Selling on your own? Learn How to Deal with Realtors…

Posted in Selling on February 27, 2010 at 12:54 pm

Hey, we’re all not that bad!  Here are a few tips to handle the many Realtor calls that you will be getting!  You will be getting many calls if you are advertising.

The reason Realtors are calling is simple.  We want to list your home and get paid a commission (you didn’t think I’d be that honest and direct did you?) Hopefully a trusting relationship can be built between us!

In general, there are two groups of Realtors that will call you.  The first group are new agents trying to drum up some business.  This group is in the under 2 years in the business category.  9 out of 10 Realtors try calling FSBO ’s once or twice (or as many times as their trained) and then never do again.  The second group are the old pro’s & (like me) have established the FSBO market as a primary prospecting source.  Yes, lots of owners do list their homes with me after giving it a shot on their own.

On the whole, it can be said that if you ever did decide to use a Realtor, those that make themselves known to you are the most motivated and aggressive and deserve a shot at it; over those that sit and wait for business to fall in their lap!  If I were you – I would pick from this group that is motivated and aggressive to do a get the most amount of money for their clients!

Now, there may be some realtors that you find that you don’t want to deal with.  Telling them that you’re not interested probably won’t stop them.  The best way to get them to stop calling you is to tell them you have an agent you’re working with.  Feel free to use my name!  Most will stop right there.  A well-trained agent might offer just to give you a second opinion.  If you don’t want them to call back just say “no”.  You’ll probably never hear from them again.

This is how I feel about it – I would turn away any agent who insults your intelligence, doesn’t respect your “no” or in any other ways turns you off.  There are too many honest, good, hard-working agents to pick from to bother with any whom are not up-front from the start.

One thing that you may hear is ” Would you cooperate with a Realtor if I had a buyer?”  There is nothing wrong with that.  What the agent means is that if they happened to find a buyer that was a match with your home would you pay them a commission.  The amount of this commission would be negotiated with the Realtor.  This won’t hurt you a bit, as there is no listing contract or formal arrangement unless the agent actually brings you a buyer.  Then you would have to come to an arrangement.  Don’t count on this actually happening however, national surveys have shown that this only happens in less than 3% of the cases!