According to an article in the Super Shopper, more people selling their home without the help of a real esate professional plummeted over the past year.  According to the NAR 2009 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, “for sale by owner” transactions dropped to a record low  11% and almost half of those sellers sold their homes to someone they already knew such as relatives, friends or neighbor.

If you look around Council Bluffs and Omaha, you will certainly see fewer homes for sale by owner as well indicating we are no different than national statistics.  Do you wonder why this is happening? 

I believe the answer is very easy:  1) The market is more complex and difficult in the tighter credit market.  2)  A Realtor can save a seller time and money by assisting the seller in setting realistic prices which are key in a tight and competitive market.  3) Managing the sale to closing has been much more complex and precarious in this tougher credit market.  4)  Without the market knowledge and professional assistance a Realtor provides, sellers are faced with a marketing disadvantage.

In past years, you saw lots of  for sale by owner properties out there because the market was booming, credit was available to everyone and the appraisal process was streamlined.  Sellers deemed it not important to have a professional involved in the process.  This actually may have contributed to buyers paying too much for homes that are now even further down in value.  As in many cases, now these people are looking to the real estate professional to get them out of the problem they got into by themselves.

Statistics have always shown that having a professional market your home results in better sales prices.  In 2009, a typical property without professional assistance sold for $172,000 compared with a $215,000 sales price for the typical agent assisted property.

The next time you are considering buying or selling a home, please give strong consideration to using a professional agent and hopefully me.  I take my taxes to a tax specialist, I see a doctor for my health issues, and a dentist for my teeth because they have been trained in their field and I have confidence that I will get the best results for the situation.  I hope you can look at what I do for a living in the same way.  I consider my career a professional career and as such I continue to seek new knowledge so I can best represent my clients and I work hard to accomplish the goals of my clients with the least amount of stress and fuss.

Tags: Council Bluffs, Council Bluffs Home Sales Market, Iowa Homes, Omaha/Council Bluffs Residential Real Estate Consulting, Southwest Iowa Home Sales Market

Posted on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 10:40 am and is filed under Buy a House, Homes, Homes for Sale, Housing Market. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.