Ways to Selling Your Home Without a Realtor
What’s the biggest cost you’ll face when you sell your home?
Of course, it’s the 6 percent real estate commission. Let me explain.
Imagine you are selling your home for $350,000. A standard 3 percent listing commission will cost you $10,500. You’ll also need to pay the buyer’s agent a standard 3 percent commission. So that will be another $10,500. Therefore, the total will work out to $21,000.
That’s a lot of money and reason enough for selling your home without a realtor contract.
But you might be wondering, “Will it take me a long time to sell my house without a realtor?” According to Realtor.com data, nationwide, a typical home spent 54 days (around 8 weeks) on the market in December 2021. This timeframe was 65 days in December 2020 and a whopping 80 days in December 2019.
The good news is the time your home will likely spend on the market is at a historic low. This means you’ll be able to sell your home fast. And there’s a higher likelihood that you will collect the full asking price for your home.
While it’s true that a real estate agent’s commission adds up to thousands of dollars, it is possible to sell your home without a realtor and pocket this money. But you’ll need to commit time and resources. This post discusses some tips for selling your home without a realtor.
#1: Getting Your House Ready for Marketing
a. Repairs
You don’t need to go for any major renovations. But take care of all the quick repairs because small things could deter potential buyers. Call a handyman or handywoman and survey your house. Some easy fixes I suggest include:
- Door locks, knobs, handles, and squeaky doors.
- Leaky faucets, running toilets, and clogged drains.
- Broken appliances, window glass, and squeaky windows.
- Loose tiles, cracks in the walls, and a leaky roof.
- Stains on carpet, floor, and walls.
- Fused bulbs and loose connections.
Depending on how fast you want to sell your house and how much money you are willing to spend on getting your house ready, you can make more replacements. For instance, if your cabinets are worn out, you could install new hardware on them. Likewise, if your appliances are dated, you could buy new ones. You could also consider giving the interior of your house a fresh coat of (neutral color) paint.
b. Photography and Photo Editing
In these difficult times of pandemic, the majority of home buyers shop online to find their homes. So for most people, viewing professional photographs is an extremely important aspect of their home-buying experience.
A staged home typically sells for 17 percent more compared to a non-staged home. An added benefit is that staged homes sell fast—they sell in 11 days or less. Statistically, that is 87 percent faster than non-staged homes.
The first steps to staging your home for a quick sale are cleaning, decluttering, and depersonalizing. Potential buyers really need to visualize themselves living in your home. But if your house is messy, they won’t be able to do so.
After thoroughly cleaning your home and getting rid of clutter, you could conceal personal items and family photos. Make sure buyers can move around your home easily. Rearrange the furniture, and put bulky items in self-storage. You could eventually move them to your new home. The point of minimizing “things” in your home is that a crowded room appears small.
Hire a professional photographer or go one step further and opt for real estate photo editing services. It’s the easiest way to highlight the best assets of your home and impress potential buyers. Photo editing can also erase small imperfections on the walls and floors.
In today’s predominantly online world, the first impression of your home is professional photographs. If you do it right, you could pique a buyer’s interest, and they’d be keen to visit your home in person. But don’t make the mistake of posting too many photographs in your listing. The right number is anywhere between 22 and 27.
It’s not just the online listing where you could use your home’s photos. You could also use them in signage, flyers, and social media posts.
c. Videos
The selling power of video is indisputable. A real estate listing with video gets 403 percent more inquiries than a listing without video. Also, 70 percent of homebuyers watch virtual house tours. And 85 percent of buyers and sellers prefer to work with a real estate agent who uses videos for marketing. These are compelling statistics.
You definitely need to make a video tour of your home. A virtual tour is a precursor to the real thing—an in-person viewing of your home. But don’t worry. Making a video isn’t difficult. You don’t need any prior experience in creating videos. You can still produce a high-quality, engaging video that homebuyers can relate to. And best of all, making a video is inexpensive.
You can get more homebuyers to click on your listing with an engrossing virtual slideshow. Or even better, you could highlight the best attributes of your home in a full-length property listing video, using photos and short clips combined with expressive text.
d. Floor Plans
The floor plan enables a potential buyer to visualize your home better. They can quickly grasp the flow of the rooms. The main advantage of including a floor plan is it makes your listing stand out when a buyer is flicking through hundreds of listings online. Therefore, a floor plan is an indispensable element of your home listing.
Even among floor plans, compared to 2D sketches, 3D floor plans are more visually appealing. With a 3D rendering of your home’s floor plan, you can quickly capture a potential buyer’s attention. Think of it like staging and image enhancement. You can display all the features of your home in the most attractive way.
A floor plan provides enough details about your home. When a buyer views the floor plan, they are able to piece together your home. And it’s more likely that they will inspect your home. The floor plan gives a potential homebuyer a bird’s-eye view of the important details; specifically, the way space is orientated.
Most often, photographs of your home are subjective. It’s possible to interpret photographs differently. But a floor plan with the dimensions of each room clearly marked makes it clear what the photography of your home is illustrating.
#2: Where to List Your House
a) Craigslist
On Craigslist, selling your home without a realtor is as simple as making a purchase on Amazon. You go to the website first, choose the nearest site, and click on Create a Posting on the top left corner. After that, you follow the prompts. Fill in the requested information. Choose the category “Real Estate—by Owner.” Think carefully about your listing.
