Advantages and Disadvantages of using Real Estate Agents when Selling Your House.

The biggest advantage of using a real estate agent is that they handle the marketing and sales process for you, and you only have to pay them if they find you a buyer. They will advertise your home in the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) which is the service that other realtors review when their clients are looking to buy a house. Your home has immediate exposure to all the buyers' agents. A good agent will also look for other ways to market your house. They will do open houses, place ads in "homes for sale" magazines, and invite agents from other offices to preview your home. And since they provide a lockbox on your door, you do not have to be home for agents to be able to show your house. When an offer comes in, they will help you with the negotiations, and they will follow up on all the steps required to get you to the closing table.

The disadvantage of using an agent is that you pay a commission on the sale of the house. As I said earlier, this can amount to 5% - 7% of the sales price of the house. So on a $100,000 sales price, you would pay them between $5,000 - $7,000 for their services. Since they are not paid unless they sell the house, many agents will not spend any additional money to market your house. They are afraid that they may not sell your house, and so they will never get back the money they spent. My question for agents with that attitude is: "If you aren't sure you can sell my house, why would I want to list with you?" Which leads to another disadvantage: since the agent works off of commission, if your house is not "easy" to sell, they will often just list it in MLS, but do little else to promote it in the marketplace. You should also be aware that some agents use a concept of listing as many houses as possible with the idea that some will sell, and some will not. They'll make their money off whichever ones sell. That's fine for them. But if your home is not one of the houses that happens to sell, it could sit on the market for a long time with no one working to locate a buyer.

Finally, real estate agents lock you into a listing contract for a specified period of time which prevents you from selling the house yourself without paying them a commission. This works fine when they quickly bring a buyer, but if the process is delayed, it can be very frustrating not to be able to take matters into your own hands and locate a buyer yourself.