I spoke with a realtor whom I was referred to initially, until we discovered that we did not have enough equity in our house to cover the traditional 6% commission. I won't debate here on my blog whether a realtor's commission is fair or not, because I'm not entirely sure. I'm not sure that the tier structure is fair. As you can see, our house is listed for $175,000. A realtor's commission on that is $10,500. Imagine a realtor selling one of those $500,000 homes, and expecting a commission of $30,000. Could we expect the same level of service as the seller of a higher priced house? In theory, yes, obviously a professional would treat us with the same level of service but when human nature is taken into account, I'm not as confident. In any case, the realtor we talked with was highly recommended to us by a friend on a professional basis and we expected nothing but the best. However, the CMA (Comparative Marketing Analysis) generated by the realtor was a little depressing taking into account our current mortgage and equity. My wife told me to check into Buy Owner.
I am very impressed with Buy Owner. What Buy Owner offers a seller is marketing and screening services. We bought the Executive package which gives us a page in their magazine. We also get a certain number of photographs and there was a special on virtual tours. The photographer should be contacting me today to set up an appointment. The pictures on our seller's page were taken from the consultant's camera just to get the ad started. I spent the weekend trimming the bushes in front of the house, cutting the grass, pulling weeds, and laying down mulch. When we bought the house the previous owners spent a great deal of time on landscaping and I was attempting to get some of the curb appeal back.
If you're looking for a house in a good, central location in a safe neighborhood, check out our page. We live in the center of Camden County, New Jersey, right off the White Horse Pike. The Lindenwold station of the PATCO High Speed Line is less than two miles from our house. This offers service to center city Philadelphia and Atlantic City. My wife used to work in Philly and took the train over every workday. We're also under an hour from "the Jersey Shore". We live on a quite, friendly, tree-lined street that is frozen in time. The street is safe and the neighbors are kind and friendly. We hold a block party every year in time for Independence Day. The party will be this Saturday. We get a permit to block the street off, set up barricades, hire a DJ, and bring our barbeque grills and patio furniture the our front yards and just enjoy a day outside. We have a Chinese Auction (which my wife is running this year) and plenty of other festivities. Oh, yeah, also plenty of beer or other varieties of "happy juice".
There is a pizza restaurant just around the corner. I walk over to get food. Across the railroad tracks is Sharky's, which has the best wings around.
If you're looking for a 4 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath cape cod on a quarter acre in this kind of neighborhood, check out our page. If you're interested, Buy Owner offers mortgage pre-qualification services which take only seconds. In the past, I've had to find a realtor, get a referral to a mortgage broker, fill out an application, wait for an answer, then go back to the realtor. The process took weeks. With Buy Owner, you can find out within moments if you can qualify to buy a house.
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