Category: Homeowners

Are you a FSBO Baltimore Seller? Are you interested in selling your home without the help of a real estate agent? If your answer is yes, we would love to help you make that a reality. However, there are pitfalls that a FSBO Baltimore seller can fall into, and we want to help you to avoid them. So, today we will review the top 7 reasons why FSBO Baltimore sellers fail.

#1 – Limited Marketing Exposure

Most FSBO’s in Baltimore use Zillow to exclusively market their homes. Unfortunately, this means that over 25,000 real estate agents may never see your home. And consequently, a large percentage of their clients will never be aware of your home existence.

Advice: Find a realtor that will list your home on the MLS for a flat fee. Listing your home on the MLS maximizes your marketing reach. And many of the real estate aggregate websites including Zillow.com will post your listing for free. Click here to learn more about our MLS Listing Only Pricing Plans.

#2 – Scams

Tricksters, and scam artists love FSBO’s. They intentional lurk on Zillow looking for a FSBO to scam. Whether you want to believe it or not, FSBO’s have the tendency to be inexperienced and ignorant about the home buying process. At times FSBO’s in Baltimore are faced with fraudulent documents, including appraisals, inspections, earnest money deposits, fake deposits, foreign bank accounts and more.

Advice: Hire a realtor or a real estate attorney to look at any potential offer, and all accompanying documents.

#3 – Serious Offer, How Do I Tell?

Identifying a serious offer is invaluable. I mean, who wants to spend months working with a buyer only to find out the buyer can’t close the transaction. Therefore, it is advantageous to know what is considered a serious offer, versus someone that is all talk. This means that a proper contract of sale must be signed. Then a determination must be made about the financial fitness of each potential buyer based on his or her submitted documents. You’ll also need to manage an escrow account for the earnest money deposit. However, please be very careful, plenty of people have been sued righteously for misappropriating the EMD.

Advice: Make sure that you collect the earnest money deposit. If you’re unsure about what to do with it, call a real estate broker or a real estate attorney. Title companies can hold the earnest money deposit as well. Just make sure that you get a receipt from your title company showing that the money has been deposited into an escrow account.

#4 – Liability and Damages

 FSBO Baltimore sellers are liable for any damages that may arise from the transaction.  You can be held liable for any error or omission that occurs on the contract of sale, disclosures, or addendums. However, when you hire a real estate agent they become liable for damages that could arise from the transaction. Realtors and brokers are also protected by a state guaranty fund, as well as, errors and omissions insurance. But, if you are a FSBO Baltimore seller and are not bonded and insured, then you are leaving yourself open to a lot of liability. This is especially true, if you do not have any real estate sales experience.

#5 – Time, Time and More Time

FSBO’s tend to under estimate the amount of time that it takes to sell a home. If the house isn’t on a lockbox, then the homeowner will be required to be onsite for all showings. However, if the home is on a lockbox, then you are essentially giving free access to your home to all who are interested. And believe me scam artists are very aware of the FSBO’s who have a lockbox on their home. If you give them access to your lockbox, you are leaving yourself open to criminals.

You’ll also need time to review contracts, communicate with inspectors, appraisers, title agents and lenders. Therefore be aware that selling a home is a full time job. If you don’t have the time, hire an agent, or find a friend.

Advice: Have a neighbor or someone you trust show the home for you in the event you cannot. If you decide to put the home on lockbox, carefully document who has access. And, if possible try to only give access to real estate agents who are generally a lot more trustworthy with a lockbox code, than investors.

#6 – Overprice Home

Due to lack research or using Zillow home price estimates a FSBO Baltimore Seller can easily overprice their home. This can be very detrimental to a FSBO because precious time is loss on the market. When a property is overpriced it becomes damn near impossible to find a buyer. And if a buyer is willing to put in an offer, it will be a lot lower than expected. Because unlike some FSBO’s, homebuyers and investors do their homework.

Advice: Conduct proper market research or give us a call and we can do it for you. Check out our market research pricing plans.

#7 – Underprice Home

A recipe for failure ensues, if a FSBO can’t properly research the property value and the local market. Most FSBO’s in Baltimore want to sell their homes independently to avoid real estate commission fees. However, if they are not trained, they can potentially lose thousands of dollars by underpricing the home and unintentionally leaving thousands of dollars on the table.

Advice: Perform proper market research or give us a call and we will do it for you ($99). Check out our market research pricing plans.

As you can see there are many pitfalls that FSBO Baltimore sellers can fall into, and we want to inform you about what they are. Now that you know better, we expect you to do better. But, if you can’t do better, give us a call. We offer flat fee listing only services for FSBO’s who still want to sell their home without any help. And for those FSBO Baltimore sellers who are just fed up we offer full real estate services, too.  We are here to help, give us a call today.

FSBO Maryland sellers fail at most things in life. Just kidding, they just don’t succeed at selling their home most of the time. Of course, there are a few that get lucky, but they tend to be far and few in between. In this article, we will give you the top 4 reasons FSBO Maryland sellers don’t succeed.

Emotional Ties to the Property

Homeowners who consider their property a homestead usually have an emotional connection to it. This can make it extremely hard to hear criticism from buyers. So when someone says I hate the paint color and why would they put that awful picture on the wall, you have to remain professional and remember the criticisms aren’t personal.

