Real Estate Agent
 

We’re thinking of selling our house this winter while we’re there and would like your thoughts about hiring a Village agent vs an outside company. Do Village agents show homes listed by other companies? Vice versa? Any opinion/information would be appreciated.


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Sally Love

I really think that The Villages sell homes well, but you can't just put an inflated price on a home and it must be clean and uncluttered and smell nice and correspond with other homes with the same kind of location and view or lack of them..

We like Jim McLaughlin who is with The Villages. He helped us with our first home buy here and then when we were looking for a home for year around occupancy, he showed us both new and used homes. Jim is NOT pushy, is honest and helpful and reliable.

We have had several homes sell within days in our neighborhood. I think I would give some thought to for sale by owner with a good closing company to guide you. I think it is still less than a thousand dollars to use a closing lawyer.

I am NOT a realtor. No one in my family is a realtor but we have several pesky lawyers.

The Villages is the way to go but I think but may use a MLS realtor. They can not sell each others. So The Villages realtors can not sell MLS and visa versa. Many also sell their own and some use this site and others, especially VillagersFSBO For-Sale_By-Owner Homes in The Villages

The Villages will advertise you home more than anyone especially in The Daily Sun.

Sally Love. I will never again list a home to sell with The Villages, especially if you live in the northern part. Most agents are not interested in this area. Too long a drive.

Lyle Gant

I heard from a couple of sellers who initially signed with Villages agents that their homes were not shown much and did not sell. After their listing agreements expired they went with MLS agents and their houses sold within reasonable time periods.

Fsbo

My understanding is The Villages do not show and can not sell houses that are listed in the Multiple Listing System. And, I believe The Villages agents are not Realtors, but simple transaction agents, as they do not belong to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Realtors can not sell houses listed by The Village agents and vice-versa. I believe this is unique to certain communities. In my opinion, it does a disservice to the public, by forcing people to choose only The Village's agents for what they list, especially, new homes.

Outside of TV land, developers usually allow Realtors to sell their product, but some don't, unless they are having a problem selling their product, and then they offer Realtors larger commissions.

Not all Realtors, and not all non-Realtor agents, are more knowledgeable about the products they sell. Ask a lot of questions. A listing agent usually doesn't sell your home, they just list it, and put it out there for other Realtors or agents to sell.

Homes here are not hard to sell and we sold our first one here without any realtor, just a closing agent and it cost us $700. People are lined up to buy homes here. If you offer it clean and well presented at a price that other similar homes with similar views are offered it will sell in a short time.

I get a little tired of all the reverence for the big
"R" in front of the word realtor. It is something in my opinion that the "R" company is selling.

Properties of The Villages sells over 70% of all homes listed in The Villages.

I am not a realtor, never have been, never wanted to be and am not much a fan of them. I don't work for The Villages either and never met any Morses in person, but I hope to some day.

I only know of one person who attempted to sell their "pre-owned" home through TV and regretted it. I'm sure many others were happy but this was the only one I knew of. Eventually they switched to an outside agent who sold it within days for the same asking price that TV was asking. Their OPINION was the TV "agents" had very little interest in selling homes that were not new in the new areas and their home was just a second thought for the agent. We bought ours through an outside agent. We also had a TV agent and all she wanted to do was push us into the new Fenney area at that time which we did not want.

We sold our pre-owned home, listed with our original TV sales agent from whom we saw it. it sold before the agents came through, and before the pictures hit the TV web site. Someone must have been talking about it in the sales office. It was a clean, uncluttered designer with many (but not a fantastic amount of) upgrades, had a privacy wall behind it, and some lovely landscaping. I think the extra pantry with coffee station we had built across the back of the kitchen (begonia, like a gardenia but with a golf cart garage) might have done the trick. Only two people viewed it, and both made overprice offers.


I wouldn't hesitate to go with a TV sales agent. Especially Tommy Incorvia (sp) or the one Gracie recommended.


We bought our CYV in the same village of Tamarind Grove, privately. Our luck was the owners had what we wanted, when we wanted it, in the exact spot we wanted, and a friend let us know about it. We bought it long distance, sight unseen, although the friend went through with Facetime. So you might try FSBO. That and TV sales agents would be my preferred choices.

Like several others have mentioned, try selling it FSBO for at least a few weeks. As Grace said, make sure it is clean, well staged, uncluttered, landscaping trimmed and looking good, etc.
Do some marketing - make up color brochures with all the pertinent information about the property. Look at real estate brochures available online for ideas.
Advertise in the Daily Sun, and on Zillow.com and VillagersFSBO. Most serious buyers are looking at all the pertinent options.
Buy signs (available at Lowes, Home Depot, Ace Hardware) and use them in your yard or window according to your covenants.
Hold open houses and put signs with directions on the main roads near the neighborhood. Advertise the open houses in the Daily Sun with BOLD Open House in ad.
When people come to your open house give them a brochure and let them know if they have any questions to let you know - then leave them alone.
Talk to a local title company and let them know you want their documents for an "offer to buy" and Real Estate Contract. They will help you through the processes you need to follow.
FWIW I am a former realtor and have sold six homes FSBO

Good luck and good selling!

Like i said, I am sure there are lots of happy people as well a some unhappy folks. That was just my experience when we bought here 2 1/2 years ago and our friend's who recently sold. When we bought in Jan '17 all they were interested in doing was selling Fenney. That was/is our one and only home so I have no further experience.

And I have to say, we were concerned about our TV sales agent wanting to show our home as opposed to new homes. So we had him out for an interview. He convinced us that they were very much into showing pre-owned homes at that time, because Fenney & south was new and wasn't connected to the rest of TV except by car. It might be more popular now.


We listed in March. People who were renting were still here, and many were looking, including our buyers. The house was great, just too big for us and too many maintenance issues when we were about to become snowbirds. I think we were in the right place at the right time, with the right house.

Actually, our sales agent did sort of a (legal) bidder's war and bumped the offer up to over 10% of the asking price.