SPECIAL SELLER EDITION: Dishin' Dirt on "Trying to Sell Your Home Without a Real Estate Agent?" with Tracy Roberts

SPECIAL SELLER EDITION:

Homeowner: If you are thinking about selling your home without using a real estate agent (also known as For Sale by Owner) then you will want to listen to this Podcast. While Blair Cato strongly recommends that you hire a qualified, licensed real estate agent, we recognize sometimes you may be selling to a family member or friend or you maybe the DYI kind of person.

If that is you, this podcast can help you navigate through the weeds of selling your own home. In this special edition of Dishin' Dirt with Gary Pickren, Tracy Roberts and I discuss the nine steps of selling a home that every homeowner needs to understand. We cover how to price, market, show and sale your home. We discuss special concerns such as your safety and forms required to be executed such as the South Carolina Residential Condition Disclosure Statement.  Spending the time to learn what you need to know in your For Sale by Owner transaction will save you both money and  frustration.  

Agents: This podcast can be shared with potential clients to demonstrate reasons some homeowners would benefit from hiring a real estate agent. Please do not hesitate to share it with your prospects. 

Enjoy
Gary

Transcript

Unknown: 0:03

This is edition dirt with Gary Pickering South Carolina's only podcast dedicated to the real estate agents crap. Welcome to edition dirt with Gary picker. And on this podcast we're going to discuss how a seller can sell their own home for sale by owner also known as fizbo. Now today's guest is Tracy Roberts from Keller Williams, Greenville Central. She's a real estate agent, a realtor and author, a wife and a mother of some wonderful, fun children. I'm very excited that you've downloaded this podcast. It's perfect for those who are trying to do for sale by owners, as well as for those agents who need something to pass along to a seller who's just trying to decide what they want to do. Now before Tracy joins us, I want to give you a caveat as a lawyer. First selling real estate is never easy. Blair Cato my law firm, we believe that it's always best to use a real estate professional to assist you in your sale. And here's five quick reasons why. Number one, real estate agents have an immense knowledge of our market, every market is different. And even inside each market, their sub markets are different. Number two real estate agents can help you market to a large pool of buyers that you're not going to be able to get to on your own. Number three ease and convenience as you start trying to sell your house by yourself, you're going to see how difficult several of the steps are, and several other things that you just need assistance on from a real estate professional. Number four negotiations real estate agents are master negotiators. They take lots of classes and spend many hours every year working on negotiation skills. And lastly, the real estate agent is going to always be your best advocate, it's easy to easier to advocate for somebody other than yourself advocating for yourself is often difficult for a lot of people. Now I recognize that many of you listening here doing so because you're selling a house to a friend or a family member. And you've already got that deal put together. But on the other hand, some of you have maybe been thinking long and hard about what you want to do. And you're satisfied that you believe that you can do it on your own without a real estate agent. And that's where this process is going to help you. We're going to show you what you really need to know and maybe some things you don't already know. With that said let me introduce you my guest Tracy Robert Tracy is the team lead of the Atlas and associate Team at Keller Williams, Greenville Central. She is a Top Producing agent at Keller Williams. And she's even authored a book on this very topic of for sale by owner. Tracy, thanks for joining us today. Thank you so much. Great to be here. And I love working with you guys. Every time we close. It's been a great experience. Tracy before we start, can you tell our listeners how they can follow you on facebook.com forward slash Atlas and Associates for our team page as well as Instagram for my handle is Atlas and Associates. And then the easiest way is if you text 59559, the word Atlas and you'll automatically get me now can be followed on Instagram, Instagram at PyCon Gary, that's PSC KRNG ar wa. And you also can find my other podcasts on any podcast platform by simply searching my name Gary picker. And when you do listen our podcast please like them, please share us please rate them. Of course, five stars would be the appropriate rating to give us on every one of our podcasts. So let's jump right in now on how to for sell a house by owner. And I've divided this into your funnel process into nine steps into selling a house that I think every fizbo needs to consider. So let's start with number one. Tracy, the number one step I believe before you even start trying to sell a house is trying to determine the value of the house. And I know there's a lot of tools out there that are available. Can you tell everyone? What are the good tools? What are the bad tools, what they need to know about how to value a house. So obviously there is Zillow, I don't hold a lot of merit into that and most real estate professionals don't as well as buyers. So that is one though. Don't hang your hat on it. Okay? tech, because so for example, two weeks ago, the zestimate on a property was in the two hundreds, the house appraised for 500 something when you might not be getting your money, or you might be low balling yourself, a lot of times people are saying, well, you're overpricing your