Strategy Central

[euterpe1]

Capt.

My wife and I just bought a house. You do and don't need a realtor. We went online to realtor.com, coldwellbanker.com, century21.com and bairdandwarner.com. We were probably able to find 80%+ of the listed homes on those sites. We would cruise by the home after work and did our homework on the school systems with information that is easily found on the web. We attended open houses on the homes we were interested in on the weekends. In our search we came across a flat fee realtor that will take there $4K flat fee and give the rest of the commission back to you 2 weeks after the close. That will put a tidy sum back in our pocket in a few weeks.

On the selling side it's not that easy. The marketing of the property is what is the key to success. Some of the buy owner sites are just OK. You need the exposure to get the potential buyer to view the place. We just sold my wife's condo. The buyer was at the building to see the other place that was for sale in the building. Total happenstance, but without the realtor we would never have come across that buyer on our own.

As to the commission part, I am OK with the 5%, but when you start getting into the 500K+ range, paying 25K to sell your house seems ridiculous to me.