You obviously did not read the post to which I was responding wherein an unlicensed individual was advertising charging $1,500 for brokerage services.

Even if you use a real estate agent, you still need to pay those fees.

Read Post No. 22. If you pay someone to advertise and negotiate the sale, then how is that a FSBO? Also, as a buyer, I wouldn't feel comfortable if a non-attorney and unlicensed person prepared the contract and conducted the closing without a title company. If something goes wrong, who is responsible? I think that both the seller and the buyer are better served by using a licensed title company to handle the contracting and the closing.

Enjoy Retirement
 

[QUOTE=retiredguy123;2079551]Read Post No. 22. If you pay someone to advertise and negotiate the sale, then how is that a FSBO? Also, as a buyer, I wouldn't feel comfortable if a non-attorney and unlicensed person prepared the contract and conducted the closing without a title company. If something goes wrong, who is responsible? I think that both the seller and the buyer are better served by using a licensed title company to handle the contracting and the closing.

I've been in the mortgage biz for many years. Using a realtor does 2 things; it creates a larger selling arena, and it takes a lot of "work" away from you. If neither of these two things are important, and especially in this market, by all means do a fsbo. Also, don't discount using an outside realtor, instead of a villages sales person.

If you are shopping for a title company to handle it all for you, check out State Title. In fact, you can tell them you know me, Bruce Hancock, and they may help you out a bit.

Selling
 

Well over 40 years ago, my mother-in-law sold their house and pocketed a beautiful new Cadillac as a difference they would have had to pay a real estate agent. This is a fantastic market. My only suggestion is have someone take great photos and pay them a few hundred bucks and also go to several real estate sites to see what the market is for your square footage and your particular geographic area realtor.com and zillow.com but mostly use your common sense and price it at the right price that you're not going to have to wait months in other words don't overprice it by $50,000

Also, don't discount using an outside realtor, instead of a villages sales person.

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I've heard that the independent real estate folks outside TV are more open to a smaller fee...worth a try

Just curious....how many of you used 1 or 2 (MLS/VLS) Realtor(s) when you bought your home? How much did you pay them to help you find a home? If you bought by owner was that the only home you looked at?

I can't speak for how the sale of real estate works in The Villages but having just sold my R.I. home of 32 years I am glad I had an agent and a good one at that.

Our home was listed on MLS at 8 am a week ago Wednesday with a scheduled open house on the Sunday that followed. Our agent called us 2 hours after the listing went up to inform us he had received 9 calls from agents wanting to bring over very interested pre-qualified clients that day. We said fine, headed out of the house and left the rest to our agent who scheduled all 9 appointments in 15 minute intervals. When we returned 3 hours later our agent informed us 3 strong offers came in which we reviewed closely together. Due to the strength of those offers my agent contacted the 3 agents and told them by 6 pm the following day their clients were to give their final and best offers. Those 3 best and final offers came in to be nearly identical all $36k over asking. My agent then called the 3 agents and told them the offers were almost identical and they needed to do a little better if their clients really wanted the house. An hour or so later two offers came back $7,500 higher, and the 3rd offer the one we accepted came back that they would go $7,500K above the highest offer up to $650K, they were putting down $100K which was $50K higher than the other 2, waived the inspection which the others did not, and if the appraisal came in lower than the offer price they would make up the difference out of their pocket not ours which that was also not noted in the other offers. After all was said and done we sold our home $50K over asking with a hard to beat contract and our closing is scheduled for 4/29/22. That $50K above asking covered the money we spent doing upgrades getting our house sell ready as well as the agent's commission, and we really think looking at the comps in our area, had we not not done the upgrades and had an agent to handle the sale we would have likely ended up selling our home for $100K less than we did. So after all was said and done I believe we did come out $50K ahead of the game.

Tough decision to make using an agent vs doing a FSBO. Wish you the best of luck in whatever method you choose selling your home.

Real Estate Broker here. No, in Florida a seller’s disclosure is not required, but you should do one anyway because it reduces liability. Sellers are required to disclose any material defects that cannot be easily seen. There was a case of a cracked chimney that the seller knew of but didn’t disclose. The seller was found liable in court. Also, if you are selling yourself you may want to contact a brokerage that does a flat fee listing so your property shows up in the mls. That service usually runs around $500. Local real estate agents will bring their buyers. You can offer those agents 1 or 2 percent for their efforts. They will be glad for that in this market. They will also be glad to help you with the selling process. There’s this misconception that all real estate agents do is drive folks around and open doors. Yes, we do that, (there’s a lot of work that goes into settings up those showings). But the real work begins when a house is under contract. Getting sellers to the closing table isn’t easy. Deadline must be met, buyers get cold feet, accept the wrong offer and the deal will fall through. We just make it look easy to spare our buyers and sellers the stress. It’s hard work, but there’s nothing better than helping someone into a new home.

You know, someone may have mentioned that once or a thousand times...:1rotfl:

Care to back that up with some facts, rather than paint 100's of people with that broad brush?

We had a similar situation selling out home in NY. The Realtor got us offers significantly over ask. The pictures and video they took made the house look great. I know the Realtor is expensive but it's a judgement call. If you think you really know the value of your home and are not concerned about your time marketing it, showing it, and all the rest of the stuff that the Realtor does then go for it. If not get a good Realtor and let them do all the work. Remember, the Realtor's know what's going on in your community real time and know what people are looking for. They will also tell you to fix or change things that might not be apparent to you to get your house sold faster and get more money.

LOL, we were told that we were in the most desirable neighborhood. Don’t Jack the price of your home up to much just because someone thinks your neighborhood is where everyone want to move to.

Capital Gains
 

Question on selling FSBO and Capital Gains. Looking for clarification on if we would sell our home (and we have been here a year), would we still have to pay capital gains on the profit if under 250K, but we have not been in the house for 2 years. Can anyone explain capital gains a tad more on selling a house on our own and have a profit of less than $250K. I thought if you reinvested the monies into a new home prior to a year, you would be okay and not have to pay the taxes. But doing a little research that doesn't seem to be true.

The reinvestment rule has been gone for more than 20 years. The newer rule is that you must use the house as your primary residence for at least two of the past five years to avoid capital gains taxes. So, if you have been in the house for more than a year, but less than 2 years, you will owe capital gains taxes.