house, because you use estimate, I'm looking at it in the best interest of the for sale by owner, you may be losing money by pricing it incorrectly and thinking you don't have value. So don't use that. No, I won't say that buyers do not look at it. Obviously they do. And sometimes they're gonna say, well, they're offering his estimate. And then you show him comps and things go from there. And other ways tax assessor. That's time consuming. I don't know there are many people that have the education to go through the text searches and go, I don't want to do all that. Right? And then there's an appraiser you can pay between 300 to $750 to an appraiser. And then they'll come give you an appraisal and then at least you could talk to the person and say okay, this is what it looks like now, and this is what we were thinking about doing to the property, what value would that add to it? And if it's even worth it, because a lot of times people talk about adding things to their home that aren't even going to add any value but it took money from them. So again, I'm worried about the best interests of the for sale by owner to protect themselves. There's a CMA you can call any railtour will be glad to say hey, yeah, we would give you a company additive market analysis is where we compare like homes and your neighborhood or up to a mile and a half to two mile radius. And we'll go over that with you and give you Well, this property has this and yours has this and compare it down to the micros for you. And then you can instead of wanting to speak to a realtor possibly go through what you think is similar homes, again, you're going to be using Zillow, or realtor.com, or what your friends told you, friend may tell you, they sold your house for 400,000. And that's similar to yours, but it really was sold for 350. But they rounded up to sound like heroes. So protect yourself and make sure you get the right information. And the other thing about I would think selling based on a similar house in the neighborhood is every house isn't really similar. I mean, they may have different features. And you have they may have less features, you may have updated your kitchen, where theirs is the original, and so you lose. So really the best way would be probably what a CMA going to a right agent. Okay. And a good thing you just I want to touch on for a second, though, as a zestimate of Zillow cannot know if you've done any upgrades to your home. That's another spot how you will lose money by going off of that. So I think if I was trying to sell by owner, I'd either want to do a CMA or get an appraiser to come out and do. Correct, we're free, they're set up to $700. Right now, one thing they have to understand if an agent comes out and does a CMA, the agent may not charge them, but obviously that that agents gonna now start calling them asking them to list the property with hope. Hopefully, they know they're already calling them. So for sale by owners probably get 100 phone calls a day from realtors. And it's very hard. It's very frustrating for for sale by owner, all these phone calls are coming in and easiest way to stop that as a high realtor. But that's also preventable. But that's an excellent point, Tracy, because you mentioned and one of the things I mentioned earlier was the convenience of this. And so when you do a for sale by owner, you can automatically expect to get 100 cold calls from every real estate agent in town. I'm a realtor because I was a for sale by owner, I literally listed my houses for sale by owner, it was a lot for me, I couldn't take that many phone calls, I couldn't take the stress of all of that, though, I was like this is kind of fun, I could do this part without having to deal with that stressful part. So I turned into wanting to do it that way. So if I didn't have an agent, I'm going to get 100 agents calling me I don't know which ones are calling me wanting to show the house versus which ones are calling me just because they want to try to get the listing from me. So I'm spending a lot of time and being interrupted at work and things of that nature, right? So you can easily tell who has a real buyer, if they're coming with a buyer, if they need to tour the home for their buyer, they don't have a buyer, okay. And that that's something they would want to consider whether they want to hire an agent is whether they want to have that convenience of being being called. Step two is preparing the home after you decided how much you're going to ask for the house for sale. Now the second question is preparing the home What does the seller need to do to consider what do they need to consider before even offering the house for sale on the market? So it just really depends honestly, if it's a young home like a year or two old, I wouldn't say that they should get a seller's inspection, but if the home is like 515 20 years old, they would need to hire and get a seller's inspection. So that way they can anticipate any repairs that they're going to have to make or want to make them beforehand. So that way they can educate the buyer and they can answer the sellers disclosure honestly and accurately they can mitigate their costs because it on a inspection. When you get a seller's inspection, you can make the repairs. It doesn't have to be a licensed person, if you're educated don't have to do it. But once you get to repair procedure, you're going to have to have a licensed Repair Contractor. So you can save yourself 1000s also you definitely want to declutter, and if you don't feel comfortable decluttering you can hire a stager. There's plenty great ones out there. You can the same realtor who did your CMA could easily give you the name of their stager. If they don't have one. You can put a post out there on Facebook, I spoke