SELLING PRIVATELY??

When selling your home you only have two choices:

1. Selling privately or
2. Appoint a professional real estate agent

Selling your home is easy. You find someone that likes the home and they offer to buy it – deal done, right? WRONG! There is much more involved in selling a property.

Generally private selling in South Africa is a failure. The biggest reason is that for someone who is not daily involved in the property market it is impossible to determine a market related price and your asking price is far more important than putting a for sale sign in front of your house or the occasional advertisement in a newspaper.
With all the hype about exposure on the internet, and that is basically all what most of the private seller organizations can offer you, the fact of the matter is until today it still is not the giant everyone makes it out to be, why?

• A small minority of South Africans have access to the internet,
• House hunting on the web is expensive unless you have access to the internet at your workplace, in South Africa we pay for telephone usage while on the internet (time spend is important, whilst in the USA for example it is free)
• It is not a tradition and custom for South Africans to buy houses on the internet

Would you go to a plumber for a medical check? – Therefore trust a real estate professional with the duty to market your house.

Ask yourself some of the following:

• Why does the majority for sale by owner properties stay on the market for a long time? Could they be overpriced?
• Have you realized that the majority of for sale by owner properties eventually sells through the efforts of an estate agent?
• Do you have enough experience about the local market to value your house at the right price? Or even worse, are you going to pay an organization to assist you with pricing, someone who has no obligation and commitment to you for success and very little experience about the local market? In most instances they overvalue the property or endorse your unrealistic expectations. (Look at their track record)
• Can you honestly distance yourself emotionally from your property? What will your reaction be if someone is very critical?
• Have you got the marketing expertise and skills to plan and implement a strategy of how to effectively market your property over a period?
• Did you know there is no advantage for a buyer to buy a property privately? Absolutely NO FINANCIAL SAVING, your house will sell at a market related price.
• Buyers are concerned that an owner will not disclose any defects and or shortcomings. It is the norm that properties are sold through estate agents so the question might arise, if there is no advantage for the buyer why should he/she run the risk to get involved where no estate agents wants to be involved. Who is looking after the interests of the buyer?
• Buyers will not be open and honest to you as to why they don’t like your property, whereas with an agent they will relay valuable information about price, condition, location, etc.
• Do you have access to a pool of buyers whom you can call tomorrow to view your property?
• Are you going to have a show day? How will you prepare and how will you ensure potential visitors will visit the house? What precautions will you have in place? 
• Are you well informed about legal matters, financial requirements and different financing options, can you advise a potential buyer?
• How well can you negotiate?
• How will you qualify a buyer? What does that actually mean?
• The potential buyer who you are going to allow freedom of your property, answering his/her questions about security, etc. How will you answer these questions, knowing that this potential buyer could be back tonight?
• The fact that you are not prepared to pay or negotiate the commission charged by a real estate agent is the only reason to take the bold step of selling privately.

If you are still confident that you can sell privately – go ahead but be warned, you might realize very soon, it is not easy!