Why Not Sell Your Own Home?

Do yourself a favour. Get a real estate agent and pay the commission and sell your home quick and for a lot of money.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can do it yourself. You can’t. You don’t have the reach of a successful brokerage, which can access qualified buyers from around the world and bring them to your door at roughly ten times the rate that you can. That means your house spends one tenth the time on the market. That means potential bidding wars and a higher final sale price.

And if you thought you could negotiate the sale yourself – against an experienced rep who’s done it a hundred (or more) times before, who smells fear and knows all the tricks – forget it. You’ll end up agreeing to all sorts of things that aren’t in your best interest but sounded perfectly reasonable at the time. Avoid.

Avoid, too, the trap of thinking that you know what to charge for your home. You don’t. And even if you do manage to get it right at the start, the real estate market can move quickly. If you don’t move with it, you lose. Brokerages have full time staffs dedicated to marketing your property to maximize profits – use them.

And lastly, don’t end up in court because you wanted to save a few thousand dollars. If you muff the contract or the close or the bank work, you’re going to pay for it. And for what? To say you did it all on your own?

I have been selling Toronto condos for 25 years now. You can believe me.

Elli Davis, your Toronto real estate agent