for everything. And you can put Who's your favorite stager in the area. Definitely hire that you want to look at your landscaping because curb appeal is very, very important. And call a landscaper and ask them the most the least expensive way to get the most curb appeal. Ask them what people are doing now that mostly are asking so like I would say to Corey who does our lawn lawless lawn care. I say to him I'm like I'm really not that are great with landscaping, what would make it look great and not cost me a bunch of money so my neighbors don't hate me. And so it's very easy to do. depersonalization is something that I hear agents talk about quite a bit. What is that and why is that important? You want to take anything that makes it look like it's your home out of the home. If your last name is Roberts, you want to take all your ours down. If you have pictures of your family, take those down. I'm really adamant about kids pictures being down because these pictures of your home that you're putting out there are going to be on Facebook and they're going to be on the internet every minute how Zillow wherever you wedding picture. I know it's beautiful. We all have them. But you don't want to do that because they can't visualize to be in their home. And that's one of the thing when you watch HGTV, always nurses say, Oh, I can see myself here, I can see myself entertaining. But if everything on the wall is a Clemson Tiger, Paul, and these people are from Ohio, they asked, he passed the Clemson Tigers. Now again, I'm a tiger fan all day. And yet there would be none of that in my home, when I'm trying to sell it as well as you want to. Also when you're getting your home prepared, you want to take if you don't have a tech home, that's okay. But if your home is over five to 10 years old, and you're competing against New construction, which all of you guys are now Okay, newsflash, all of you guys are competing against New construction, because they're here, you must get a ring doorbell, you must get nest, you must get Arlo, you must get whatever it takes. And it's probably 500 to $1,000 investment to make this happen. But you want to make it to where you have a tech time, as much as you possibly can for the least expensive amount of money. Because when that when the tech husband or the tech wife, and the non tech husband or non tech wave come into your property, they're looking for two totally different things in that home she's wanting or he's wanting to make it a home because you don't know who's the stay at home parent, but you also want to have the person who's wanting to check everything on their phone, turn the heat down, turn the heat up. So you definitely want to check into those things to the third step is seller disclosure, and I'll talk about that for a real brief second, in South Carolina, we do have a seller disclosure law, it requires all sellers unless you're exempt to prepare a seller disclosure form. Most people are not exempt. Everybody thinks they're exempt because they're selling for sale by owner. That is not an exemption. So you do have to do a seller disclosure form now you can go to the south carolina real estate Commission's website. And you can find the seller disclosure form there. So just go to Google type in South Carolina disclosure form seller disclosure form, and you'll be able to find that there are a couple of things. One thing I do need to mention to you on that is there is the option of writing no response or you're going to answer yes, no or no representation. Rather, I have done a podcast on when why you should never use the no representation. So what I believe you should do is there's two other podcasts. If you'll go check out my other podcast, I've done two podcasts already on seller disclosure. So if you are for sale by owner, or even for sale with a real estate agent, it would behoove you to go listen to both those podcasts, because those podcasts are designed to help keep you from having lawsuits against you. But understand you have to do the seller disclosure form even if you're for sale by owner, I want to add one thing to that and add one thing to that. So when you're doing the seller's disclosure, you also need to do the sellers disclosure addendum that has whether you have an HOA and the stipulations of your Hoa, you need to put in the exact dollar figure of your Hoa, don't do a guest don't round up, don't round down, find out the exact amount, put the information on who the contact person is, what the phone number is, this is very important information. Because it's not just not just about selling your house, it's actually closing your property. And if you don't give that attorney all of the information for them to be able to get the job done for you before closing, you're not closing on time. And a lot of these neighborhoods now, the fees have just gotten to be outrageous. It's not just HOA fees, but it's Hoa transfer fees, capital contribution of stopple fees. And so a lot of buyers now are aware of this. And they want to be able to call and find out this information and what you don't want to have happen. And there's some neighborhoods that have master associations and then individual associations. And when they come to closing and they find out there's two different associations and you didn't disclose that. Now we're sitting here at the closing table arguing about who has to pay for these additional fee. So that's something we definitely want to make sure it's disclosed. So now as we move to step four, marketing the home, how does a seller market the house now when you hire a realtor, that's what they do. They take care of all the marketing, but what are some of the considerations that a for sale by owner seller needs to think about? Some of the things is how much of