You think "For sale by owner" ? Think again

As you know, I am a Toronto real estate agent. One of my clients sent me the following letter the other day. She has not agreed to publishing her name, so I'll leave her letter anonymous. But I am convinced her message isimportant.

"We made a big mistake when we decided to sell our home without an agent. Our pride at seeing that "For Sale by Owner" sign on the front lawn soon turned to bitterness.

Why?

Simple. We're not real estate professionals. We had no idea of the complexity of a real estate transaction, how many different issues and skills we were going to confront. We were up for weeks on end trying to do research that an agent would have had at his fingertips.

Like what?

Start with exposure. We had no idea how vast the professional real estate market network stretched. We thought a sign on the lawn and a few internet posts and little word of mouth and we'd be away to the races. It didn't happen. We waited almost a year before we sold, and then it was at a distress-level price. We just couldn't keep people interested. Not to mention the fact that we appeared to be freaks to a few buyers. We didn't have the polish that a broker has. We didn't know what to highlight and what to ignore until five or six months into the process, and by then we were dealing with a collapsing market and a great deal of personal stress. It took almost ten times longer than we had planned. By then, prospective buyers were certain something major was wrong with the place.

Unfortunately, once we managed to find a buyer our real problems began. I won't get into all the details, but suffice to say that the night before closing both sides' lawyers were screaming at eachother and theirs was threatening to sue us for far more than we could afford. By then we had had enough. We capitulated and let them have what they wanted. Our plan to save a few thousand dollars resulted in the loss of a whole lot more."