PHOTO: Becky Irvine Stone, centre left with her family, didn’t mind putting in the extra work to sell her house privately and later bought that way too. (Supplied: Toni-Jade)
When Becky Irvine Stone decided to sell her investment property back in 2011, she was concerned by the $10,000 fee quoted by a prospective real estate agent.
In a very Carrie Bradshaw-esque way, the mum-of-three couldn’t help but wonder: what if she sold the joint herself and saved the cash?
People tend to use real estate agents because they can make it easier to meet the legal requirements of selling a home as well as preparing the property for sale, listing it, marketing it, running viewings, dealing with prospective buyers and the actual sale bit.
But “in the same way you’re entitled to sell your sofa yourself, you’re entitled to sell your house yourself”, says Dr Cathy Sherry, an associate professor at UNSW who teaches property law.
There’s no legal requirement that you have to use a real estate agent to buy or sell, she adds.
A bit of online research later and Becky decided she didn’t mind putting in the work if it meant ending up with more money.
But is it that simple?
Hosting viewings yourself
Becky signed up for a website for private home sales, created her listing and put the big sign the company posted her in front of her house.
For good measure, she also paid $2 to place an advert in the local school newsletter.
It was enough to drum up some potential buyers.
About three Saturdays in a row, Becky took five to 10 people a day through for viewings.
She channelled the energy of real estate agents she’d observed on walkthroughs to turn her house into a place others could imagine themselves living in.
On the last Saturday, she got an offer on the spot.
Becky then spent about $600 engaging a conveyancing company to help with the nitty-gritty of transferring the title to the buyer.
“The whole thing ended up costing us maybe $4,000 to sell. We saved about $10,000 by doing it,” she says.
But Timothy McKibbin, chief executive of the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales, says he wouldn’t necessarily think about it that way.
“Initially [selling privately] looks very attractive … You say to yourself, ‘I’m going to have to pay the agent so many thousands of dollars and that doesn’t look very attractive’, but what if the agent gets you an extra $100,000 as opposed to what you could do yourself?”
Despite the possibility of more money, Becky says she’d sell privately again if she ever does.
And when she needed to buy a new family home in 2017, she ended up going down the private road for that too — but not in the way she anticipated.
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