After living at 1438 Hollow Tree Court, Lilburn, GA 30047 for almost 15 years we are putting our lovely home up for sale.
We have loved the house and the subdivision, but if you have been reading my other entries here then you know why. We are either downsizing and staying in Atlanta, or preferably, leaving the country as employees of the Peace Corps. In either event it will be sold.
We know it is a bad time to be selling and a great time to be buying, but we have to sell, now, and do the best we can.
We decided to use a discount broker, Duffy Realty.
Why a discount broker? In the traditional setup you list your home with a full-service real estate agent, and agree to pay 7% commission. The agent places in on the MLS services. They do some marketing, create a flyer, put a sign in the yard, host some open houses, etc, but in most cases the home is sold by a completely different agent. This selling agent probably saw your home on a web site that is fed by the MLS services, or was told about it by their client who saw it on a web site. Then the 7% commission is split between the two agents. Duffy charges a flat $500 to get your home in the MLS services so it is available in the web pages searched by clients and other agents alike. When it is sold by another agent, that agent gets about 3.5% so your total outlay is much less. If someone just drives by and likes the house, you can sell it to them outright (not possible if listed in the traditional way).
So far the house has shown twice and it has only been two weeks, which is pretty good traffic for this economy. We have about a year to sell, so we are giving this a try.
UPDATE: 4/29/10. We have had a total of seven visits to the house in the last three months. In the meantime we have remodeled our kitchen, adding granite counter tops, a new cook-top, fan and sink. The lack of traffic is disappointing, and we are assuming we had it priced too high. Now that we have entered peak selling season (Spring/Summer) we are going to drop the price by almost 10%.
UPDATE: The house sold in July 2010.
Front View of our Home
