Selling Without a Broker

NATURALLY, real-estate brokers vigorously fight the notion that you can sell your house yourself. They argue that only they know true local home values and real-estate laws and that they will "screen" potential buyers for you — protecting both your time and your safety.

Some owners think otherwise. According to a 2006 National Association of Realtors study, about 7% of all home sellers go solo. The advantage is that selling on your own — while potentially a hassle — could save you roughly 5% in broker fees. This varies, of course. For hard-to-sell properties, the savings could be as high as 7%, but in highly competitive markets (where brokers are cutting their commissions), the savings may be lower.

Thinking about taking the plunge yourself? Here's what you need to know if you're going to act as your own broker.

Finding a Buyer
The most important step is pricing your house properly. Charge too little and you'll always wonder if you lost money on the deal. Ask for too much and you'll "go stale," as real-estate agents put it, making buyers suspicious that something's dreadfully wrong or that you're simply an unreasonable person.

How do you arrive at the right price? The easiest way is to hire an independent appraiser. Most charge $250 to $500 for the service. They'll have information on any nearby home sales at their fingertips — they buy access to tax-record data bases and multiple-listing information — and they'll personally inspect your house to take into account the new deck you've built or the recently finished basement.

Designing Our Dream Green House

I wanted to build an "Eco" home, but I didn't want it to look like one: No geodesic dome, walls of free-form rammed earth or cave built from old tires, please. My husband and I drew a preliminary design, showed it to an architect friend and he said hurtful but true things—like, it looked like a big barn.

I went out to our land and sat. I saw that although we wanted a house that felt like it fit right into the landscape, our site hadn't even taken advantage of the best views of the woods.

We talked with architects and studied books. We learned that each main room should receive air and light from at least two directions. And that no one uses porches unless they are at least 6 feet deep. We made ours 7 feet deep. Bill McDonough, the famous eco-architect, said a house should feel like "Fred and Ginger could dance their way through it." With circulation in mind, we decided to design our house based on the human body. If you look at the layout from above, it looks like a person lying face up on the ground. The kitchen is right where the stomach is, the stairway that Fred and Ginger could dance down is the lungs, the only steel beam runs right down the center where a spine would be and there's a little fireplace right where the . . . Use your imagination!

For materials, we made a list of eco-priorities, with local at the top. We live 15 minutes from Slatington, Pennsylvania, a major source of slate, in an area also rich in rocks and trees. That made it easy to choose traditional stonework, stucco and local wood. I began to think of our house as a "Native Eco-Home." We had stopped trying to fit someone else's style and come up with something entirely our own.

Designing a Native Eco-Home

Orient the house to best take advantage of the climate, the sun and the views: Most windows should be south-facing for maximum sun in winter. Make fewer windows on the north side, where winter winds are harsher.

Design for as much natural light and ventilation as possible. Use double-glazed, energy-efficient windows with "low-e" coatings. We won't have air conditioning. Instead, a panel of windows at the roof of the house will suck out the hot air in summer. Almost every room has cross-ventilation.

To conserve energy, insulate and make the house air-tight to eliminate drafts.

Explore your best alternative-energy sources. We are connected to the grid, but to generate electricity, we'll have solar photovoltaic panels. A solar water tank on the garage roof will supply our water heater and radiant heat pipes in the floor. We'll get toasty with a super-efficient, wood-fired Russian Tile Masonry Heater.

Use local, environmentally sustainable materials whenever possible. We built with local stone and wood, reclaimed wood and FSC-certified new wood.

Do these ideas actually work?

Do these ideas actually work?

Unquestionably they do.

The bigger question is: Will you study them, grasp them and then take massive action to make good things happen - in spite of the challenges of this tough market?

Massive action in the right direction has an amazing way of curing the effects of a difficult market and attracting the success you desire... so long as your ladder is leaned against the right wall.

That's the upside!

There is a very clear and effective path for laying your business foundation, earning a healthy income and setting the stage for a massive and abundant future.

Work hard, work smart, and the rewards you'll receive from your real estate business will far outweigh virtually any other business you could possibly get into for just a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars.

Why do I say that? Because...
You're Worth $300 to $500 an Hour!

Where else can you invest 10-15 hours and earn $3,000 to $5,000 or more? (A recent study showed the average listing took just over 10 hours of an agent's time from point of contact to closing-for buyers it was a little over 15 hours.)

And that's with you doing all the work. If you take advantage of the most effective real estate systems (like the "recession-proof" strategies I'll be sharing with you in a minute), your per-hour return is even higher! In fact, using these exact same systems, some of our agents are earning $1,500- $2,000 an hour!

So is real estate rewarding? Yes!
But, to make it through this deadly
slow market you need to understand a
few "Key Survival Strategies"

In a nutshell: To survive you need to buckle down, sharpen your sales skills and consistently exploit "smart marketing" that will inexpensively (or even free in many cases) reach prospects first...before your competitor.

Do those three things and you have the winning edge, and to do that...

INTRODUCTION

You dont need me to tell you the market is tough. Youve read all the headlines:
"Worst real estate market in over 30 years..."
"Biggest real estate slowdown since the Great Depression..."
"U.S. real estate market wont recover for at least 10 years..."

You've had absolutely perfect deals fall apart. Everything was perfect... the house was perfect...your clients credit was great...plenty of money down...yet the headlines killed the deal and your clients got cold feet.

Hasn't happened to you yet? Trust me. It will.

See, I've been consulting real estate agents for 12-plus years now. And let me ask you...
Have you ever seen a time
when fear and uncertainty was
at such a high level?

Fear is undermining confidence in nearly everyone. Even top agents are beginning to feel the grip of fear. Agents who were closing 100+ transactions a year are seeing their production drop 30-50% or more.

Buyers are scared. Banks and mortgage companies are afraid to lend money. And only the very best, "squeaky clean" deals are getting done.

Sadly, when you're facing conditions like these, many of your friends and colleagues are going to starve and be forced out of this business.

It's a cold, hard fact of life. When there's not enough food to go around... only the strongest get fed.

But...
There is a silver lining in this
nasty looking storm cloud!

In spite of all the extreme pessimism, in spite of the never-ending bad news, and in spite of the nearly universal feeling of gloom and doom, there's good news... in fact, it's very good news...
This crazy, uncertain market presents you
with the single greatest marketing opportunity...
ever in the history of real estate!

Yes. Its true.

The market is tough right now. Average, to below average agents are suffering badly. And its sad that so many agents are in such pain. But, unfortunately thats the way life is sometimes.

The good news is that the disciplined, highly-skilled agents who consistently use "smart marketing" will capitalize massively on this once- in-a-lifetime opportunity. They'll carve out large chunks of market share and stake their claim to a huge portion of the enormous rewards to come.
The question is
"Will YOU be one of them?"

If you are going to take advantage of this rare opportunity, now, more than ever before in your real estate career, its crucial for you to develop a deep understanding of human psychology, current technology and "smart marketing.