You’ll find useful tips on how to design an effective For Sale by Owner (FSBO) listing on Craigslist. Read this information twice. A good description of your house is an essential element of your Craigslist ad. Include details that make your home special. Inform potential buyers about any improvements you have made.
The more information you provide, the easier it will be for you later on. You’ll not need to answer a ton of questions, as you’d have already included the answers in your home description. Tell potential buyers about the parking and the yard.
Include at least six (or more) high-quality photographs showing different areas of your home. Post both the interior and exterior photographs of your home.
The most important element of a Craigslist ad is including your contact information. It’s best not to post your phone number if you don’t want your phone ringing constantly. Including your email address in the ad would suffice.
b) Zillow
With 36 million visits in October 2021, Zillow is the leading real estate website in the US. The listing is free, but you’ll need professional photos for selling your home without a realtor on Zillow. And like on Craigslist, you’ll also need to write a detailed description of your home. The main advantage of listing on Zillow is you’ll find useful information on the approximate price of similar homes in your neighborhood.
Since most potential homebuyers start their search on Zillow, it’s easy for them to find your listing on this platform. They can search for homes using specific filters such as the number of bedrooms, square footage, lot size, type of structure, and price.
The biggest challenge of selling your home without a realtor is setting an appealing home listing price. There is little margin for error here. While there’s nothing wrong with wanting top dollar for your home, overpricing isn’t a good idea. It can easily result in your home staying on the market for a long time, and you might eventually opt for a price cut.
Considering this unfavorable scenario, it’s important that your home comes onto the market with an accurate listing price. On average, the longer a house stays on the market, the less likely it will sell at its listing price.
c) FlatFee.com
On FlatFee.com, there are two options: free and paid. Your free FSBO listing will be posted on several websites such as Craigslist, Zillow, Front Door, HotPads, Homes.com, Trulia, and more. You can also include 24 photos of your home and your contact information. You can reorder the photos to your liking and add options. Your listing will take you less than 15 minutes, and it will have nationwide exposure.
You can also upgrade your listing. FlatFee.com presents home sellers with a hands-on approach to create Multiple Listing Services (MLS) listing at a highly competitive listing package priced at $95 for 6 months. Your home will be listed with 6 photos on MLS, Zillow, Realtor.com, and Trulia. The listing package with Max photos priced at $175 offers more listing visibility on these four websites.
A paid listing of your home on FlatFee.com is a great idea, as potential buyers will be able to find it on numerous public MLS websites. These are the first places where buyers start their search for a home. Other advantages are MLS listed homes also sell faster and for a higher price than non-MLS-listed FSBO homes.
d) Realtor.com
Realtor.com serves agents, brokers, teams, and industry partners. This website doesn’t offer an exclusive FSBO service to home sellers. But you can still advertise on Realtor.com and list with a real estate agent. Or you can sell with ease to their partners, who provide competitive cash offers. The advantage of an instant cash offer is it enables you to skip the listing process.
Realtor.com also presents you with several options. For instance, their iBuyer service allows you to stay clear of prepping your home and listing it for sale. It’s possible to complete a buying transaction entirely online and in a quick time.
You also have the option of selling now and moving later. You can even choose a convenient closing date. This option is especially favorable, as you can continue to stay in your home until you purchase a new one and are ready to move. You also have the option of selling your home, regardless of its condition. So if your home is damaged, in need of urgent maintenance, or facing foreclosure, you can still sell it to an iBuyer.
#3: Selling to an Investor
Selling to a real estate investor like Home Seller Heaven is a surefire way to avoid paying any commissions. The main advantage of selling to an investor is you can sell your home for cash.
This way of selling your home without a realtor is extremely convenient when you don’t have money or time to wait for repairs. You can also avoid unsafe showings during the ongoing pandemic, and you don’t have to show your house to strangers.
You don’t need to worry if you are late with your mortgage payments and the bank is likely to foreclose on your house. You can still sell your house to an investor. We offer you a fair price for your home, and we close fast (as quickly as 5–7 days if you need to). While selling your home without a realtor is complicated, you can make it happen by selling your home to an investor. And in the bargain, you can save thousands of dollars.
If you want to sell your home quickly or before a certain date, then working with a real estate investor is a wise move. They will buy your house directly for cash and close fast. The advantage of selling your home directly to Home Seller Heaven is it enables you to liquidate your property fast without extra costs. In addition to not having to pay agent commissions, you will also not incur holding costs, listing fees, or for that matter, even closing costs.
It’s true that we might not pay you full retail. However, when you consider all the time, hassle, and money you end up saving, it’s a huge bargain. We speed up the entire process, pay you cash, and close fast.
Our team can also help you a lot if you are dealing with special issues such as probate, liens, code violations, tax problems, bad tenants, or foreclosure. In case you are faced with such a situation, our team offers you a convenient and cost-free sale transaction.
If the process of selling your home the traditional way seems inconvenient and time-consuming, inform us about the home you want to get rid of and sell your home fast for cash. Please submit the information about your home by calling us now on (305) 209-5230.