Living In Plainfield

Every time I drive through my neighborhood, and all throughout Plainfield IL, Naperville, and Joliet, I’m amazed at the number of homes for sale or vacant. Even more surprising is the percentage of people who are choosing a company that advertises themselves as a discount or flat fee real estate service to market and sell their homes.

AND, there is a BIG difference between what you can expect from a licensed Realtor®, and trying selling your house by owner.

When hiring a flat fee MLS service, there is probably a list of things the agency expects YOU to do! You may be asked to do Open Houses and pay for advertising. Even though you paid a flat fee to the listing agent, you will still have to pay a cooperating commission to the agent who actually sells the house.

Did you know that ALL real estate commissions are negotiable? It doesn’t matter what company you hire.  There is no industry standard for real estate commissions.  By law all real estate commissions can be negotiated, otherwise it’s known as price fixing.

What is the real savings with a discount brokerage?

All in all, the amount you will truly end up saving on the average $200K house is close to $3,000 when compared to the “full service” options. But that is only true IF you don’t end up having to lower your sales price during the negotiation process.

Most buyers expect some kind of concession in this type of market. Without proper representation, you could end up giving away more than you bargained for. Can you afford to do that?

Real estate commissions, as part of state law, are variable. When you are interviewing agents, make sure to ask what kind of service they will provide for their varying degrees of compensation.

Questions To Ask

• Will they provide additional interior photos of your home?
• Will your home have a presence on the Internet?
• Will they work with buyers too?
  
• Will they hold an open house to attract buyers?
• Will they advise you of an appropriate selling price as part of their services?
• Will your agent be available to you to answer questions or to negotiate contracts?

There is no need to sacrifice Service!

I say all of this not only as an agent, but as a consumer with first hand experience on the subject.

My husband and I tried to save some money the first time we tried to sell a home, first by owner, and a few weeks later by listing with a no commission real estate company. It was a disaster right from the start. The agent asked for money up front. He asked for almost $3,000 to pay for marketing that did NOT include MLS exposure. That money was to pay for the in-house advertising that the broker would only include on their company website. And that was only if someone from their office sold it!

We said no to that option! We knew consumers were looking at Realtor.com to find homes and narrow their search. I didn’t want to put all of my hope on the chance that a buyer was just going to stumble across their website and make an offer on our house. We would have been out that $3000 whether we sold our house or not.

With their MLS option, we were still going to have to pay the selling agent 2.5%, in addition to the 2.5% for the agent that got our listing at their office. That adds up to 5% when I do the math, and was then in the same range of all of the other full service companies that promised more in their representation.

Of course we realized all of this much too late.

We were young, and very naive about how many factors really come into play when selling a house, so we eventually did agree to using them to list our house on the MLS during a pretty intense sale pitch. We signed a 12 month contract, and listed our house about $20K over market value, because we had no idea what our house was really worth. I guess a market analysis wasn’t part of the “services” included in our listing agreement…

Our house was on the market for several months before we decided to throw in the towel, and wait for our listing to expire. I was willing to pay the 5% commission, but I wasn’t willing to do the agents work for them! We did re-list with a Realtor® from a local office in downtown Plainfield later that year, and we sold our home in 8 weeks!

Now that I’m a licensed real estate agent, I reference that experience in my mind, and go above and beyond what my clients expect from me. I’d rather surprise them by giving them what they didn’t expect, than disappoint them by not doing all that I said I would.

I’m not saying that it isn’t possible to have a positive experience by using a discount service, since I’m sure I’d be able to locate people that have, just do your homework so you know what to expect from your agent.

Choosing the right agent to represent you in this market is the key to a successful real estate transaction. Take it from me, it’s so much better than learning things the “hard way”!

Julie Ferenzi | Realtor®
Plainfield IL Homes
630-673-6233

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