Sell Your House Quickly

Realtors, especially those blowhard “power closers” and “mega-producers”, so full of themselves as they generally are, claim they’re worth their 6% because homes sold by a real estate clerk sell for more than FSBO homes, because of their smarts, their good looks, their hustle, their “local knowledge”, whatever they can spew to convince you of their worth.

And I don’t disagree with the fact that homes sell for more using a real estate clerk – I’d bet on it that homes sold by real estate clerks sell for more (before you subtract their 6%).

Why?

It’s called “restraint of trade”. It’s called the MLS monopoly.

If you try to sell your home in today’s anti-capitalistic NAR/MLS world, buyers can’t find sellers easily unless the home is on the local central database, the MLS.

But what happens when a new, improved, more efficient, nationwide, agnostic “MLS” finally comes to fruition (hello google! cleanup on aisle 3!)?

You got it – real estate clerks go away, FSBO homes sell for just as much if not more than realtor sold homes, and the days of 6% go away, big time.

Yes, craigslist, ebay, gumtree, fsbo.com, zillow and the likes are helping defeat the evil NAR/MLS. But we need a dominant and free central database. Google is it. And watch them buy zillow soon.

Until then, if you’re going to sell your home, find a way to get it onto the MLS for the lowest possible cost, and be done with it. And tell real estate clerks that try to convince you otherwise that their days are numbered, they’re being disintermediated, and they can stick their 6% where the sun don’t shine.

Technorati Tags: FSBO

Since proposing an open source replacement for the MLS, many people have told me that that would not be sufficient to make the real estate market fair. There are many houses for sale, perhaps even the majority, that are simply not listed in the MLS even now, and here are some of the reasons:

• “Exclusive” listings that are not on the MLS seem like something special just because they are not listed. This may lead to a higher price.
• FSBO’s (For Sale By Owner) are not listed in the MLS.
• People wanting to flip houses will pay realtors cash for addresses of fixer-upper houses that are not on the MLS. These fixer-uppers are often already bought by realtors just to flip to flippers.
• New construction is often not in the MLS, because the builder is trying to sell it directly.
• VA, HUD, other government programs with houses in default often do not use the MLS.
• Banks with houses in default often do not list in the MLS, preferring to sell to “professional investors” to dump the houses quickly.

Any other reasons? How can sellers be persuaded to use a free and open system of listings?

Technorati Tags: FSBO