You don’t need a realtor to buy a house. A lot of people are under the impression that if they want to purchase real estate in the United States, they can only do so under the guidance of an expert realtor. After all, these specialists have substantial experience with the local market, and they surely know which houses are a good bargain or which homes would be a good fit for the buyer.
But what if you flip the script? What if you did some investigative work yourself and put in some elbow grease and did the research? Well, it turns out that you might get a better deal.
Please understand that when you buy a home for yourself, your primary motivation is not to sell a house or sell any house. That’s not going to drive you. That’s what motivates typical realtor, but that won’t your plan. What will you focus on?
It’s simple. You want to get a home that makes sense to you. You know your personal preferences. You know what your budget is.
So, you work with your own set of personal preferences. This is not tinged or contaminated by the profit margin.
Sure, you’re trying to save money. But at the end of the day, your main focus is to buy a home. One that makes all the sense as far as you and your loved ones are concerned. This may be a far cry from the focus of a realtor.
A realtor will go through the listings, look at your budget, and try to study you regarding preferences, but it’s never going to be a tight fit. What they’re going to do is try to show you as many houses as possible that kind of makes sense, but it’s not exactly a tight fit.
The idea is to get you excited among a wide range of properties so that eventually, somehow, someway you pick something, and they make money. They’re all about that commission, and you really can’t blame them. That’s how they make their living. There’s no need to hold this against them.
You have to understand that there are two conflicting interests here. Their primary interest is to sell something anything. You, on the other hand, are looking for the best. This is the significant disadvantage of having a realtor.
The Disadvantages Of Not Having A Realtor
Unfortunately, there are also disadvantages in not being represented by a realtor as you shop the local market for housing options that make sense to you. First of all, you may not have access to multiple realtor listing systems. This is where some of the good deals are listed that few people have heard about.
You have to understand that sometimes in hot property markets throughout the United States, houses remain on the market for a few days. Before you know it, they are snapped up. How does this happen?
Realtors quickly pounced on hothouses that go on the market and push it on their clients. If you were to look up online resources to find inventory for sale, you’re probably going to be a day late in the box short. You’re always going to be the last person to know.
This is not a good thing because, as you can well imagine, leftovers are costly homes that need a lot of work. Sure, you’re saving a couple of hundred thousand dollars, but you probably would have to spend a half a million dollars to get that house in the right shape. Did you see what’s wrong with this?
Another disadvantage of not having a realtor is that sometimes you come against tough negotiators. We’re talking about home sellers who are represented by very pussy realtors.
If you don’t know the first thing about the local real estate game, how can you battle-hardened professionals? The short answer? You don’t!
So, please understand that there are severe benefits and drawbacks to buying a house without a realtor. What you need to do is to get a complete list of low inventory as possible.
Try to get a list from the internet of all the homes in the area that you would like to buy a home. It doesn’t get any simpler than that. The longer your list, the more houses you can choose from. Here’s the key.
You have to make sure that you use the right search parameters. If you know that you can only afford $500,000 and not a dollar more, stick to that price. I know this sounds like crazy advice for a lot of people because let’s face it.
The real estate market in many parts of the United States had been going crazy recently. We’re talking about a massive appreciation over time; homes that used to cost $100,000 are now half a million dollars in value.
But you have to stick to what you could afford. The worst trick you can play on yourself is to go in thinking that somehow somewhere, you would be able to provide a more expensive house magically. Let’s put it this way.
If the Math doesn’t make sense now before you even start looking at homes, how in the world you expected to make sense once you are asked to make a firm offer for a property? It won’t make sense. So stick to your budget. If all you can afford is 500,000, stick with that amount. If all you can rustle together is $250,000 or $300,000, stick with that amount.
Once you get that out of the way, compile a massive list. Well, it turns out that in your local area, there are a lot of houses that can fall within your budget. However, chances are there’s something wrong with them.
Maybe you have to change the roof, fix the driveway, or there are issues with the heating system. Whatever the case may be, there are discounted houses. Get that massive list.
Check Out All The Houses
Now that you have a list, check out all the houses and check out the local area. Talk to people to see what it’s like to live in that part of town. Once you get that information, then you can start sorting the different houses in terms of what is a better fit for you personally.
If you are going to be living there with your family, make it a point to include most of your family. In other words, if you have two kids who are going to grow up in that home, make it a point to bring them along. I’m sure they’d rather play Rob lox or Minecraft. They’d instead parking that themselves in front of the video game and play Xbox and PlayStation all day.
But you need to bring them along because it’s going to be their home too. They’re going to spend their formative years in that structure. So everybody has to be on the same page.
When you do all of these, you wouldn’t know which property makes the most sense to you, and when you’re appropriately motivated, you can then negotiate. You have to understand that there’s no point in negotiating if the price doesn’t need your budget. Okay, so let’s get that out of the way.
I don’t care how awesome of a negotiator you think. There’s no way you can get somebody to shave hundreds of thousands of dollars off the price. That’s usually speaking, “That’s just not going to happen.”
Focus on the real possibility and negotiate accordingly. With the right preparation, you’d be surprised as to how successful you can be in buying real estate without the aid of a realtor.
