Home sale
 

We're getting ready to list our parents' Premier house on the market. Just learned that there are two ways to list it. What are the pros and cons of going with The Villages agent or the outside agent? Thanks in advance!

Pros & Cons to both.


Some posters are anti-Villages and will recommend an outside broker.


Bottomline, no group sells more homes than The Villages brokers.
(whoever you pick, ask how many Villages home they have sold in the last year)



No matter who you use, if it is priced right.............it will sell quickly
(Mostly a premier......very limited supply and no new construction)


Good Luck.

I would give The Villages a 90-day listing, not 6 months like they will want. You won't be competing with new houses because there are no new premiers. If they can't sell it in 90 days, then I would consider using an outside agent. If it has a nice view, it will be much easier to sell than if it is on an interior lot.

Here’s my RECENT experience buying - The Villages homes were overpriced by 15,000 - 25,000. Liked many, but didnt think seller would come down that much.

Bought a house from MLS realtor.
2 of the Villages listings were resisted MLS, 20,000 less and sold in weeks.

My opinion (and its my opinion) is TV realty (not the realtors, but the leadership); pushes toward new construction vs resale.

I think a lot depends on the location. North of 466 to 42, I would list with MLS.

Been here a while and follow the real estate market as a “hobby”. My quick answer: If it’s priced at or just below market, it will sell quickly. If you try and get 50K more than market - not so much. It appears to me either will get the job done.

Depends upon the agent and how hungry they are to spend time on the listing to get it sold quickly

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If it doesn't sell in 90 days it's priced too high and most likely nothing to do with the listing agent.

Correct, that is only your opinion and many times the owner is firm on setting their price too high instead of listening to the listing agent. We live on a small street having only 8 homes, all stucco designers south of 44. Of these eight homes 5 have been sold, all listed with TV agents. 2 homes sold the first day, 1 home sold the first week, and 2 homes sold the fist month. That is a pretty good record.

Make sure you check your home, once its for sale, on the web and ensure everything is ok. There can be some crazy occurrences. We purchased a home that had been on the market in TV on MLS for 3 months because the out of town owner listed with an agent in Ocala and it was listed with the entirely wrong address and never viewed for the entire 3 months. We saved well over 50K.

We had a bad experience with Villages Realty. They do like to push new homes. Best Agency is Realty Executives. They sell almost the same amount of resales as Villages and almost as much as all other outside combined. Very professional and hard working company and agents.

the villages job is to sell New homes, go with Remax

I have an episode on my YouTube channel that talks about the difference between MLS Realtor and The Villages Sales Associate
What is the difference in a Real Estate Professional in The Villages |How to Buy a Home - YouTube
Let me know if I can help

Kent Merchant at Realty Executives did a fabulous job for us. Recommend highly.

Everybody has a story of selling their house in two minutes. If looking for a new home, buyers must buy from the villages. On the resell, I think they are less interested but do so out of necessity. Probably a good sales person, regardless if they are a villages sales or outside sales, would do a good job. Hard to know beforehand. I sold with Tammy Freilich (sp) at Remax. Great pictures! Lots of personal attention.

MLS, in fact I did FSBO thru MLS for 2.5% Houzeo cost $399 to list it. link

Very simple process done online in simple steps, you can not get on the main MLS directly when you sign up they have a licensed broker upload the listing.

Not true about priced high.
TV couldn't sell a pool home in 70 days, I sent a friend in and they pushed to new in 5 minutes.
I was told that but didn't believe it.

TV broker just kept coming up with excuses asked to drop the price, that's when I sent in a secret shopper, after seeing the way they steered to new I canceled the contract.
I was told new has higher commission and bonus incentives

Best move ever, about a week MLS had 1-2 showings a day.
Sold for 15K more and saved 2.5% or $10K in commission

came out ahead about 25K

only way TV sells fast is if you list it low, most of the brokers are order takers not sales people

Try selling it yourself on nextdoor. Many of our neighbors sold this way and got over asking. And the plus, NO real estate fees. What do you have to lose??

