I just read another article by a real estate agent trying to scare the daylights out of homeowners like you, that are selling for sale by owner, that has me fuming! This article was “57 Reason Why You Can’t Sell Your Own House”. The reasons listed ranged from silly to totally manufactured. Notice the how it uses “real estate speak” to make the questions harder to understand than necessary, too.
I don’t want to bore you with debunking all 57 (!) so I’ll just pick three so you can get the idea:
Reason #1 - What is the condition of the current title? You may be thinking, “Gosh, I have no idea!” You may not even fully understand what a title is. Not to worry! That is something neither homeowner or real estate agent would find out anyway. Your title company or attorney that will be doing the closing will always do a “title search” and let you know if there are any issues on your title. Most likely, there won’t be.
Reason #8 – Did you review your existing financing to determine whether is can be assumed? Again, you may be thinking, “I have no idea! How can I find out? Why do I need to know?” Assumable loans stopped being issued in 1989. If you obtained the mortgage on your house after 1989, the answer is “no”, it won’t be assumable. If you obtained your mortgage before 1989, it’s possible. Contact your lender and ask – it probably won’t be, but there is a chance. An assumable loans means that your buyer can “take over” your loan and not have to get their own loan, which can be a great selling point.
Reason #39 – How will you prequalify a potential buyer? Good news. You don’t have to! Only a lender prequalifies buyers, not you and not a real estate agent. Prequalified doesn’t mean anything, anyway. You only want to work with preapproved buyers. So I guess this was a trick question!
I resent real estate agent resorting to scare tactics like this to try to make homeowners selling FSBO feel stupid and powerless. They must be pretty desperate if they to resort to having to scare homeowners into listing with them.
At the risk of sounding like I’m trying to scare you, if you are selling for sale by owner and didn’t know the answers to those questions, you should consider investing in The Truth About FSBO – Complete Selling System. My mission is empower FSBO sellers like you so that you can proceed in selling your own house with confidence. Isn’t it always better to make decisions from a place of empowerment and knowledge, than to make knee-jerk reactions from fear? And that, I believe, is the difference bewteen what that agent was trying to do to you and what I’m trying to do for you.
P.S. Let me know if when you come across this sort of thing. If you do, I would LOVE for you to send it to me so we can stop this emotional assault on people selling “for sale by owner”.
