From: manes@magpie.nycenet.edu (Steve Manes)
Subject: Re: Getting Ready to Sell House
Organization: Manes and Associates, NYC
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 00:53:57 GMT
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL7]

Ed Green - Pixel Cruncher (egreen@east.sun.com) wrote:
: In article 17v@magpie.nycenet.edu, manes@magpie.nycenet.edu (Steve Manes) writes:
: >Ed Green - Pixel Cruncher (egreen@east.sun.com) wrote:
: >: 
: >: For a well maintained house in a desirable location, there is seldom
: >: any compelling reason to list the house through an agent.
: >
: >For well-maintained house in a desirable location, and a seller who
: >has years to make the sale. 
: 
: Simply not true.  The sale may take somewhat longer, simply due to the
: sheer number of people who know about it via MLS, but "years" is
: ridiculous.

You read me too literally, although one of the owner-represented
houses I looked at has been on the market since early 1989 (almost
four years).  Reason: the house was overpriced by at least $100k.
He's selling the house himself because brokers won't touch it
at his price, or at least that's what a local agent told me.

Besides lack of access to the local real estate board listings,
which reduces your buyer pool significantly, representing a house
yourself means that you have to work your prospective buyer's
schedule around your own.  How many people can take off work to show
their homes on weekday afternoons, for instance?

: How about otherwise reasonably priced houses
: whose asking price is artifically inflated 6% to cover agents' fees?

This infers that owner-represented homes have asking prices 6% less
than agency-represented homes, which I didn't see even once.  Unless
you're a naive buyer, before you make any bid on a home you've
already studied what similar houses in the area have recently sold
for; their asking prices and their sales prices.  That data is
available from the local real estate board although, for obvious
reasons, the agent won't volunteer this information.  You have to ask
for it.

: If you expect more honest answers about a house from an agent looking
: to close the sale ASAP, with legal obligations to the seller (as has
: been discussed), than from the people who live there, you are living in
: a fantasy, IMHO.

I didn't say that a prospective buyer should take an agent's word.  In
fact, I said just the opposite: get hard documentation to back any claims
made by either agent OR seller.  If you use an agent however, you can
tell him or her to do the City Hall/Hall of Records gruntwork for you.
The agency who repped the house I just bought (Settlers and Traders
of Westport, CT) was happy to get me all the documentation I needed,
including a copy of the survey, inspection certificates for an addition
at the rear of the house and for a new chimney, a letter from the current
owner's septic cleaning company with an appraisal of the current system.
This was BEFORE I made a bid, not after they had my earnest money.  In
the meantime, I looked at more houses.

Sure, I probably could have done this work myself... if I wasn't working
during gub'mnt hours and I didn't live 70 miles away.  Even if Catherine
Calise (the agent) was working for the seller/herself, she was a major,
major time saver for me.

: >In one owner-represented case, I saw a nice house with a new
: >addition that, although well-executed, looked suspiciously
: >home-made (no access to crawl space, no soffet vents, no ridge
: >vent).  The owner was less than informative in his response to my
: >questions about who did the work, which left my only recourse being
: >a time-consuming search of building permits and inspections at city
: >hall to make sure that I was looking at something insurable. 
: 
: 1. Tell the owner you are interested, but you need to see said
: documentation before putting down any money.  If he wants to sell the
: house, he will provide it.

If the work is legit, you're right. If it's bandit work, he may own
up to it and agree to pay for an inspection and any contracting
costs to bring the disputed item up to code... or he may waste your
time promising to get documentation that's not there, hoping that
you'll like the house anyway and will make it up to you at
negotiation time.

: 2. Hire a professional to inspect the house and the addition, and
: certify that it conforms to the local building code (something I would
: do with *any* house I was serious about buying, anyway).

Unless you're paying cash for the house, any mortgage lender will
insist that the house be inspected by a licensed housing inspector
prior to contract, for everything from code violations to termites
to a leaky roof.  But I prefer to have this information in my hands
at the walk-through, not after I've signed a bid, not after I've paid
a private inspector upwards of $350.

In this r/e market (the northeast), it looks like one out of every
five homes is actively for sale.  If you've got a serious edge on
your competition -- something that would set your house out from
everything else in the neighborhood, something that would cause
people to stop and knock on your door -- and you have the time to
do it, by all means: rep it yourself!  If not, you're dreaming
if you think you can compete with full-time professionals.

Sure, you could drop your price 6% to entice a few buyers away from
the agencies but WTF have you gained?  You've avoided an agency
commission at the expense of taking on the agent's job yourself for
no compensation.  What a deal!

-- 
Stephen Manes					   manes@magpie.nycenet.edu
Manes and Associates/Commontech-NoHo		   New York, NY, USA  =o&>o

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