your budget you're actually going to do. How much money do you have to spend on marketing you have where you're going to have to have pictures please do not take camera phone picture, hire a professional, you are selling your property because you're putting yourself in a position as a professional like we sell ours. Don't put your property on the market and the same neighborhood that I paid professionals to promote theirs and expect the same result people walking through your door to see it because pictures are what get people into the property. You also want to have somebody who isn't just taking a picture. They need a drone now they need to be able to have matterport if you don't have matterport I don't know what to tell you. Because matterport is where you can virtually walk through a home. You can hit circles on your phone or your iPad or click it with a mouse and you're literally walk through a home. We are a huge area of For relocation of northern states and other Midwest states, they will buy sight unseen just off of matterport. If you have prevented yourself of that that's a problem. You need to have video walkthroughs in you can, there are companies that have all of that. So you need to make sure that you if you're wanting to save money somewhere, don't save it there. And how much for a good photography? good photographer package costs to get that kind of stuff done. On I'll use a 2500 square foot home. Okay, that would be between 500 to $750. Okay. Don't skimp there because pictures sell the house, they definitely do. You're going to want to have for sale for sale signs. Okay, so here's the thing people will tell you don't need signs. And I agree. And I don't agree. Here's why I don't agree. If you're just gonna plop a sign in the yard that looks like you bought it from Lowe's. It doesn't work. If you're willing to go to sign stores or somewhere else, that where we get our signs and you buy some arrow signs at the front of your neighborhood, just putting the sign in your yard probably is not going to promote much, right? And yeah, if you did some arrow signs from the largest intersection going all the way to your house, that there's a house for sale, and then do the same thing. If you do an open house, you will have a lot more success. There's a reason why there's real tours during open houses put 20 signs out there for open houses is because it brings the traffic. You also would love to work with a realtor because you're only selling one house correct. You're selling one house, but there's probably going to be 50 buyers that talk to you about buying your house that are not represented by a realtor. So the best way is connect with a realtor that you can give those buyers to that could help those buyers. At the same time, you now made a connection with a realtor that has a database of people that can then pour in some buyers and to come in to see your property. They'll help market your property not marketed as like put it on the internet, but they can show for sale by owner create and help you create a sheet for it through Canva and then email it to their database. Now it's a win win for you and them. So find find your alliance somewhere if if that works, you definitely want to make sure you're putting it on Zillow. Sadly, it is estimates why crazy, though it is where people look to see properties. I won't negate that that's a definitely a good thing. I won't argue about it. Don't believe you can not put it in the MLS. If you're not going to hire a realtor that's your business. There's a there's flat the companies that you can play to just put it in the MLS but just understand don't do the three P's. Don't put a sign in the yard, don't put it in MLS and pray for that does not make things happen for us or anybody else. So you can pay $550 forget that. I think it's isaev or something like that. But you can pay him he'll put it in the MLS for you. And he'll make it to where you can. agents can schedule through showing time. The problem for you though is it says that in his remarks, you have to contact the seller. So if What if you're working you can't answer a calls all of those things. So yeah, right. And I think that's very important jurisdictions do it differently MLS, we're talking about the multiple listing service. And that's where when a real estate agent gets a property for sale, they typically put it in the multiple listing service. So all the other realtors in town and real estate agents in town can see it. And so it's very important to get into the MLS and every jurisdiction has different rules, some MLS is and some jurisdictions will let a private consumer put it in there. Others make you go through a real estate agent others making you could go through different companies. So you need to do a little research online and maybe even pick up the phone and call the local MLS and ask them what the rules are for you getting your property into the MLS. And if they say that it does require a real estate agent, they might be able to provide you the name like Tracy said of the real estate agency that will just charge you a flat fee for that because that is allowed in South Carolina under transactional brokerage. Right and then the Upstate I know greater Greenville Association of Realtors Western upstate as well as Spartanburg Association realtors does not allow unless you have a real tour put it in, and I will touch on that a tiny bit more. If you're like one of our cities, Greer can technically be Greenville. Spartanburg just depends where you're at and Greer right you wouldn't want to be in just Greenville unless you'd want to be in Spartanburg MLS as well, because that's where we find our listing like the listings for our buyers. And sometimes a buyer would want to be in either one. Tip number five