Real Estate: The Realtor Advantage.

• Author: SWAGEL, WILL

For many individuals and businesses, buying or selling a house or building may be the largest purchase or sale they will ever make.

While real estate agencies proliferate throughout Alaska, real estate professionals consider their greatest competition not to be each other, but those property owners who decide to sidestep agents' 5 percent to 6 percent commission (up to 10 percent for commercial transactions) by handling the deal themselves.

"If you had a $100,000 income tax problem would you attempt to deal with it without a CPA?" asks the National Association of Realtors Web site, realtor.com, touting its members' services. "If you had a $100,000 legal question would you deal with it without the help of an attorney?"

For buyers, using a professional means to gain help determining their buying power, to gain access to lists and computerized archives of properties, to get help with selecting the right property and to get aid with negotiating effectively to get the best price. A Realtor also performs due diligence and assists in securing financing.

Sellers can receive professional advice regarding pricing, improvements that need to be made prior to sale and marketing-including computer listings and virtual tours, negotiating a sale price and the apportioning of the closing costs. Further, real estate agents will make themselves available to show the property to prospective clients, saving the seller from that sometimes disruptive chore. The sellers generally shoulder the broker's fee.

Michael LaGuire, a real estate broker in Sitka, chuckles at the recent needling he got from a friend, referring to a "for sale by owner."

"They sold their property in a couple weeks all by themselves," the friend told LaGuire. "For $250,000!"

And LaGuire said, "Oh, for that $275,000 property?

"It seems to me," says LaGuire, the owner and broker of RE/MAX of Sitka, "that they left my commission on the table, with all the protections and services that comes with a Realtor and all the advice-plus a Hawaii trip for themselves (with the money left over after commission).

"There are many cases where people have sold without the aid of a professional and it has worked out okay," LaGuire says. "But the likelihood is less than if a professional is involved in the transaction."

Different Kinds of Pros

Most people use the terms interchangeably, but a Realtor or and a real estate agent are not the same thing. Real estate agent is the generic term; a Realtor is a member of...