“Saving almost $20K in agents fees and getting $70K more puts us $90K ahead. I’m happy about that!”
Read Dr Robyn’s story on how they approached selling their own property whilst also juggling homeschooling their children!
What services did PropertyNow provide, that assisted you most?
When people called the PropertyNow phone number, they were directed straight to our phone. I liked that. I also really liked the professional floorplan taken from my not-so-professional Paint job! And the flyers were just beautiful and so nicely packaged!
Were you hesitant before trying private selling? What made you decide to give it a go?
Not really. The local guy was appalling. Didn’t cross his Ts or dot his Is. Would’ve sold it for maybe $600K. We had to seriously re-think. We then had meetings with other agents who wanted 2.5-3.5% and told us they could sell it for perhaps $650K. We just didn’t think they were offering us a good deal and we were pretty sure they were low-balling us because we knew the market (and it was meant to be their job, ha!).
We got $720K selling it ourselves and the approx. $1K we spent on PropertyNow was way less than the $15K-$20K the agents would’ve taken for doing effectively nothing! Saving almost $20K in agents fees and getting $70K more puts us $90K ahead. I’m happy about that!
I was already home-schooling the kids and working for myself so what was one more job of selling a house ourselves?! Turns out it actually WAS hard work and plenty of stress but for $90K more in the space of 6 months, it was worth it.
Do you have any interesting, fun or unique stories to share about your experience?
We decided that the tranquillity our property offered was better without our noisy children present for the viewing! When we finally got that one sorted, we sold it straight away. Hilariously, I’d done all the walk-throughs but the proper offer we got was when I was hundreds of KMs away with the kids and my hubby took a couple of people through himself!
Sometimes I wonder if the house sells itself. You just need the right buyer not necessarily the right agent/seller. But somewhere in there I also knew that hubby would be the one to sell it, not me. Weird how things work out, eh?
When you sold your property yourself, how did it feel? Was it empowering? What are you going to do now?
We’ve already moved 1000km away (somewhere warmer!), a mere 5km from our land that we’ve bought where we are going to build our new house (well, hubby is going to build it, ha ha).
And yes, it WAS empowering when someone made us an offer. We had to haggle a little but we negotiated a price that we were willing to accept. I had to coach my hubby on what to text to the buyers, because I’m more a people person and a better communicator than he is and it worked out well enough for everyone involved. Team effort!
What do you plan to do now that you’ve sold, how will the sale benefit you?
As I stated before, we’ve already moved 1000km away and will be building our new house soon. Getting $90K more puts us in a MUCH better position for building our new house.
If you could go back in time and give yourself some advice before selling your own home, what would it be?
Be MORE prepared. Expect delays. Learn to let go a bit more and not stress so much: it will sell when it sells.
Get the kids out of the way from day dot when doing viewings!
And sell it yourself the FIRST TIME, not after the agents have dicked you around! Agents ended up wasting 3-4 months of our time before we decided to sell it ourselves (at the suggestion of a friend of mine who’d successfully used PropertyNow before).
If we’d just decided to bite the bullet and sell it ourselves first up, we would’ve got more for it.
Also, never try to sell a house when an election is on!
What was the hardest part for you personally and how did you overcome it?
The waiting. The not knowing. The unpredictability & unstable future. The what ifs. The worrying. The financial concerns. In the end, I figured that it wouldn’t sell for a year, so I just got on with things, made plenty of winter food for the freezer and decided not to worry. Of course THEN it sold (with a quick settlement, too!) and I had to pack like a madwoman whilst ploughing through the frozen food ASAP!
It was very nerve-wracking selling it ourselves but we got $90K more in the pocket than we would’ve with and agent, so if I try looking at it as we paid ourselves $180K/yr to sell it (but only worked for a year) then yeah, the stress was worth it. But I don’t want to go selling a house again in a hurry! However, we WILL sell ourselves when we do get around to selling again.
Is there anything else you think we should know?
Your staff were very helpful, kind and courteous and very human. I liked the interaction with them.