Blog.ByTheOwner.com

A recent article explains that real estate agent’s commissions might end up costing consumers even more money. The article states that the Ontario Government is considering combining the GST and PST into one tax. Currently only the GST (5%) is charged on a real estate agent’s commission. A combined tax could be 7% or 8%. Here is the tax that a person using an agent has to pay right now:

Agent’s Commission = $15,000
GST paid by seller = $750

This means that seller’s need to pay an additional $750 on top of the large commission of $15,000 (another reason to not use an agent!). This amount would be even more if there is only one tax is used and that tax is 8% (for example).

http://www.movesmartly.com/2009/02/harmonized-tax-would-hit-renovations-resales.html

There are many costs involved with selling a home and the more you pay, the more tax you pay. Save your money and sell privately!

ByTheOwner.com

This Monday, February 16th, ByTheOwner.com set a record with 49,000 website visitors to our website. This sets a new mark for us. Private selling is taking off in this new real estate market. Seller’s cannot afford to drop their price AND use an agent.

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This picture says it all. In this market, the best way to sell your home is privately. As home prices drop, home owners selling with an agent are not able to LOWER their price AND still pay commission.

Here is a link to the ByTheOwner.com’s listing that sold while two other agent homes down the street remain on the market:

ByTheOwner.com SOLD

To compare the amount of money that an owner keeps selling with ByTheOwner.com vs what an owner would keep selling with an agent, we can look closely at the 2 other homes in this photo.

Home Number 1: is currently asking $266,900 for their home, with an agent. If this home sells for 98% of asking price and the owner pays 5% commission + GST, then the owner will ONLY KEEP $247,830 from the sale of their home. This amount is $27,070 less than the price of the ByTheOwner.com home.

Home number 2: is currently asking $257,900 for their home, with an agent. If this home sells for 98% of asking price and the owner pays 5% commission + GST, then the owner will ONLY KEEP $239,476 from the sale of their home. This amount is $35,423 less than the price of the ByTheOwner.com home.

Save money and sell privately!

ByTheOwner.com

Back in November of 2008, the Canadian Real Estate Association forecast that 2009 homes sales would decrease by 3% (See press release here).

Knowing that CREA predicted 1.5% drop in 2008 and the actual drop was 12%, we took their 2009 prediction with “a grain of salt” (See ByTheOwner blog on Real Estate Predictions). How could they be predicting that sales would drop by 3% when they just dropped by 12%?

So it came as no surprise that CREA amended their 2009 forecast of a 3% and they are now forecasting a drop of 17% in 2009 (See press release here)

CREA is also forecasting an 8% decline in housing prices. This means if you use a real estate agent you will be looking at a 8% + 5% = 13% drop in what you take home from the sale of your home (compared to 2008). The time is now to sell privately and save as much as you can from the sale of your home!

ByTheOwner.com

Welcome to February!

ByTheOwner.com has had 80 homes sell in the first 5 days of February! At an average house price of $300,000, this equals $1,260,000 million dollars saved in real estate commissions (Assuming 5% + GST).

According to our recent testimonials, the key to our customer’s success has been:

- Patience!
- Blocking out the agents who only want to list your property!
- The help from the ByTheOwner.com rep, our sales coach, and our customer service team!

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Real estate agents spend a lot of money trying to slow down the For Sale By Owner movement in Canada. They have done billboards, and TV commercials, yet nothing stops our sold listings from growing and the agent’s sold listings from decreasing. In 2008 ByTheOwner.com’s sold listings increased 20% and real estate agents sold listings decreased 20%.

Here is the lastest information one of our customer’s received from a real estate agent. The original information had “Right now, this person is selling his home” (in a vain attempt to convince the private seller that using an agent is easy: Ya right, easy for $15,000-$20,000!!!)

However, when our customer passed this information on to us, we edited the text a little! Ha!

Have you often wondered about the published real estate numbers that say “sold for 109% of asking”? How about the overall mls average of “homes sell for 98% of asking”. Or “Sold in 1 week”? We too have wondered, but last week it all became clear…

We closely watched one home first listed by an agent in October of 2008 at an asking price of $419,000. This asking price was dropped to $379,000, then $349,000, then $299,000 and then it dropped to $289,000. Soon after the last price drop, the sold sign went up and the eventual sold price was much less than the $289,000. Of course, the stats will show that this property sold for 90% of asking price, but this only compares it to the last price change! An accurate stat would show that the home sold for 60% of the original asking price.

Incorrectly calculating the % of asking price, is simply hiding the real issue and making it appear that agents are selling homes more successfully than they are. Here is another example of creative statistics…

In regards to “Days On Market” or the time it takes to sell a home, the above home will be shown as sold in less than 10 days! Another home right around the corner took 4 months to sell with an agent, but mls calculated it a sold in 3 days because the price was changed 3 days before it sold!

It just goes to show that the public needs to closely examine the numbers published by real estate boards. But it would also be easier if the real estate boards simply published more accurate numbers.

ByTheOwner.com