Selling House – FSBO, Flat Fee, low cost realtors

I will be selling my house next summer and I am starting to plan for thing now. I have bought/sold 3 houses in the past few years (divorce) and the thought of all of the commission I have paid out makes me cringe. I am exploring options for this next house sale and was wondering if any of you have experiences (good/bad) with some of the lower cost options out there. I have been using a relative of mine for all of my sales up until now, but he works for a large firm and I am paying roughly 5.5-6%. Other than the closing deal and negotiations, I don’t know that the service is much different from other firms. The last house I bought the owners paid roughly 4.5%, so I know there are lower cost options out there.

I have no problems taking on some of the work involved, but the legal paperwork needs to be handled by someone.

I sold my second home FSBO, the buyer’s realtor grossed up the sale price to get their commission and they handled the purchase agreement. The title company handles most of the other work, the piece you miss out on is the marketing of your home.

I was naïve and accepted an offer at my asking price (in 2002) before my first open house and probably could have gotten more. That said, our goal was to get out with a certain amount to roll into the next home…so no complaints.

I JUST sold my home, it took all of 3-4 hours. We waited two days to gather some extra bids and that got us an extra $7k. It was nice getting the realtors advice on what to fix, update, improve and some staging tips. I didn’t like paying over $20k in fees considering how easy it sold, but it was nice to have experienced professionals handle everything.

As Dave said, the selling side is pretty simple especially in this sellers market. You can pay a flat fee to a lawyer and have them assist you on the legalities. Buying is a different issue, and where a good realtor is the difference between getting the house and not. My good buddy is our realtor and handled both ends for us on our move recently, and earned every penny of the significant amount he made. As with most things you can have it done cheap, quick or well, and at best you can choose two of those 3 options, or pay a little more to know you are getting all 3.

A little off subject but I went down to the south end of sconny to help my elderly mother list / sell her house this last weekend. Holy crap is the market hot in her area (Holy Hill). 8 showings later and three offers over the weekend house was sold with many perks thrown in way over her asking price. All I can say is the house selling business is strong if your in the right area.

My nephew had a buddy who charged 3%. Not bad imho

It comes down to risk/reward. The low cost options leave more responsibility on you. What to accept in an offer or what to deny or counter.

Very good points listed above. Years ago, it was all about listing on the mls and newspaper ads. Now, many buyers are searching Zillow and others and “finding” homes on their own. So marketing, terminology, and protecting yourself with any declarations you need to list.

Understand your offers and what you can legally do or not do. Part of that commission is for protecting your interests. The more you know and understand is less you need to pay for.

The actual sale/closing is a straight forward process. Until your dealing with first time buyers, govt backed buyer programs,…most of the time, banks underwriters will come up with my re hoops to jump through and that usually goes back to the buyers. But some things or requested concessions will go back to the seller. So making sure you know and understand these processes determine if you need a Realator or not

The only thing realtors offer is marketing, sell the house on your own. A lawyer can write up the sales contract for $2-300 and the title company takes care of everything on their side. I bought 2 of my houses without a realtor so I had more room to negotiate.

If I were selling any time between now and the middle of next year, I’d for sure give it a go without a realtor. If you do not have any offers in this market, then you are beyond over priced or are missing something altogether. Find a local lawyer with some sort of real estate experience and get a quote on drafting up the papers. The last person I asked about it said it could be done for $400.

As for buying, we purchased the house we live in now without any realtor involved. We found the listing as a foreclosure and times were different (2013). I contacted the bank selling the property and offered them $40k less than they were asking. They countered with $20k less than asking price. I then offered $39k less than asking price and told them the offer was good through the upcoming Saturday at noon. Within a couple hours I had a call to set up the paperwork and make it happen.

Thanks for the input. My house is in an area that sees a lot of interest so I don’t worry much about the marketing, once the MLS is up people will find it.

With all of the tech out there today I was seeing houses show up for sale and contacting my realtor before he had a chance to look and tell me about them. It just seems that buyers have easy access to much of the same info. It’s just the transaction part that I need to figure out more.

Realtors don’t have anything to do with the transaction part, that is lawyers and title companies. Realtors are there for marketing.

onestout wrote:

The only thing realtors offer is marketing, sell the house on your own. A lawyer can write up the sales contract for $2-300 and the title company takes care of everything on their side. I bought 2 of my houses without a realtor so I had more room to negotiate.

^ This was my experience as well. Mom’s house never hit the market (4 Years ago). We paid the title company and mom’s attorney. Done deal.

The only marketing Realtors do is list on the MLS. 2% May get a FB add or listed on there web page, but 98% of homes are found on the MLS.

onestout wrote:

Realtors don’t have anything to do with the transaction part, that is lawyers and title companies. Realtors are there for marketing.

I would never defend a realtor! But….ours did more than that. They took profession photos, created a 3D interactive walking tour, told me where best to invest my updating dollars and my house sold with multiple offers in a few hours. Two houses down, she did a crappy job staging her home and it took her two months to sell.

I don’t know if it is available in your zip code but we sold a house to Zillow. No staging, marketing, final house clean up, etc. Cash payment. Complete transaction took three weeks.

If available in your zip code they will make you an offer within a couple of days. We just provided pictures and a list of recent/relevant improvements/updates. If nothing else you’d get a good, current, unbiased estimate of the value of your home.

This was an out of state home. Our NET was more than area relators suggested we LIST our house for. All in all a great transaction for us.

I sold my last house three years ago (divorce) and the ex demanded we had our friend who’s a realtor list it and be our guy.

In one day we had thirty prospective buyers look at it, three offers, all of them above asking price, we picked the highest, obviously, and I think in the end $27K came out of the sales price for everything. We each got a $50 gift card from our realtor so make sure to factor that in.

The guy didn’t do jack. Our first meeting with him he thought we should list it at $65K below what we got for it in a day. For some reason he didn’t believe me when I kept telling him it’s worth way more than what he was thinking. He started creeping up as he realized I was right but in my opinion we could’ve got another $20K easy.

He was with Keller Williams and the only thing of any value he provided with his services was photos after having the house staged. The ex was actually pretty stylistic and we had appealing stuff, but my advice would be too get rid of most of your stuff so people can picture their stuff in your house, and give a woman who’s trendy final say in what it looks like before taking pics. Women buy houses—men pay for them.

All our realtor did was post the pics he took on Zillow. That was it. MLS isn’t even very important anymore. Get yourself some decent pics after cleaning out most of your stuff, have a woman look it over, and then post the pics to Zillow and unless you’re delusional in what you want for it it’ll sell no problem in this market.

I’d sell now. In a year there’s no way the market will be this bearish for sellers. No way. It wouldn’t shock me if it tanks once all the covid money pumped in runs out and everyone who is unemployed can no longer pay their mortgage. Seriously, if I was for sure going to sell I’d pull the trigger and do it as fast as possible. There’s simply no better time….record low inventory of homes on the market.

I like your style and wish I could’ve done what you’re doing. I didn’t have much of a say in the matter but it still hurts to think about how much it cost me.

Good Luck!

bigcrappie wrote:

The only marketing Realtors do is list on the MLS. 2% May get a FB add or listed on there web page, but 98% of homes are found on the MLS.

Around here many houses don’t even make it on the MLS. We bought in december, and in the 6 months leading up to that i’d bet 60-75% of the houses we looked at, we got in 1-2 days before they were going to hit the MLS. That’s where a well connected realtor is handy. Ours found us exactly what we were looking for, we were the first in the door to tour it, and made our offer 15 minutes after arriving for the walkthrough. Since buying, I’ve had 3 different realtors stop by asking if we were interested in selling.