is buyers are now showing interest in your property. So now that you have somebody interested in seeing the house, what do you need to know what do you need to do? Personally, I'm about a safety I want to sell your home or I want to bring up as a buyer's agent. I want to bring a buyer to your home though I want to be safe right that you want to make sure you have hand sanitizer. You want to make sure that you have gloves out for them or and you've cleaned it like you'd wipe down surfaces before they come and then wipe down surfaces in between different people coming to see it don't allow overlap showings don't allow two different overlap showings is two different agents to bring two sets of people in at one time. Give yourself a buck In between to be a wipe down surfaces, you don't have liability there. Then the other thing, we also want to have the lights turned on and the doors open to everything so they don't have to Yes. Also you want to before COVID, this is something you should always do, you don't have access to a super lockbox. Only agents do with that makes it to where only a realtor could pop the box, you have a house, right? You have a combo box. So please take these steps, have a combo box, do not make the combo box, the last four of your phone number, don't make it 000. Don't make it 123 please make it a different code. Second, before you show a different person. So you showed this one property of left a lockbox outside for them to see it you're going to leave it in your home all the time, unless you know is showing is going to happen. Then you put it on the front porch, and then allow for the person to see it. When that person has gone, you're going to change the lockbox code, because now that they're gone, the next person needs to have a different lockbox code for safety measures for yourself. At night, your lockbox should never be outside, you need to protect yourself. This isn't I would love to think that our world's perfect, right. But we get attacked at open houses at times, you know, at showings. It's a scary field, right. And so the only thing I could do is protect you by telling me that. So what you're talking about is getting a box that you can put a key in it has a combination. If I want to come look at your house, you give me the combination, I pop it open, I use the key, I put it back in after I'm done, then you're going to take that box back in the house with you change the combination, and only put that box out during those times. Now the other thing on safety which I don't know if a lot of people even think of this is we've had a problem in South Carolina with people going into houses and stealing medication. And with opioid crisis as bad as it is right now, if you have any type of medication, you need to put that up and have it locked up somewhere because we've had cases where somebody had some type of pain medication, and it's been stolen during showings. So anything of that nature medicine wise, you need to make sure that's locked up and put away so nobody can get access to that. I mean, hopefully they know like not to leave expensive jewelry out and guns and stuff. They should be in like a safe or something. House, right? also have a strategy on how you're going to allow this to happen. Are you going to allow how many showings in a day? So are you going to allow from five to 7pm? What are you allowing to have that already set up to where like we have it through showing time to where we can block off our client schedule to where nobody can even schedule a showing during that timeframe, they need to have that on their voicemail and on their voicemail. And I would create a Google phone number for it. Instead of using your phone number, you would have a Google phone number that attaches to your phone that can go away after the house has been sold your phone numbers not out there, you're going to have the Google phone number and on the recording, it's going to say the hours of showing times are XYZ. And if you're a realtor that would like to show our home, please send your business card with your license number, the client of the time that you would like to see it and your website so that way you can validate who they are, you can check the phone number on the card from the number that texted it, as well as check up their license number to make sure that they're actually an active agent, then you could reach back out to them and say that they could show your property and here is the code so that when you're not when somebody calls, it doesn't have an agent, I just got a guy down, you know, I don't know this person. He says he lives in my neighborhood. He wants to look at the house, and I'll let everybody in my house who calls cell phone. Okay, that just makes me uneasy. Um, so we don't even show properties unless you have a license, like you have to send us your driver's license. And if you're paying cash, we need to see your proof of funds. And if you're not paying cash, we need to have your pre approval letter. There's a red flag if someone says to you, well, I don't need my pre approval letter because I don't even know if I want to buy your house. Well, I understand. I can't show you my home until I have a pre approval letter because I need to make sure that I'm not during especially during COVID. I don't want to open my home up. If you're not able to or you're not willing to purchase the home. You also want to decide Are you willing to show a home to somebody you don't know even with those parameters? I don't know I wasn't as a for sale by owner. That's why I ended up listing. I was a for sale by owner for 13 days. And then I ended up listing my house because I was like this is a no go for me. But at a minimum if I'm going to let somebody in my house with no agent, I won't