The Real Estate Browser Volume 10, Issue 4

www.LynchburgRealEstateBrowser.com Volume 10 Number 4 – Say you saw it in The Real Estate Browser of Lynchburg — 41 in a declining market, the danger is that all The Internet has made much more infor- mation available to consumers, but not all the the offers will come in at the asking price or lower. information is equal, or even accurate. “A lot of people, for some reason, they believe what they read on the Internet,” says Gea Elika, principal broker of Elika Real Estate in New York and a regional director of the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents. “Read everything you see on the Internet with a grain of salt.” You can get a better deal as a buyer if you don’t use a real estate agent. “That’s a com- pletely false premise,” Elika says. If the house is listed with a real estate agent, the total sales commission is built into the price. If the buy- ers don’t have an agent, the seller’s agent will receive the entire commission. The danger with believing everything you hear or read is real estate myths can cost you money when it’s time to buy or sell a home. Here are nine of the most common ones that can trip up buyers and sellers: You can save money selling your home yourself. Some people do successfully sell homes on their own, but they need the skills to get the home listed online, market the home to prospective buyers, negotiate the contract and then deal with any issues that arise during the inspection or loan applica- tion phases. It’s not impossible to sell a home on your own, but you’ll find that buyers expect a substantial discount when you do, so what you save on a real estate commission may end up meaning a lower price. It’s not impossible to sell your home on your own for the same price you’d get with an agent, but it’s not easy. Set your home price higher than what you expect to get. Listing your home at too high a price may actually net you a lower price. That’s because shoppers and their real estate agents often don’t even look at homes that are priced above market value. It’s true you can always lower the price if the house doesn’t garner any offers in the first few weeks. But that comes with its own set of problems. “Buyers are highly suspicious of houses that have sat on the market for more than three weeks,” says Nela Richardson, chief economist for the brokerage Redfin. In areas such as San Francisco where mul- tiple offers are common, sellers will actually price their homes for less than they expect to get, in the hopes of getting multiple offers above asking price. However, if you do this The market will only go up. In recent years, homebuyers and sellers have experi- enced a time of increasing home values, then a sharp decline during the economic down- turn and now another period of increasing values. “They think that the market only goes up,” Elika says. “They don’t think about when a correction will come.” The recent recession Click on the Listing for photo tours and additional information for each property.

The Real Estate Browser Volume 10, Issue 4 | Page 41