"Not all real estate agents are Realtors"

All REALTORS are licensed agents. When you consider Buying, you are likely
to search their listings and, thus, find more properties for sale than is
likely trying to find FSBOs which may only be advertised by the sign in
their yard on the day you do your looking.

But, don't TRUST a REALTOR to be looking out for your best interests or even
knowing the law relating to contracts.

They can, thus, get in the way of an offer as they have the SELLERs trust
and the SELLER may be taking their mis-guided advice as to your offer.

Years ago, the selling agent would actually meet with the SELLER and SELLERs
agent to present the offer(s). Now, they simply fax them about town (or out
of) and "advise" via phone calls.

If you find a smart, educated agent, try and work with him (or her)
exclusively and let them know you are. At least you'll have someone "on your
side" through the process rather than "picking and agent" because he/she had
the sign on the property you liked.



"B A R R Y" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 23 Dec 2006 21:43:17 -0600, "Greg O"
wrote:


My cousin tried to sell a house a few years back on his own, got a few
bites, but nothing near what he was asking for it. He finally gave in and
hired a realtor to sell the home. The Realtor appraised the house at
almost
1-1/2 times his original asking price. My cousin figured he was crazy, but
they went ahead on the deal. Two days later he got a call from the realtor
with an offer within a couple grand of the "new" asking price! Even after
paying the fees he was way money ahead!

A flip side to that:

I had a neighbor who put his house on the market FSBO right after the
neighbor listed his very similar home with a realtor in mid-2001.
Every time the agent held an open house, so did the FSBO. The realtor
sold the home he had listed for $284, the FSBO went for $281. Without
the home next store attracting the traffic, I'm not so sure the
results would have been the same, but it's a great example of making
the best of the situation.

Side notes (for general reading, not to pick on you G):
1.) A market appraisal, which is different from a tax or lending
appraisal. can be had ethically simply by paying ~$200-300 for it.
2.) Not all real estate agents are Realtors, the terms are not
interchangeable.
3.) Since the market has gotten very quiet in my area, where the
average home is still $280,000 something, discount brokerages are
becoming more and more common. 3% brokers were getting common on
500k+ stuff while the market was still steaming.