driver's license, because as soon as they have you have a copy of their driver's license, they're less likely to attack you. When you get a copy of the driver's license. What I would do is take a picture with my cell phone and say let me text this to my spouse, my partner somebody so they'll have it right in front of them so they know somebody else has it. Also you can go to an app called forewarn you can download it we don't we get it with our MLS. As a consumer, you'd have pay for it, but it's worth it right. So you put their information, their cell phone number and everything. And it will validate if they say they are who they say they are. And if they had any convictions or anything like that, it's going to show you on that app to make sure you're protected. Also, you could find an agent, that you say, Well, I don't feel comfortable listing, though I'm willing to pay a buyer's agent, this particular person came came to me saying that they want to see the home, I'm willing to pay you for representing me and them for a certain fee, you can do that. Or you can do it as a buyer's representation or listing. So that way, you don't have to know all this paperwork because understanding a contract, I took the class five times in January, just to make sure not that I'm inept or anything, but I want to make sure I represent my buyers and sellers accurately and efficiently. So I took it with five different teachers to make sure I didn't miss any nuances. Well, you bring up an excellent point, you've mentioned this several times. And so I think this is a great time to talk about this. So I'm for sale by owner, you're a real estate agent, and you call me I got a buyer, you want to sell your house and you bring this well qualified buyer that wants to buy my house, am I paying you, I assume they expect to get paid as a listing agent, list your property, they the complete commission that because there's no standard commission, I'm just going to use generally say 30%, it's not 30%. But I don't want to say any lower because then it's going to say that that's what I listed for right, then you you would take part of that commission gets agreed in the contract that would be paid to the co op agent, buyer's agent, or however you want to call them. And then the other amount is remaining to you. With that being said, as if it's a listing. If you take that away, now you're really in essence, the listing agent as the for sale by owner, you're going to have to decide what percentage of what you wanted to keep. Are you willing to give the buyer's agent? Are you willing to give 3%, three and a half percent to 25 100%? Where are you intending to provide them, and then you let the buyer's agent know that because they're going to have you sign a form that says a compensation agreement. And then that means that if y'all come to an agreement, this is the amount that is going to be given to the buyer's agent at closing. And the form is also provided to the attorney's office, you make some good points, there's let me let me break down from the legal aspects on that as well. So what we're talking about is if I'm listing with you, I'm paying you x commission, and you're going to accept x for the seller of the house, and then the buyer's agent will get paid out of your exit, maybe half the exit, maybe one part of the exit might be $1 amount, whatever that is, that's between you and that buyer's agent. But if I'm listing the house for sale by owner and you show up with a buyer, you're wanting to get paid something. So I've got to figure out what of that x, I'm willing to pay you is it half the X is at a quarter, the X is that 1/3 of the x whatever we do, but here's the main thing as a lawyer, the real estate agent should not show that person the house until they get you to sign that document. So they will be handing you a form document make sure it's a form document. It comes from the south carolina Association of Realtors in most cases, or it will be from their brokerage firm. So if they work for Keller Williams or Coldwell Banker, century 21 look on there and it should have their logo, and there'll be a for me, right? at less than 59559. There you go. And what it's going to do is it's going to say, I'm going to show your house of this one person all this data, they buy it, you agree to pay me this percentage commission. But be sure always to get that documents on before you let them show the house so that we're not arguing. Correct. And I'm also I think it's double sided. a buyer's agent has a buyer's agreement, exclusive right to buy with their client, there's two different sections that they can check. One section says that there are going to pay if the for sale by owner will not pay. And there's one that says that if they will, they will not pay if the for sale by owner. So there's like a checkbox yes or no, that needs to be stated, in my opinion to the for sale by owner, the for sale by owner needs to understand that this buyer has already stated they do not have any intention of paying the buyer's agent and will not be able to purchase the home because of the agreement that they have with the buyer's agent. Because of that. Now, I personally would not prevent my buyer from not buying a house, like Do whatever you need to do, I'm gonna be there. I mean, I just want you to be happy, I want everybody to buy what they need and all that kind of stuff. And yet, I think everybody just needs to be full transparency with each other, for sale by owner would need to understand that, hey, you didn't want to pay x commission in the first place. But now you've got a buyer. So you're not paying x, you're paying a portion of x. So you are still saving yourself some money. But now you also now have a professional agent in the transaction to help walk you