When selling your Southern California home, it’s natural to want to maximize your profit. The math is simple: the price you get minus expenses is how much you end up making. Thus, getting good value for your home is the first step, while cutting down on your expenses is the logical next step.
When you put it like this, it can seem like the best option is to sell your Southern California home on your own, so you don’t have to spend money on an agency.
However, this is often not the case in practice. A good agency, like SleeveUp Homes, will make the sale easier and will likely end up making you more money than if you did it on your own. Let’s go over the advantages and disadvantages of doing it yourself and hiring an agent to help you out.
Advantages of Selling Your Home on Your Own
If you don’t hire an agency, you control the selling process – the main and only advantage of doing everything by yourself is that there is no middle man, so all of the money you get ends up in your pocket.
However, unless you have some experience with selling homes (or have the help of someone who does), the entire process can be very stressful and take more time than necessary.
We’re not saying it’s impossible, as a lot of people sell their homes this way, but when you have to do everything yourself and real-estate is not your area of expertise, it’s easy to make mistakes and make the process unnecessarily difficult. If you do decide to go this route, here are the basic things you need to take care of.
The Basics of Selling Your Southern California Personally
There are 3 aspects you need to consider if you wish to sell your Southern California home on your own:
- Advertising
- Negotiating the price
- Taking care of the legal aspects of the sale
For the first two, try to take emotions out of it and put yourself in the buyer’s shoes.
Advertising
The aim of advertising is to attract as many serious buyers as you can. There are multiple ways you can do it – the traditional methods are putting up “for sale” signs, taking out ads in the local paper, and regularly organizing open houses.
In your ads and during an open house, try to imagine what kind of person would want to buy your home and emphasize what you believe would attract them.
For instance, if you’re selling a 3 bedroom family home, stress the safety and friendliness of the neighborhood, emphasize if there any good schools in the area and community events for the family, etc. If your target market is single people, talk about the bars and restaurants in the neighborhood and similar events.
Of course, always show off the home itself in the best possible light.
In addition to traditional advertising, don’t forget to utilize digital marketing. Take some good photos of your home (never underestimate the power of a good photo) and advertise on your social media. You can even organize an online open house via Zoom, Facebook Live, Instagram, etc. Basic marketing over the internet is not hard to do and it won’t cost you a penny.
Negotiating the Price
When you are selling the home on your own, it’s up to you to negotiate the price. Naturally, the starting price must be reasonable for any buyers to be interested. Always know what’s the lowest you are willing to go and don’t let the buyer talk you down below that.
A negotiation is an art form, so expect serious buyers to aggressively try to lower the asking price.
The Legal Aspects
Usually, this would be taken care of by your agent, but in this case, it’s up to you. It’s best if you consult a lawyer, but here are the basic things you need to take care of:
- Signing a contract
- Disclosing anything relevant to the property
- Taking care of any buyer and seller fees
Take note that disclosing anything that could affect the buyer’s desire to buy your home is not optional in California but a legal requirement; if you don’t do it properly, you could face steep penalties.
Hiring an Agency To Sell Your Southern California Home Effortlessly
The main drawback of hiring an agency is that your agents will take a percentage of the earnings, directly decreasing the potential money you could get. However, they more than makeup for it with their skills and expertise.
After all, this is their job and a reputable agency will likely get a better deal than you could and save you the stress of doing it on your own.
Agents Are Professionals
You probably have emotional attachments to your home and mixing business and emotions is never a good plan. Emotions can lead you to make simple mistakes, while an agent will act as a neutral party.
Don’t underestimate the power negative critiques or reviews can have on your mental state if delivered to you directly. With an agent, everything gets filtered through them and it becomes much easier to accept constructive criticisms that help bring up your home’s price.
Selling Takes Time
Selling a property is a full-time job, so ask yourself whether you have time to set up meetings and meet potential buyers when an opportunity shows itself? After a long workday, do you have the energy to do even more work?
More than likely you don’t, but that’s exactly why you hire an agent. Additionally, agents can weed out uncommitted buyers, so you won’t end up getting your hopes up and getting shot down many times until the sale happens.
Agencies Have Access To a Larger Customer Base
You can do as much marketing as you have the time, but it will never be up to par with what an agency has. Because it’s also in their best interest to sell your home quickly, they will take all of the standard steps necessary for good marketing, and they have direct access to buyers through their professional connections.
Put simply, an agency will always outpace an individual when it comes to attracting potential buyers.
They Take Care of Negotiating
As we have stated, negotiating is an art form and good agents have perfected it. They know the ins and out of how to get you the best possible price within the time-frame you give them.
If neither you nor the buyer has an agent, then you may get a good deal. However, it’s more than likely that they’ll have a professional negotiator on their side, so you could end up making bad deals if you face them alone.
You Don’t Open Yourself Up To Legal Risks
Selling a home entails a lot of legal baggage. It’s not as simple as agreeing on a price and signing a contract. When you have no experience in the legal aspects of selling property, everything becomes a legal liability.
On the other hand, when you hire an agent you get an expert who will take care of it for you and give advice where necessary.
What’s Better – Doing It On Your Own or Getting Professional Help?
Both selling a home on your own or doing it through an agency has certain pros and cons. However, unless you have real estate experience, your best bet is to hire an agent to do it for you.
With a good agent, you can sell your Southern California home effortlessly and end up making more money than you would otherwise, even after the agent’s fees are deducted.
