Real Estate Agent vs For Sale By Homeowners
Whether you are selling your home or purchasing a home you might have thought that searching in the For Sale By Owners would save time and money. That does not seem to be the case.
In the 2018 Profile of Home Buyers and Seller, the National Association of Realtors®’s announced that the number of home sales by homeowners (FSBO) fell to a record low of seven percent of all home sales in 2018. That FSBO number is down from eight percent last year.
More and more people looking to buy or sell a home are looking to work with professionals in the real estate industry; realtors, lawyers, mortgage brokers.
Selling with Real Estate Agents
The number of homeowners who try to sell their properties themselves (FSBOs) without a real estate agent, has been decreasing each year. Homeowners selling homes with agents attributed this to their valuing of the real estate agent’s reputation, trustworthiness, and honesty! Sellers using agents and the Multiple Listings Services, MLS, also identified the following key benefits:
- Agent marketing the home to potential buyers
- An agent prices the home competitively
- Agents are able to sell the home within a specific time frame
- Selling agents quickly find buyers for the home
- and a real estate professional will identify what needs to be addressed or fixed to improve the home sales process
Buying with Real Estate Agents
More home buyers are using agents to save time. The 2018 Profile of Home Buyers and Seller reported that buyers who worked with real estate agents spent much less time finding a home than those doing it themselves. Buyers you searched on the Internet typically spent 10 weeks and visited an average of 10 homes whereas a buyer who used an agent only spent 4 weeks and on average visited 4 homes.