Why Home Seller Sense?
The business of selling homes is increasingly dynamic. Traditions in the brokerage world put brokers at the center of selling and buying (and leasing) nearly all real property — residential, commercial, industrial, and so on.
The Internet disrupted the traditions. The disruption puts publicly available, nationally comprehensive websites at the center of buying without question. Buyers (especially the younger generations) need little, if any, help to find the neighborhoods and properties that most appeal to their needs.
For sellers, the picture is not quite so Internet-centric. Brokers continue to monopolize one essential tool — the multiple listing service. Sellers need a broker relationship to advertise a property to the Internet-centric buyer population.
Apart from the dominance of real estate brokers over MLS, the centrality of brokers at least in the marketing of properties is much diminished from just a decade ago. Advertising properties no longer focuses on flyers or magazine ads or socializing with buyers’ brokers. Open houses are far less important than before the rise of social media and non-MLS websites like Zillow.com and Realtor.com and Homes.com.
A listing in the local MLS without much more will expose properties to nearly all potential buyers quickly and efficiently. Once a buyer finds an appealing property, the traditions of brokerage services can return to the process with more value, but the buyer and seller still have alternatives that once were obscured because brokers dominated the selling and buying activity from the very outset. Brokers can be quite helpful but so can lawyers.
At Home Seller Sense, we aim to equip home sellers with essential insights and practical strategies to re-take control over the sale of their property. Our aim is to demystify the home selling process and reveal the new balance of power between sellers and brokers. We hope to empower sellers to make informed (if not enlightened) decisions about how to list, market, and ultimately contract for and close the sale of their property.
Although the role of licensed brokers clearly has changed since the emergence of publicly available listings and social media, we do not urge the exclusion of brokers from the sale of property. We say that the role of the broker has changed. Sellers have choices about whether and how to work with brokers. Home Seller Sense seeks to make those choices as informed as possible.