Home Hunting and the Internet

So, it’s home hunting time. Where do you start? Who do you contact? Well, home hunting has been made much easier with advent of Internet. There are plenty of websites these days with huge numbers of real estate listings, which make task of finding a home so much easier. You can now browse through home listings, compare prices, compare specifics of each home before deciding on which home you wish to see. Not only do you save on a lot of time but you get to choose from among a variety of homes hence not missing out on any home you may regret not having seen earlier. In addition, you also stand to benefit when it comes to negotiating for your new home as you have access to details of other homes and their prices and these comparisons can be put forward to home owner.

Should You Sell Your Home Yourself?

Should you sell your home yourself? Yes and no. Yes, you should leave option of selling on your own open and no, you shouldn’t rule out using services of an agent to help you sell. There are a considerable number of advantages of using an agent to sell your home but their services do come at a price – up to 6% commission on sale price! That’s quite a sum, a precious $6,000 for every $100,000 your home is worth. Agents are not indispensable. With advent of Internet, a fairly sizeable number of owners have been able to successfully sell on their own. Statistics have it that 80% of home buyers begin their search for a home online. So, putting your home details on Internet is one effective medium of advertising your home and reaching out to a large number of buyers.

So now, how would you go about doing ‘yes and no’ at same time? Well, agents may not tell you about this but there is a type of listing arrangement you can have with them, known as an ‘Exclusive Agency Listing’. Under terms of this listing, they would be exclusive agents handling marketing of your property and should they or another agent find a buyer for your place, your listing