Why Hire A Realtor?

Several years ago I was doing calls to find leads and someone laughed and said it's 2019, what do I need A Realtor for? I can list myself and save thousands!

He sure was confident.

Statistically, hiring a Real Estate Professional will earn you more money when you sell your home, typically quite a bit. There are reasons why we spend time going to meetings, building relationships and taking additional courses (if we take our job seriously). We pay thousands of dollars per year joining clubs, associations, groups, community events and the like. Relationships and community are important, a lot of us donate and even give back to the community, associations, groups and organizations we join. 

For example, I often do food drives around the holidays. I've had my kids help out, I did social media posts, delivered fliers myself and with my kids and went around door to door collecting food donations. It's important now, more than ever since use of local food banks has gone up significantly.

These groups we join and activities we participate in have many benefits, not just for us but also for our clients. We make relationships with other Realtors, with home inspectors, mortgage agents, people of all backgrounds in our community. These relationships take time and time is money, trust and loyalty. We recommend professionals who have great experience in their field to better benefit our clients. Yes, our clients. We (or at least I) don't receive any sort of kickbacks or benefits other than someone I can trust to help my friends and clients and in return, everyone wins. It's mutually beneficial for all. To me, trust is worth more than money.

When dealing with the largest purchase in your lifetime and spending your life savings to buy a home, doesn't it makes sense to have peace of mind and make the experience stress free with as little problems as possible? Imagine writing up an offer yourself and trying to navigate such a deal! What clauses should you put in? how much is the deposit? What is and isn't included in the purchase price? You don't want to find out after moving in the the previous owner took the furnace, a/c system, appliances or anything else you may need when you're scraping money to make the deal close. I've personally seen many deals where someone was missing appliances, heating or a/c systems when moving into the new home. Then lawyers have to get involved and it's messy. I think the peace of mind alone is worth hiring a Realtor, but the savings that you can get also plays a big role. Does it make sense that a Realtor is going to spend extra money to take additional courses for fun? some of them aren't fun at all although meeting others and learning how to keep your clients out of trouble is totally worth it and I always enjoy learning something new if I can. 

You can skip hiring a Realtor to help you buy or sell of course, you can use a lawyer but now, they're adding themselves in sometimes to collect commissions and lawyer fees so be sure to check to see what the fees will be once the transaction has closed. Nothing against Lawyers in general, we need each other to make a deal close and it's always in everyone's best interest to play nice and work together. 

Realtors also have all the tools to properly advertise your home for sale, stage it by professionals, set you up with a lawyer to close, movers, storage, you name it, we know someone who can make your experience easier and less stressful. We pay a lot to advertise, stage, build the connections, get educated, it's our profession, our livelihood, we better take it serious! Not just advertising but how much to list, recently sold, all the information we need to properly sell your home is absolutely vital. We pay for access to this information too. Typically thousands of dollars per year out of our pocket. Nothing comes free as a Realtor, not gas, office supplies, lunches, no paid breaks or vacations and despite what the public thinks, if a deal doesn't close for whatever reason, we don't get paid. We have bills and families too!