We have always used the best agent in the Villages area, Chris Day .
Contact him at NextHome KD Premier Realty 352 988-7777 or 352 561-8322
You will not regret it.
Regards, Alan Perkins

The Villages will put your house at or just above prices of new homes being built. When taking their customers to show your house their line is " you know we have a brand new premier home just built with a warranty that just fell thru and Hummm I believe its about 10k cheaper than this one if you want to see it." 5 or 6 % selling a used home vs 40% profit on a new one. Which one do you think they will try to sell first your resale or the new one that just happened to fall thru? The Villages is known to use this technique all the time.

Don't use the villages. Too lengthy just don't. Maybe just list it yourself. Where is it.

MLS - Multiple Listing Realtors
BLE - The Villages Realtor

MLS list and sell houses in Florida
BLE list and sell houses in The Villages

The Villages is different because sometimes resales cost more than new homes. The commission to list and sell is about 6%. The listing agent gets half and the buying agent gets half. I think the VLS agents steer people to new construction for less money. MLS agents can Not sell new construction in The Villages.

Real estate is interesting. We are very much amateurs. You are ready to, need to sell.
You contact a broker. The presentation goes something like I can get you $$$$$$$$$$.
Their goal is to get the listing. What happens is if they have the listing and say a broker on multiple listing sells it they still get part of the commission. What is the house worth? It is worth whatever it sells for. In terms of pricing and selling. Statistics are not really valid. You only sell to one buyer. There is no shortage of lookers. Do they just want to see how you decorated. Landscaped etc or are they really buyers?

The house we sold in our previous state. We bought first in the villages and then put our home up for sale. I sure some will say that is nuts but it left me in control on both ends.
We listed the home for sale with a broker. The negotiated commission was 4%, truth they were very helpful. We were told no one wants wall to wall carpeting. Ours was good quality, I read a humorous article about emerald green carpet-exactly what we had. Our 78 year old house had real hardwood floors and they were in new condition, the previous owner also had them covered with carpeting.

I figured it would take 6 months to sell. We sold it in a week, got full price and a cash deal.

My opinion, having done sales. Sales people like new stuff, new toys to play with.
If, your property sits unsold. It is public information on zillow or realtor dot come.
Anyone looking is going to offer less and/or wonder what is wrong with it that it is sitting unsold.

Commission. For sale by owner. Both the seller and the buyer think hey no broker
one thinks I can pocket more. The other thinks I can pay less. By the same token
on a 350,000 home where you pay 4% commission that is 14,000, you net 336,000.
At 7% commission to net 336,000 you need to sell that 350,000 home for 362,000.
362,000 less 7%=336,660 net. A direct deal with a seller, first of all an attorney is far more important and they will likely charge you more to do the closing.

Like most things we have the choice of making a right or a wrong decision. For most people we tend to say I shoulda, coulda mighta. I have no trouble with based on my situation, collecting information based on what I know, knew, I did the right thing.

People do not think professionally. Ken Jones got xxxxx, my kitchen is nicer so I will not take a penny less than 10% more than Ken got. They do not think about the cost of sitting on that unsold home. On the Zillow kind of lists, our sold home has gone up in value. So has our place in the Villages.

My experience purchasing a resale through The Villages real estate
 

I just purchased a resale in the Villages. It was listed by The Villages. I was not steered to purchase new like some others mentioned. In fact, they left it up to us just as I expected. We did look at new homes and resales. I think the Villages did a great job and don't have any complaints. Best of luck to you!

We bought a premier home in 2019. We had bought a designer home in 2017 and realized we needed something larger. Spent 5 months looking at Zillow, The Villages website, and the Daily Sun, then going to open houses.

The home we bought happened to be listed by The Villages. We noticed the house on their website, made an appointment to see it 2 days after the listing, and made an offer the day after we saw it. In our case it made no difference whether the house was listed by VLS or MLS. We would have found it either way. We didn't use a realtor until we made an offer.

The quality of the listings for the 25 houses we looked at was very similar, whether VLS or MLS. I thought MLS realtors did a little better job of open houses. I liked Debbie/Matt Roberts and Cindy Wise.

After our offer was accepted we listed our designer house with The Villages and we had a full price offer in 16 hours for 10% more than we paid.

Currently VLS has 5 premier homes and MLS has 6.

All 3 of my transactions were through The Villages and they were really easy. Used Lynn Peterson and his daughter.

I would talk to an MLS and a VLS realtor, see how they would price and market your house, then pick the one you prefer.

