Testimonials

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Dawn, we are really grateful for the way you have responded to our questions and our needs. You are an honorable and faithful professional. I am glad we listed with you.

Respectfully,

Warren

In the spring of 2009, houses in my neighborhood had been on the market a year and longer without selling. I had just built my retirement home and needed to sell my old house.

So…what is a guy to do? I knew I would have to sell for less than my two neighbors. I thought about using a Sellers’ Agent but realized that would cost 6%. I decided to do a For Sale By Owner (FSBO) and share the 6% savings with my buyer. FSBO allowed me to offer a very attractive price. I knew that if anybody looked at my house they would buy it. Unfortunately, the sign in the front yard, Internet advertising, and newspaper ads failed to attract customers.

After a little looking around, I found that people like Dawn Faust could put me in the local multi-list service (MLS) database for $299. In the MLS I said I would pay the buyer’s real estate agent 3%. (Without the 3% the real estate agent has no motive to show my house.) This gave me the best of both worlds. If the buyer didn’t have a real estate agent, I would sell FSBO saving 6%; and if he had a real estate agent, I would save 3%. I started getting calls from realtors but had the problem of needing to leave work to open the house for showings. I paid $30 for a Master Lock key box. I gave the 4-digit combination to the realtor the day they needed to show the house and changed the combination when I got off work.

Anxiety attack! Can I survive without my own real estate agent? I had promised a real estate agent friend at church that I would use him if I didn’t sell my house in a few months. I asked him what he could do for me I wasn’t already doing for myself. He said he couldn’t do much more for me.

Second anxiety attack! How do I handle the title search and other legal details? It turns out that not even real estate agents know how to do this. You pay the abstract company to do this. They even arranged for the termination of my house payments and for the refund due me from my mortgage company.

So what did Dawn do for me?

1. Dawn kept me from pricing my house too low. I found houses on the Internet selling for fewer dollars per square foot than I was. Dawn checked them in the MLS and told me they were not active and hence should be disregarded. In the meantime, my neighbors who were asking too much have slowly lowered their prices to roughly the same price as mine.

2. Dawn told me what I was responsible for and what the buyer was responsible for (e.g., the buyer arranges for the termite inspection).

3. Dawn protected me from contingency contracts. Three couples who fell in love with our house and were absolutely certain they could sell their house quickly. The contingency contracts required me to sell my house to them after they sold their house. After discussing this with Dawn, I realized that the contract didn’t do anything to help me and that it gave the buyer loopholes to get out of the contract. On the two buyers I followed up on, neither has sold their house!

4. Dawn helped me negotiate the sale. The people who bought my house initially asked me to pay closing costs, repairs, etc. which totaled around $3,000. Based on Dawn’s advice, I offered $1,000; and they took it.

5. Finally, Dawn saved me $650 on the Treatments, Repairs and Replacements (TRR. Under the contract, the buyer paid a professional inspector to inspect my house for things which needed to be repaired or replaced. The buyer gave me a TRR with an estimated $1,000 of repairs. Most of the items on the TRR sounded valid to me, but turned out to be cosmetic items which the contract didn’t require me to fix.

Bottom Line: You don’t need your own real estate agent if you are willing to familiarize yourself with the contract, arrange for showings, and do some other legwork. You can use the 3% you save by using Dawn to reduce your price for a quick sell like I did or to ask market price and get a bigger profit. I went for the quick sell. In the meantime, my neighbors still have NOT sold. They’ve lowered their price—but it’s hard to lower your price when you have to pay your real estate agent 3%.

Thanks Again,
Vance Mansur

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