I know you’re probably getting solicited by one realtor after another telling you how quickly they can sell your home if you just agree to let them list it for a mere 6% commission. Of course, the vast majority of realtors do very little to sell your home. How can they if you really think about it? Can you really convince a person to buy a home if they aren’t sure if they really want to buy it? Of course not! It’s not a car, TV, appliance or piece of clothing. Fact is the vast majority of homes sell themselves based on location, price, size, personal touches, etc. In reality, there is only one thing a realtor can do to sell your home better than you can yourself: Create MAXIMUM EXPOSURE to those people that are in the market to buy a home!. There are TWO things a realtor MUST do to create MAXIMUM EXPOSURE: 1. List your home on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and related websites (websites like realtor.com, Zillow and a host of others that almost all realtors use these days) and 2. Stage OPEN HOUSES FREQUENTLY (frequently means once every weekend, not just once every so often). These two items MUST be done to create MAXIMIZE EXPOSURE. If you fail to do either of these TWO things by selling it yourself or if the realtor you hire fails to do these TWO things, your home will not get MAXIMUM EXPOSURE and your time (if you do it on your own) or your money (if you hire a realtor) will be wasted.

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Let’s look at this situation truthfully and candidly. Compare you putting a for sale by owner sign in your yard and listing it on Zillow.com versus what I have described above. If you’re really honest with yourself and you should be since for most people their home is their most valuable asset, do you really believe the exposure your getting is the MAXIMUM possible? Let’s dissect it a little further. The vast majority of homebuyers (most statics say 80%+) are represented by a realtor. As a FSBO, your home is not on the MLS and a realtor is not going to show it. You may say “But I’m offering to pay a commission if a realtor brings a buyer”. Even if a realtor happens to know about your home and you offering a commission, almost all realtors will still not bring qualified buyers to see your home. Let me give you two quick reasons why almost no realtors will show your home as a FSBO. There are more than these two reasons, but these are the most common objections that are universally held by all realtors. First, there are too many dangers to jeopardize their commission if their client were to buy your home and it is not listed on the MLS. If a property is listed on the MLS, there is ZERO chance the agent will miss out on her commission due to the way the MLS is structured in its listing agreements. Agents know this and will always steer their client away from FSBO’s for this reason. Think about it from the agents perspective. If the agent does bring a buyer and that person wants to buy your home and for some reason you decide you don’t want to pay a commission (this has happened many times in the past with FSBO’s) that agent has no recourse to get her commission. The reason the agent has no recourse is because all things related to the selling of real property must be in writing or it is not enforceable. Realtors that regularly work with buyers know this and for this reason alone will not bring their buyer to view your property. Let’s face it, your home is not so unique that any buyer can’t find another home that will suit him just fine. Second, buyer’s agents know that dealing with a seller directly and not their realtor will make it much more difficult to come to terms on a deal and even if you do get a deal in writing, getting it closed without dealing with another realtor will usually result in much more work for the buyer’s agent. Anytime an agent has to deal with a person that is not in the “industry” the agent knows it will be much harder to get a sale completed. Rightly or wrongly this is the common perception in our industry and reason enough to avoid even showing your home. I have been in the real estate business for most of my life, my company has listed and sold thousands of homes. I can attest to the fact that overall this is a true statement. All of this adds up to realtors steering clear of your home as a FSBO.

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Hopefully, after reading this, you agree that hiring a realtor to provide MAXIMUM EXPOSURE will result in your home selling faster, for more money and with less hassle. However, your next question is probably how can Reliance do all of this and only charge a 1% commission while everyone else charges 6%? That is a perfectly legitimate question by the way and one that I would ask as well. The answer is simple. Reliance doesn’t generate most its commissions from listing and selling homes. In fact, the majority of our income is derived from representing buyers not sellers. Sure, we have listed and sold thousands of homes, but we have sold much more representing buyers than sellers. So this leads to my main point. Ask yourself what is the best way for a realtor to get connected with potential home buyers that are not already represented by a realtor? It’s simple, meeting them by doing open houses. Most potential buyers that come to open houses are NOT represented by a realtor and are in the market to buy a home. Unbeknownst to most realtors, the thing they hate doing the most, which is holding open houses, happens to be the best way to generate more commissions. Sure it requires more work and it can be somewhat mundane, but doing open houses is the surest way to success in residential real estate. This is the reason why we will gladly list your home for 1%! Yes listing your home on the MLS and having an open house every weekend will result in MAXIMUM EXPOSURE of your home which will put more money in your pocket and sell your home faster, but it will also result in our agents and company generating more commissions! Our model is great for you the seller and great for us the company doing the selling. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. Both parties have the incentive to act in their best interest and acting in our collective best interest actually benefits both parties. It’s what is called a win, win! After all, a mutually beneficial relationship is what we all want in any business relationship, right? It’s never good to have one party benefiting more than the other in a business relationship. It just creates resentment and an unhappy outcome for one of the parties involved and is why many people selling their homes start out trying to do it on their own. The Reliance model levels the playing field and creates an equally beneficial relationship for both the seller and the agent listing the property and that is why it’s disrupting the real estate industry in a positive way.