Village agents main focus is to sell NEW homes from the developer not pre owned. If you are looking for quick resale at a good price check out Karen Kemperman at Keller Williams.

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I think you can pay a bonus to a licensed agent, but a salaried employee, who does not have a Florida license, cannot receive income based directly on a sale.

That only means you priced it too low to begin with IMO

Because TV started at low $$ in their best interest not yours and you paid 5%

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That is not true. All of the MLS agents total sales are about equal to TV used home sales so one agency can't sell the same as TV unless the others don't sell any homes.

Where do you come up with this stuff. The TV agents sell over 200 used homes per month, just about the same number as new homes. We tried using Remax when we bought down here, they had only one home that met our requirements for us, TV had dozens but none could compare to the deals that were offering in Fenney at that time.

Totally agree about Chris Day—fantastic realtor!!!
 

Totally agree about Chris Day—fantastic realtor!!!

Does it have a pool? We have been looking at Premiers but none seem to have pool

Hands down for a resale, put it for sale with an outside realtor. They will put it on the MLS, and people everywhere can easily see the house. The Villages realty only put it on their own website. My parents tried to sell their house for a year and a half with the Villages realty because they wanted to move near us. Finally, we ended up moving close to them. After some years, we got to the point I had to sell their house. Listed it with the Villages realty. After over 3 months of nobody coming by to see the house, we paid the money to cancel the contract and went with Keller Williams in Summerfield. It was sold within 2 months.

If you do a FSBO, isn't the closing and paperwork more complex in The Villages? What professional services will you need to pay for that is not needed if you were using a realtor? And who would you recommend?

Outside agent. You will get local,national and international coverage on your house and you will also work with a Realtor!

Why?
 

First of all knowing what I do with this real estate market for sale by owner would be my way to go as I am comfortable doing research and being a salesperson myself. Honestly do you think a real estate agent is worth $20,000 for maybe a week's work? If they are good agents that's probably what they are getting for the time spent on your house as the MLS or The villages system computers are doing 90% of the work it's not oh I know a great house exactly where you want it. Most people today are very comfortable looking online on Zillow and other places to see what area that they want to live in and figure out what's good in bad like not being right next to the highway or coming right off a bridge if they want to be near a community pool they can tell where it is on the map. That being said if you do want your hand being held I would recommend Joe Hamblin, (352) 874-6495. He knows the villages from having lived there many years as well as the alternate communities that would save you $100,000. He is ethical, soft sell, and very truthful. Further on listings that he himself has done he does the best photography both regular 3D and drone which makes a real difference. In fact I have known him to sell homes over the phone do people that have not even come down that is how much they trust him. I would appreciate if you do call him tell him Jules sent you . I've had breakfast with him before covid every month for quite a while and he is a polite individual, he does work with his wife so it is up to you who you decide you want. Yes you can save selling by yourself and also you can get in trouble by selling by yourself unfortunately but Joe will not leave you down

It is not a problem at all. There are title companies who will provide you with a FSBO package, including all of the required forms and they will handle the closing for a reasonable price. It is important to contact them before you start to show the house, so you will have a sales contract form for the buyer and seller to sign when you make a deal. Two companies that I know of are Tri-County and McLin Burnsed.

I seriously advise you to NOT use a Villages realtor!! They are allegedly told to sell the new homes first! Two friends of mine used a Villages realtor to sell their two homes because they were planning on getting married and were buying a new premier home together. . I had heard bad things about the Villages salespersons , and had been a realtor myself in the past , so knew the trucks that can be used in the trade. They didn’t follow my warning and hired a Villages saleswoman. Neither one of my friends had offers on their houses for several months, which is very unusual in the Villages. Eventually a neighbor of my friend posed as an interested buyer and allegedly caught the saleswoman promoting the new homes instead of my friends house! She reported it to my friends but they feared breaking their contract with the saleswoman! They did challenge her which resulted offers on their homes, much lower prices than they wanted . Unbelievable! Out of desperation, due to the purchase requirements on their new home, they accepted the lower offers. They lost a lot of money. I was very upset that they didn’t cancel the Villages salesperson’s contract, but decided to stay out of their business to preserve our friendships. I therefore urge you to use a regular licensed real estate agent, not Village salespersons who allegedly don’t have to follow the same rules of the real estate commission.