Thinking about selling your piece of Markham Ontario real estate? If so, you should explore all of your options. Selling a home can be a very expensive business, whether we are talking a Markham home or a Toronto waterfront condo. Sure you have a lot of money to make off of the sale, but you also stand to lose quite a bit as well. The more you know, the more you stand to gain for yourself during the sale process.
One piece of knowledge that is important for many home sellers is understanding the different types of listing agreements that are out there. Listing agreements are the terms under which a home seller agrees to work with a real estate broker in order to sell his or her home. The Markham or Oakville real estate agent employed by the broker who sells the house for the owner must abide by this agreement when the sale is complete.
One of the three types of listing agreements that a seller can enter into is the open listing agreement. Under this type of agreement, the seller is actually responsible for the sale of the house on his or her own. It is listed through a real estate brokerage of some sort, but no agent is hired to represent the seller. Instead, the onus is on the seller to arrange times for potential buyers to look at her homes for sale in Markham, as well as to complete the paperwork and additional advertising measures to sell the home.
The obvious advantage of this type of agreement is that a seller can get up to 50% off of the usual real estate commission, because she is not paying a selling agent to represent her. If a buyer is found through a buyer's agent, that is the only agent that will be paid a commission out of the sale money. That means only paying about 3.5% of the sale price to one real estate agent. That can be a significant saving when we are talking the sale of Toronto condos!
If you as an owner find a buyer without the help of any Markham or Etobicoke real estate brokers, then you don't have to pay any commission at all. That's an ideal scenario for many home sellers.
On the other hand, using an open listing agreement means quite a bit of extra work for the seller. It's not easy to navigate the stormy waters of the real estate world, particularly in the current economy. You also have to be ready to show a house whenever a potential buyer wants to see it, and that means keeping it in tip top shape at all times. Finally, many full service brokers won't offer open listings, because of course it cuts into their potential profit.
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