through the end of it. Because the next four steps are where I think you really need a lot of help. So let's talk about I'm gonna cover Step six, which is writing a contract. So you've now found the buyer, the buyer wants to buy the house. Now you have negotiated terms and that's again, where you know you have got to understand you're in a negotiation. It's not Here's my here's what my house is for sale and there's no negotiation, a buyer's gonna want to negotiate the price, the length of time, the earnest money, any special conditions. So you need to be understand that the sell of a house is a negotiation. It's not a one price, like you go to Target, you buy a bar, a bottle of soap, that's the price, there's no negotiation, a house is gonna be a negotiation. So if you don't like the pages, right, yeah, it's nine pages. And that's something that should tell you, you don't want to try to sell the house for sale by owner because I hate negotiating. I can't stand it. I feel guilty when I ask for more money. But that's why I always use a real estate agent. So once you've decide you're ready to write a contract, I implore you do not go on the internet and download a form contract and fill it out. It is terrible. There are so many things that those form contracts are missing. Oftentimes, they're not written pursuant to South Carolina law. Even inside South Carolina, different areas do things differently. Greenville has different real estate customers from Orange County, from Columbia from Buford, they all do different things different ways. It's not going to cover what you need, contact a real estate attorney, have them write the contract, you need to think about terms such as beyond the price, I get emails all the time, I'm selling my house for 200 grand Can you write a contract? Okay, what's the buyers names? What's the sellers name? What's the property address? What is the earnest money going to be? What? Who's paying closing costs? How long before we close? Is it contingent on financing? Is it contingent on an appraisal? Is it contingent on you selling another house? You know, what are under contract? Right? So there could be 1000 things that that real estate attorney needs to talk with you about. So please pick up the phone, y'all are gonna do it free, right. And so we're going to get paid for that contract. So yeah, and typically, you know, we're three to $400. To do a simple contract. If you start getting into complex contracts, you're now by the hour, so be sure you understand that. Now let's move on to Step seven. Because I know we're running short on time. Now we're into what I like to talk about is due diligence period, and most of our contracts and most of our jurisdictions, the buyer will often want a period of time to do inspections to see what's in what the house is really like to make sure they This is going to meet their needs. So what does a seller need to know about this due diligence period? Tracy, normally talking in the beginning about having a seller's inspection, that was one huge way to figure this all out? Right. So if you've had a seller's inspection, and you know what's wrong with your house, if you automatically are willing to give that to the buyer's agent to go over with their buyer, I personally, if I don't have anything to hide, again, remember, I'm transparent, I'm going to give it to them. And then I'm gonna show them the repairs that have been done. And they can choose to have an inspection after that. Again, it's it lets me know how much I'm going to have at risk. A due diligence is where they can decide outside of the normal repair procedure, which is a lot different. They can ask for anything that honestly they can add on the ninth day of a 10 day due diligence, and I don't like the way that the clouds look on the backyard at 6pm. And it just doesn't work for me, I don't want to buy your home anymore. And that's important, again, to go back to having a real estate attorney work with you. Because at this point, you know, you need to understand what are your rights? What are your obligations under the due diligence period? What are the timeframes? How do we count the timeframes here in Colombia, a business day does not start on the weekend or a holiday and it starts at 8am the day following ratification of the contract. And so it goes from 8am to 7:59am. The next day, we're in Greenville. Y'all ends at what time 10 champion or one? Yeah, so it's Yeah, so it's a big difference on how a lot of jurisdictions do it in your contract, you can draft with your closing attorney can say anything, you'll want it to say you also have to understand that you have to provide access to the buyer to have their inspectors come in and do the inspection. And you can't turn off the power, the water and all that stuff, all your utilities got to be on so they can do those inspections, which now brings us to step a Is it the buyers now won't repairs. So what's our seller got to do now is most of the contracts are going to require the seller to use licensed certified contractors, that gets to be a sticky point. Because if they're asking something that truly doesn't need a certified or a licensed contractor, those areas get to be very, very legalistic because this should have all been taken care of in the contract. Somebody wants out a touch up paint done a law, I don't need to go hire a painter to paint a two by two square from where I took a picture down and scrape the wall. But you need to spell those things out in the contract. So you need to be able to and one thing I would tell you is you need to know before you even get into this, what kind of contractors are going to need what companies I want to use? Do they have good reputations? Because if you're not using the termite companies, good Heating and