A Secret Way to Price Your Home Below The Competition Without Losing Money

These days selling your home is extremely competitive so you have to know exactly what to do to achieve the best price, have the best deal and ultimately make the sale. Here are some insider secrets from an industry professional that will help you be successful in selling your home.

It's very tough but a lot of folks still need to sell their homes despite the economy. Can you tell us what some real estate agents are doing to help home sales?

About two years ago it became clear that a lot of people wanted to take advantage of this great time to buy a home, but they had a home to sell first. With that in mind, wouldn't it be great if real estate professionals could give people an advantage in selling their homes right now by lowering their cost to do so? If the costs to sell a home could be lowered, then the seller could lower the asking price of their homes and be priced better; they could out-price the competition and as a result, sell their homes quicker.

What is the difference between that type of home-selling program and a discount brokerage firm?

Typically a discount broker puts your home on MLS for $500 dollars and then you're pretty much left on your own to do the rest of it. There's really not a whole lot of other backup or assistance in staging your home, pricing it correctly, creating flyers for marketing, open houses, or providing personal service; and no one shows up at closing. I recently closed on a home where nobody was there except the seller. With a discount brokerage firm there's no help in assisting with any repair needs that may be discovered after the inspection. Closing time is so crucial because it's one thing to go to contract when selling your home in today's market but it's another thing to get to the closing table.

With the home-selling program outlined above, a real estate agent will do all of the work mentioned and many times they will be available seven days a week, 24 hours a day. With this unique program, you get all the service for selling your home for free, as long as you agree to purchase another home with your listing agent, which is how they will earn their commission.

Lets walk through the commission structure of this type of program and then compare it with what a traditional agent would make.

Typically commission costs come in somewhere around 6 percent to sell a home; 3% of the commission goes to the seller's agent and 3% goes to the buyer's agent. The problem is when somebody is trying to achieve a certain net result when selling, they price their home higher to cover the 3% fee that a typical agent charges. If you use a program like this one, where the seller's agent waives their 3% fee, you can turn around and use that savings to list the home for less. Many times this allows a seller to list their home below a crucial price point since they are only being charged a commission by the buyer's agent. This scenario gives them a far greater advantage in selling their home much quicker than they could have at a higher price.

So the bottom line is you save money on the front end and that's how you are able to drop the price; then obviously it's going to sell more quickly.