YOU Need To Be In Charge
You’ll have to forgive that the title of this blog was “borrowed” from my favourite personal finance guru, Gail Vaz-Oxlade. Gail hosts the TV show “‘Till debt do us part“.
Gail’s blog has an enormous wealth of information (pun intended). However, I thought that her blog entitled “YOU Need To Be In Charge” contained a very valuable lesson to anyone selling or buying a home.
Gail points out that she watched a show called “Property Virgins” where “the host tell a couple that since the bank had pre-approved them for $350,000, that’s how much they should spend. She tried to convince her poor –sucker-clients that since the bank had run all their numbers, checked their credit history, calculated their debt-to-income ratio, it was the best judge of how much debt they could afford to take on. ”
Gail’s comments and suggestion that “YOU need to be in charge” is very similar to the message the ByTheOwner.com teaches. The first line of our Seller’s Guide quotes Epictetus: “Only the educated are free”.
We believe that selling a home, with or without an agent, involves education. Before you list a home, you need to know all the costs involved and you need to know how much money you will keep at the end of the process. You also need to know what services are being provided so that you can calculate if it’s a good decision.
Knowledge is power!
ByTheOwner.com
October 28th, 2009 at 11:29 am
I have watched Sandra Rinomato’s show and I agree that is very forceful towards her clients about the amount of money they should spend. I find her tactics very rude most of the time. On one of her shows she also told her client not to trust a private sale seller as they should beware of the way in which they sell their home and that the buyer would be opening a “can of worms” as she put it. The client did pursue the private sale so as to get her home at a better price and Rinomato was not impressed and told the “audience” to beware if they were ever to purchase privately. The seller is in charge, as is the buyer and no agent should make their client feel like they must spend a certain amount so she makes more, and no seller should to be badmouthed like that by an agent. Sellers should be allowed to pusue legal action on agents for blackballing properties.