.Berea-Richmond, KY: For Sale By Owner

Are Real Estate Agents Required?

No law requires you to hire a real estate agent when you sell a house. Some states, however, particularly in the eastern half of the country, require a real estate attorney to handle the transfer documents and closing. Check with your state department of real estate to find out whether an attorney is required in your state.

What Tasks Are Involved in Selling a Home?

The closer you look, the more little tasks are revealed as crucial in preparing, marketing, and successfully selling your home. The most important tasks that a real estate agent will normally perform for you include:

• evaluating the local market and comparable home values
• suggesting an appropriate listing price
• advising you on how best to present your home, including providing referrals to painters, repair persons, and more
• helping coordinate preparation of disclosure and other needed forms and documents
• creating advertising materials and arranging for photographs (interior and exterior, hopefully done by a professional) and possibly an exterior drawing of your home
• placing ads on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and in other media, and sending out postcards to potentially interested buyers on the agent's mailing list
• arranging for individual visits to the property -- if you're no longer living there, most likely by providing a lockbox for use by other realtors, and meeting with individuals who don't yet have their own agent
• answering questions and providing documents such as disclosure packets to potentially interested buyers and their agents
• holding one or more open houses, possibly including weekday open houses for other real estate brokers to visit and weekend open houses for the public (which itself involves many tasks, such as arranging for and putting out signs in advance, and providing food for the broker's open houses, as is traditional in some areas)
• receiving offers to buy your house, whether via email/mail or in person if other agents wish to formally present their offers
• helping you evaluate the strength of each offer and strategize on issues like whether to accept or reject an offer outright or make a counteroffer, and whether to also look for or arrange a backup offer.
• negotiate with the buyer's agent until the purchase contract is complete (although this task may fall more to an attorney in states where legal help is required)
• coordinate with the buyer's agent throughout the escrow period, helping to make the house available for inspections and appraisals and make sure you're doing your part to close the deal
• help you strategize over requests made while in escrow, such as for a reduction in purchase price due to repair issues revealed in the inspection, and negotiating such issues with the buyer's agent (unless any attorneys are still involved), and
• attend the closing.

Obviously, these are just some of the highly qualified needs for sale by owners may need to be aware. 

Contact an experienced agent like Jason that will save you time, stress, money so that you may focus on your home buying needs instead.  I can market your home on Trulia, Realtor.com, Zillow, LIsting Hub, LBAR, MCBR, etc. just to name a few well known home for sale sites.

I can send you a FREE For Sale By Owner Packet to assist you at your request.

Jason's references are always available upon request. He looks forward with serving you and your family.

Feel free to leave feedback, comment on my blog, or ask questions here or on my Trulia Blog located on my Web Page.
Jason Smith, Realtor
Realty Executives of the Bluegrass
(859) 358-5563
jason.smith@realtyexecutives.com
www.forsaleky.com (Like Me on Facebook) and view my Trulia Blog