Air companies, they could come in and take you for a Yeah, take you for a run. They'd have to show up. They'd have to answer the phone or call you back. So we don't have that problem because when a realtor calls a contractor or termite Inspector, they know we're not just one deal. So they're gonna call us back. So if I call and a for sale by owner calls the same vendor, they're gonna call me back faster because I, and it's not that they're bad people, that's just where their money is right. And so they I see all the time on Facebook, people complain that nobody calls them back, and the fencing guy won't call back or this or that one call back, but they're probably on the phone with us. Alright, let's get to the final step here, which is getting to closing contracts done, repairs are done, everybody's ready to close it. So what's left for us to do is we've completed it now what are we going to do. So when you're completing the repairs, you're going to provide invoices for the repairs. Also, on closing day, you want to make sure three days before, this is very important. If the person is buying your home as financing, you need to ask the lender and the buyer's agent has a trade CD gone out, they'll understand it is a federally mandated law, that this CD has to go out to the buyer. If it does not go out three days before you're not closing on the day of closing. So that way, there's an easy way to know that and there's nothing that you're gonna do to get around, there's a lot of things that you have to do to troubleshoot that so you don't take off work or you don't waste your time thinking you're closing on a Thursday and push schedules around, the buyers always going to want to re inspect prior to closing to make sure the repairs were completed and they were completed properly. Now the contracts may vary on how those processes are done. So you need to make sure again with your closing attorney that all of those matters are handled the way they're supposed to on reinspection. You also have to understand most contracts are going to have it written in there that once the repairs are done, that you the seller are going to be responsible for maintaining the house in the same condition as it was once the repairs are done. So if something breaks, after the repairs are done, like let's say the air conditioner unit stops working the day before closing? Well, most contracts are gonna say that his own you to repair it because you have to deliver the house in the same condition. So again, it goes back to not using form contracts. Because when we use those form contracts on the internet that we don't know where they came from, or who drafted them, if they're even drafted by a lawyer, then you're going to have a lot of those areas are mentioned or missing. Now the closing day, hopefully the buyer has selected a good closing attorney you can put in the contract who you want the closing attorney to be South Carolina, we do have a law that says a lender may not require an attorney to be used by a particular buyer in order to get a loan. But that does not mean that the buyer and the sellers cannot agree to who the closing attorney is going to be in the contract. Now understand also that the typically in South Carolina, in most jurisdiction, the buyer and the seller will use the same closing attorney. And so once the closing attorney has been selected by the parties, the closing attorneys gonna have a lot of questions for you, they're going to need your information on your current loan on your house so they can get the payoff on the HOA fees, and things of that nature. And the last point you brought up was very important was the closing disclosure, also known as the CD, they are federal laws that require the lender to provide certain documentation to the buyer by a certain date or the closing gets delayed. So that's something you need to constantly be in contact with the closer or the closing attorney to make sure that those things are being done because a lot of lenders aren't going to provide you that information. You also want to make sure you understand how earnest money is held. And when you need it. You should want it to be held at the closing attorney's office. You shouldn't hold it the buyer's agent shouldn't hold it. You want to make sure you understand if the deal fell through how that looks for you. There's a lot of things so yes, right, this exactly Great point. So make sure when you do talk to an attorney that you're talking to a real estate attorney and not a general practice lawyer. If I have a heart problem, I'm not going to my allergist, I'm going to go directly to my heart doctor but make sure the lawyer is very familiar with what they're what real estate is and how to draft a contract so that you get the best lawyer that can represent you. So there you have it, those are the nine steps are selling a home for sale by owner do keep in mind that they are many different facets to consider that we have not had time to recover here. I do hope that this podcast has added some value to you and if you like it, please rate us five stars of course, share it and like us as well. Also, other podcasts such as a seller's disclosure that I mentioned earlier can also be found on any platform for a podcast by searching Gary picker and that's PRC k ra n one last time Tracy How can our listeners get in touch with you if they have questions about selling a home for sale by owner? They can either call me at 644126225 email me t dot Roberts at kW comm they can go to our website Atlas and Associates comm or they can go on our Facebook facebook.com forward slash Atlas and Associates or text Atlas to 59559. If y'all need any legal questions, please call us at 803 480 600 in the Netherlands and if you are in the Upstate, it's 864-999-2030