For Sale By Owner Toronto
Toronto GTA - FSBO information site

In the year 2011 there was over 32,000 homes sold on the MLS by Realtors.
In addition to these transactions, some home owners opted to selling their home privately without the help of an agent.

Although the number of private sales or FSBO's were not too high, but never the less some homes were sold and many others, after trying for few months, ended up listing and selling with an agent.

There are many reasons why a home owner decides to go the FSBO (For Sale By Owner rout).

  • Earlier experience of working with an agent was not a pleasant one
  • Cost of selling a home is high
  • The owner is market savvy and can sell the house without the help of an agent
  • There already is a buyer for the house
  • Another house on the street sold privately
  • There are some companies out there that provides website listing and signs
  • Agents simply charge too much
  • Other reasons not covered above

I will try to address all the issues mentioned above. What I will try to argue for is, that it's not only the cost of sale that would effect the net amount at the end of a sale but also the time it takes to sell the house and the amount that the house will actually sell for.

There is a lot of value that a Realtor will brings to the table as a trained professional. Aside from the skills and experience of selling homes a Realtor has the network and a pool of buyers who may be looking for a house similar to yours.

Remember that serious buyers usually work with an agent. Now, even if you do manage to sell your home privately you will be up against a professional salesperson and you will end up paying the 2.5% commission to the buyer agent.

Since the buyer has been working with this agent he or she relies on the agents advice and suggestions. We all know that buyers do not pay  commission or fee to their agent but seller usually does and this has been on going for many many years and has been widely accepted across the board.

For a buyer who spends hundreds of thousands of Dollars it makes perfect sense to have an agent on their side throughout the process. In order for a FSBO seller to make the deal happen he or she has to co-operate with the buyer agent and pay that 2.5% commission.

So, therefore expect to pay a commission to buyer agent or must discount the price so much that it's simply too much of a good deal for the buyer and it's unlikely that a seller wants to sell the house much lower than it's actual market value.

At the end of the day, it is the listing agent's commission that you migh be saving by selling FSBO, but is it really worth it?
It might be if you were to pay another 2.5% commission to your own agent for all the work he or she does to sell the home and negotiation a good price and terms of sale.

What if that 2.5% listing agent's commission was reduced to only 1%? So now we are talking about One Percent Fee being the differece of hiring a professional realtor and going it alone.

Don't let your home sit on the market for too long so that you have to reduce the price that it might result into selling the house bellow it's market value.
Although you are paying 1% listing commission, all the services are included in selling your home. These services include but not limited to:

  1. Market evaluation of your home.
  2. Preparing the home for sale
  3. Staging advice
  4. Taking professional photos
  5. Producing colour feature sheets
  6. Creating virtual tour
  7. Multimedia vidoe of your home
  8. MLS listing
  9. For Sale lawn sign
  10. Direction signs
  11. Open houses
  12. Mass email to realtors in your market
  13. Actively looking for buyers
  14. Helping buyers with financing
  15. Arranging for all showings
  16. Keeping all records of showings and offers
  17. Negotiating the deal
  18. Working with home inspection and other conditions
  19. Working closely with your lawyer until the deal closes
  20. Any other services required to sell the house

I will be further developing this site to allow home owners to advertise their homes for sale as FSBO without any charge and post their contact information for prospective buyers.

If you have any questions about the this top, please contact me:
Fahim Safi
Real Estate Broker
CITYGATE Realty Inc. Brokerage

E-mail

www.SaveOnCommission.ca
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