Having an emotional connection to the home can also prevent you from seeing the true value of your home. You may think your home is worth $250,000, however research says it’s only worth $185,000. So, be sure that the emotional connection you have to the home isn’t clouding your ability to see the real number (value). And by real number, we mean the number that your house will actually sell for.

Insufficient Market Research

FSBO Maryland sellers suck at market research. Sorry, not sorry. I mean, you guys really do. But it’s not completely the fault of the FSBO. In order to do proper market research it is advantageous to have access to the MLS. Therefore, if you’re using information from Zillow and Redfin to do your market research, please stop now. Get out and start networking. See if you can find a realtor to work with, who can help you with your market research.

I’m not sure if you know, but we can totally help you with that. Give us a call today; our licensed realtor will supply you with an up-to-date market research packet (Comparative Market Analysis) for $99 per property. Click here to learn more about our Market Research Pricing Plans.

Real Estate Agents and Buyers are more likely to overlook your home.

FSBO’s aren’t really good at listing homes. Descriptions tend to lack information that is important for agents and buyers alike. Not to mention their pictures suck; no editing, bad angles, etc. Also, FSBO Maryland sellers aren’t good at paying the buyer’s agent commission.

Keep in mind; if a home is not placed on the MLS for the maximum amount of marketing exposure then it is possible most homebuyers will not see it. Zillow aggregates data from the MLS, so it’s not only showing FSBO properties, but also every property that is posted on the MLS by professional agents. So, if you are a FSBO and you would like for your home to have more visibility, list your home on the MLS with a realtor as a Listing only. This means that your listing will get maximum exposure, but you’ll still have the ability to remain a FSBO Maryland seller.

If you’re a FSBO and would like help overcoming some of these disadvantages, our licensed realtor would love to help. And we are sure that you would too? We can help you sell your home and maximize your marketing exposure. I don’t know what you’re waiting on, give us a call today, we’re waiting on YOU!

I know you’ve seen those signs. We see them often while we’re driving, when we’re walking. You know, those signs that say, “We Buy Houses”. I remember thinking as a youngster; those people must be investors, or someone who have the ability to buy a lot of homes. What I soon learned is that those ads are scams. And the people who place those ads are called wholesalers. I will introduce you to, 7 scams that wholesalers run and the real scam behind “We Buy Houses” signs in Baltimore.

Scam #1 – We Buy Houses

Wholesalers do not buy houses. Want proof? Ask them to provide proof of funds or a preapproval letter. I can bet you they won’t be able, or willing to provide it.

Scam #2 – We can offer you money.

Wholesalers do not actually offer money. They are simply offering a reassignment contract with an offer price, and a marketing agreement. If they can’t reassign the contract to an actual buyer who has proof of funds they will not offer to buy your home with their own cash money. Real estate wholesalers are somewhat of con salesmen, not honest investors.

Scam #3 – Lowball Offer

Any offer that a wholesaler presents to you will be a lowball offer. They will never truly tell you the value of your home. It’s not in their interest to tell you the truth. Providing truthful information to the property owner about the true market value of any given property prevents the wholesaler from maximizing their profit. So, it’s not that wholesalers want to be liars and scam artists; they have to be liars and scam artists to be able to turn a profit.

Scam #4 – Zero Commission, Zero Closing Cost

No commission, no closing cost. These are pretty big lies in my book. But, I guess if I was under cutting my clients by $10,000 on each transaction, I could also claim zero commission and no closing cost. After the original sales contract is signed the wholesaler increases the sales price and begins marketing the home. The final sales price subtracted by the offer price is the commission amount the wholesaler has stolen, I mean scammed, shucks, I mean earned. 9 times out of 10 the commission the wholesaler earns will be higher than if a realtor was hired and the seller paid the commission and closing cost.

Scam #5 – We can sell your house fast!

We can sell your house quick.  Any house can be sold quickly as long as the circumstances are perfect. By perfect, I mean cash funds, no inspections, clean title, and an agreement between the buyer and seller to close quickly. Any real estate agent, wholesaler, grandmother, or Jack Russell can get a home to settlement within 2 to 3 weeks with those circumstances. Wholesalers aren’t special they just lie enormously in there marketing.

Scam #6 – We can sell your house faster than realtors.

Wholesalers don’t have any special tools to market properties. They belong to Facebook groups, Meet-up groups and Zillow. After you market one or two homes you can have quite a big email list. The list usually consists of investors and real estate agents. The property is generally marketed towards this group of exclusive and usually small list of buyers first. And if no buyer is found, it is then put on the open (public) market. Nonetheless, wholesalers market properties the same way that real estate agents market properties. The biggest difference is Realtors, have the help of 25,000 other realtors plus the power of the Internet to help find buyers, and wholesalers just have their handy, dandy email list.

Scam #7:  The contract is guaranteed.

The initial sales contract in malarkey! The original contract with the agreed upon sales price between the property owner and wholesaler is meaningless. The greatest significance the contract bears is in its marketing agreement. Secondly, it guarantees the property owner the amount that is offered on the contract. However, keep in mind the wholesaler can renegotiate the contract and propose a lower offer price at any time. They can also request to extend the marketing period if they are unsuccessful with finding a buyer.  Consequently, your contract is nothing more than a marketing agreement between you and the wholesaler that allows the wholesaler to sell the home to the highest bidder.

If you would like to know the true value of your property, call us today for a free evaluation. We will also provide you with a estimation of your closing cost so you understand just how much money you are leaving on the table if you decide to use wholesalers in Baltimore to sell your home.