[sschuler1]

We made the mistake of listing our home with a friend last year, and we decided to put it back on the market with a realtor that we had interviewed this year. We interviewed four realtors before we made our decision. The one we chose is the number one sales team for Coldwell Banker in the state of Michigan, and number 14 in the country. They are so confident in their abilities to sell your house that they don't ask you to sign for any specified length of time. You can get out of your contract anytime you want. They ask if you would be willing to pay 7% commission, because they offer the buyers agent 4% instead of the typical 3%. They say that this is enough incentive to have other agents really want to show your house over others. We declined, and went with the 6% commission. We had one other realtor that we were considering that said he would only take 5%, but he didn't have the sales numbers that this team could boast. We did bring up the fact that we could go with this other guy at 5%, and our realtor said they would only take 5% if their team sells the property.

This realtor does not do the print advertising that our realtor did last year. They told us that print advertising is a thing of the past in real estate marketing, and I tend to believe them. People are looking for homes on the internet nowadays, and the virtual tours really make open houses obsolete as well. We had four open houses last year, and they were a complete waste of time. We are averaging about 12 to 16 views on our virtual tour every week, and we are getting 1 or 2 showings every week from those views. We feel very comfortable that this real estate team knows what they are doing.