5 Reasons Not to Sell Your Own Home

With websites such as FSBO.com and Bloomkey.com promising to help home sellers "do it themselves," many sellers are attempting to put their own homes up for sale-without the help of a real estate professional-only to be disappointed with the results. The National Association of Realtors reports that sellers who sell their homes themselves are more likely to take longer to sell their home and for a lower price than they would have had they used a real estate professional.

A lot of sellers who put their homes on the market as "FSBO" or "For Sale By Owner" do so thinking that selling their home will be an easy task, and that they can make more money on the sale of their home by not having to pay a sales commission to a real estate professional. However, if the seller is taking longer to sell his home and for a lower price, in essence, he is losing money anyway.

While many people have their own personal reasons for not hiring a real estate agent, here are five reasons the average seller should not sell his own home.

1. The seller has no knowledge of the real estate market. It is important to know at what price the seller should expect to get for his home, what the average days on market are for the area, and what concessions sellers are offering to attract buyers.

2. The seller has no knowledge of real estate laws. Both the buyer and seller of real estate have certain rights under a state's real estate laws. By not being informed, a home seller may unknowingly be breaking the law while conducting his real estate transaction. On the other hand, a buyer that is represented by a real estate agent may have an advantage over the seller who is unrepresented.

3. The seller is not able to understand real estate contracts. Many sellers may be unaware of their obligations under an executed real estate contract or what they should expect from buyers under the executed contract. A typical example of where there can be confusion in real estate contracts occurs when deciding whether a buyer is or is not entitled to a refund of his earnest money deposit when a contract is terminated.

4. The seller is not able to effectively negotiate a sales price. This goes back to the seller having knowledge of the real estate market. Without that knowledge, a seller may have unrealistic expectations of what his house should sell for, and may possibly miss out on a viable offer because of those expectations.

5. The seller is not able to effectively separate his personal feelings towards the home versus the business of selling the home. Because a seller is so close to his home, he may not be able to objectively see improvements or repairs that need to be made or items that need to be removed in order to make the home more presentable to potential buyers. In addition, when showing the home to prospective buyers, the seller may be too caught up in giving them their personal history in the home rather than selling the buyer on what they can do in that home.

For these reasons and many more, a home seller should probably hire a professional real estate agent to sell his or her home. It's likely that in the end, the seller will save both time and money than trying to sell it on his own.