If selling your house through a REALTOR you will probably have been told never to get into conversation with buyers or Agents viewing your home, and refer ALL questions to your Realtor.  

If you are typical you will ignore this advice the 1st time someone asks a simple question such as “where are you moving to”. Where’s the harm in telling this friendly guy you just got notice that your 5 year adjustable mortgage is going up to 6.75%,  and since you got laid off 9 months ago and your unemployment benefits are coming to an end  you won’t be able to pay that for much longer. In other words you’re pretty desperate and it’s only going to get worse.

Is it likely that this friendly fellow is going to feel sorry for you and offer you his top price? Or is it more likely he smells blood in the water and is going to give you a low ball take it or leave it bid? 

And just what benefit did you get from the conversation that made it worth ignoring the good advice you Realtor had given you?

Neither a potential buyer or buyers agent can tell you anything your advantage, but by talking to them you can give a considerable amount of useful information away.

AND:

Allways remember that Social Media web sites are not designed to keep your conversations and opinions private. Quite the opposite.

1. Buyer Only Brokers.

2. Buyer Rebate (Kick Back) Brokers.

3. Virtual Office Brokers. No physical location.

4. Reduced Commision Brokers.

5. Fixed Price Brokers.

6. Transaction Facilitation Brokers.

Etc, etc.etc ad infinitum.

All of these and many more are proof that we have a lot of competition in our business, and that the Consumer (Buyer or Seller) has lots of choices.

I won’t try to explain the pro’s and con’s of any of these options, but will strongly suggest that whichever of them you choose you  strongly consider working with a REALTOR.

My reason for this specific advice is as follows:

1. There are more than Half a Million Licensed Real Estate Agents in California. This is the minimum required qualification for the job.

2. Only 165,000 of them are REALTORS who have voluntarily agreed to subscribe to a strict Code of Ethics, and are paying members of their Local, State, and National Associations of Realtors.

Amongst many other services Realtors provide to the public is the web site Realtor.com. the most popular of all on-line Real Estate sites. Check out http://www.realtor.com/.

Unfortunately many of our clients get most of their information from the talking heads and empty suits of the mass media whose purpose is to sell advertising, with LITTLE or NO REGARD to TRUTH or CONTEXT.

They are therefore led to believe that any house can be bought for at least 20% less than a year ago, anywhere it happens to be located.

Here are a couple of facts that might be thrown into the running conversations about “How’s the market”

Over the past 10 years the average home price has INCREASED by 6.2% Nationwide.

Over the past 20 years the average home price INCREASE has been 4.7% Nationwide.

Source www.ofheo.gov

These are way below the numbers for Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) where I live and work, and they are way above the numbers for Dallas Texas.

The Morale is “East San Jose is NOT Palo Alto. Sacramento County is NOT Santa Clara County, Southern California is NOT North California”. Florida statistics are not relevant to any other State.

ALL REAL ESTATE IS LOCAL