Video Transcription
Dan Razzano: Hi, I’m Dan Razzano from Razzano Homes and Remodelers. We’re here today with Garry Packer from Walton Realty Group to talk about the benefits of why you should use a real estate agent to sell your home. Garry, thanks for coming in today.
Garry Packer: Well, thank you for having me, Dan.
Dan Razzano: Could you tell us some of the benefits of using a real estate agent versus maybe doing a for sale by owner to sell your home?
Garry Packer: Sure, Dan, I appreciate that. We’re in the spring market and a lot of sellers want to sell their property and they’re trying to sell it themselves, and they feel they’re going to make the most money by selling it themselves. They don’t have to spend money on the commission for real estate. So the big thing is, how many buyers does a for sale by owner have? They might have 3 or 4 buyers coming through looking at the property. For a realtor, there are 3,500 agents, hungry agents, I might add, and these agents, each one of them might have 3 or 4 buyers. Multiply 3,500 times 4, that’s a lot of buyers, isn’t it?
Dan Razzano: Right, right, yes, it is.
Garry Packer: Within 24 hours, your property in real estate would go on the market, and all these agents see the property and they see it and they tell their buyers about the property. So it gets people excited. See, to sell your home once, you have to sell it twice. First you have to sell it to the salespeople and they sell it to their buyers. So to get you the most money, quickest sale, and fewest problems, you’ve got to get these salespeople excited about your property. With real estate, see, the thing is, the for sale by owner, they try to save the commission, the buyer also tries to save the same commission that the for sale by owner’s trying to save. So the thing is, what they do is they come in, let’s say the commission is 5%, okay? They save the 5%, but then they look at saving maybe 5 or 10 percent more, okay? See, it’s hard for you to negotiate because you have too much emotion in your house.
Dan Razzano: Do you find sometimes that when you use a real estate agent, that you’ll actually get more money for the property versus not using a real estate agent? To offset that commission that the for sale by owner might have saved?
Garry Packer: Dan, 99.9% of the time, you will get that money back and more. The reason why is the buyer does not have to pay an agent to find a house. Now, a realtor has hundreds of houses for sale. As a for sale by owner, you only have one house. And it doesn’t cost the buyer anything. So why would a buyer go to a for sale by owner to buy that house when it doesn’t cost them anything with a realtor? The only reason is what? To save the same commission you hope to save. Does that make sense?
Dan Razzano: Yes, it does. So, Garry, how would a real estate agent prepare a prospective client’s home to sell the home faster or for more money?
Garry Packer: Okay, great. Good question, Dan. What we do is we bring a professional designer to come through and look at the house to make it more of, not an emotional thing, you know, because the designer wouldn’t be emotional towards that house. If you’re selling your home yourself, you’re emotional, you’re going to leave your pictures up, you’re going to think everyone wants to see it. When a buyer comes through, you don’t want any of those pictures up. You don’t want anything to remind them that your family is still there, okay? You want a picture of your own family on the wall, your wedding picture, and things like that.
So what a designer would do is set up, they prepare place settings in the kitchen and things like that, and they would say, “Hey, you know the cabinets need to be redone. You need new cabinets. You need a new table.” See, with real estate, if you put $10 into something, you want to get $1,000 back. So maybe you don’t have to redo the whole kitchen, you know. Maybe you can do just the cabinets. Maybe paint the cabinets, maybe paint the room, okay? So you want to just get them to come, go through the door, look at the house, and say, “I want this house. Wow! This is my house.” Okay? That’s how we get them in there. I’ve seen a designer come and put a setup card game, and they had a place setting on the bed. It was all fake. And they rented furniture. This is a vacant house. They rented furniture to put in the house. That house, as soon as they did that, sold in 24 hours, and we had two offers on the property.
Dan Razzano: Wow, that’s pretty good. That’s really good.
Garry Packer: It’s extremely important that we stage the house to get the buyer’s emotion, to get the most money for your property. Does that make sense?
Dan Razzano: Yes. What makes you passionate about doing real estate? What got you into it and what drives you to do a great job for your customers?
Garry Packer: Another good question, Dan. The reason why I got into real estate, and I was in commercial, and commercial is more of numbers. When you’re dealing with residential real estate, you’re dealing with emotion. I like dealing with emotion. People get excited. This is their first house. They come in and they get excited about it, and they’re in tears at closing. They bought this house, and they say, “Because of you I’m in this house and this is my life.” It’s a great feeling for me, and I can sleep at night.
Dan Razzano: Yes, so you get a nice sense of fulfillment out of it.
Garry Packer: Exactly.
Dan Razzano: That’s cool. All right, very good. Well, thank you again for coming in today, Garry. Garry Packer from Walton Real Estate. I’m Dan Razzano from Razzano Homes and Remodelers, and these are just some of the benefits to using a real estate agent to sell your home.
