Residential Real Estate
Seller Representation for Residential Real Estate
- Purchasing a home is one of the greatest rewards and commitments in life. When you hire us to assist you in purchasing a home not only will we do our absolute best to give you the personal attention and service you deserve but more importantly we will protect you by clearly outlining services and expectations:
- Consultation on best areas to search for your next home based on your wants and needs
- Connect you with our Mortgage partners so you know exactly what you can comfortably afford and will not be looking at homes out of your range. You become a “qualified buyer” which puts you in a stronger negotiating position with sellers
- Valuable Resource in search of the perfect fit as we also work with other brokerages in town to provide a larger network of information and service
- Schedule of showings mindful of your time and only what you’re looking for in your next home
- Pricing Strategy: Once we find a home you like, you may decide to submit an offer on the home. Before writing an offer, we will do some research to be sure the Seller’s pricing is in-line with the current market conditions and we will share with what other similar homes in the market has sold for
- Negotiation: Our team sales background and experience allows us to effectively negotiate a fair market value for our clients, this is where we really make a difference as we assist you in evaluating every important term of the contract to be sure we are looking out for your best interests.
- Guide you: Through the closing process as many of the steps above will have strict deadline dates applied, and if not completed properly and on time, could cause forfeiture of your earnest money and loss of the sale. We will outline and discuss some of the steps to ensure a happy ending.
Marketing Process of Residential Real Estate
Selling their home is not something most people do once a day (or even once a decade) so it’s perfectly natural to enlist a real estate professional to help with the process. Enter the real estate agent — specifically, one known as a seller’s agent. AKA a listing agent, these reps price and advertise your home, organize showings, negotiate with potential buyers and in general represent the seller throughout the real estate transaction, from initial listing to final closing.
While you do not need to work with a listing agent to sell your home, many people choose to do so because they can make the process go more smoothly and help maximize the sale price of the home.
A seller’s agent is a residential real estate professional (a Realtor, a real estate agent or a real estate broker) who helps prepare and list a property for sale (the latter being the reason they’re also known as listing agents). They represent the person selling a property and must work in their best interests.
Seller’s agents handle many tasks involved with selling a home, including:
- Helping you analyze the market to figure out if it is a good time to sell
- Giving you advice for maximizing your property’s value
- Connecting you with other professionals to help prepare or improve your home
- Staging your home
- Listing your home on multiple listing services
- Helping you price your home
- Marketing the home: running tours, organizing open houses
- Serving as the go-between in negotiations with buyers
- Drawing up the purchase agreement
Seller’s agents get paid on a commission basis. That means that they won’t be compensated until they close a deal.
Typically, when you sell a home, you have to pay a percentage — typically 5-6 percent — of the sale price in realtor fees. When the home sale closes, this fee gets taken out of your proceeds and paid to the agent’s brokerage (unless the agent is a broker themselves). The broker will take a cut and then distribute the rest of it to the agent who assisted you with the transaction. In most cases, the overall fee gets split between the buyer’s agent and the seller’s agent.
This method of compensation can be beneficial for sellers because the agent is incentivized to help you sell your home for a higher price.
A seller’s agent’s job is to represent the current homeowners who are putting their property on the market. Many agents, especially Realtors, subscribe to a fiduciary-like code of ethics, which requires them to disclose compensation amounts, be open and honest in all dealings, and to always put their clients’ interest first, ahead of their own.
However, there are some cases where a seller’s agent may represent more than just the seller.
