  This really comes down to how much effort you're willing to put into learning how to sell your home yourself. 

We've put together a quick list of advantages for each method below...  

The Agent

If you use a real estate agent to sell your home, you will obviously end up paying him or her a fee for doing so.  This fee varies from one realtor to the next and can be a good chunk of your home’s value.  But, for that price you get several things:

• You will be able to have your home advertised through real estate agent listings, the "MLS" or Mulitple Listing Service. 
   
• Also, many realtors will cover all advertising expenses.  Since they don't get paid until your home sells, they have the motivation to do all that they can to sell it.
   
• They will handle the haggling that inevitably arises with each offer a buyer makes.
  
  
• Agents help you with all of the legal aspects.  In fact, they will do the paperwork for you to insure that everything is taken care of.  This paperwork shuffle is enough to make most folks opt for using an agent.
  
  
• Your home will likely sell faster, and selling a home fast is usually high on the list of priorities when you decide to sell.  This is because there is likely a deadline of some sort that needs to be met, like having to be at a job far away, school starting for kids, etc.

On Your Own

Nevertheless, there are distinct advantages to selling a home yourself:

• You will likely save a good chunk of money from your efforts--even after paying for advertising and hiring a Title Company or lawyer to handle the paperwork.
  
  
• You are able to do whatever advertising you want to--to include paying for internet advertising.
  
  
• You can price your home to your liking.  Of course, you'll need to do a little research to make sure your asking price is reasonable.
  
  
• You have complete control over who you sell your home to; you won't be pressured by a realtor to sell to the first offer.
  
  
• You control how much time you're willing to take to sell it.

It depends on how important the advantages of using a realtor vs the advantages of selling it yourself are to you.  But keep in mind that if you find a reasonable real estate agent, you will likely sell your home faster.

Next, we go into a little more detail of the advantages and disadvantages of selling your home yourself.