There are many reasons to consider selling your house. Tragic events like a recent loss, divorce, or foreclosure can cause this, along with other reasons. Perhaps, for instance, you’ve simply grown tired of the house you’ve lived in so long, the kids have moved out and it’s time to relocate to something more suited for your new lifestyle. Whatever the reason, selling your home is a big decision, so it doesn’t hurt to get a little help along the way. And if you’re in a hurry, selling your home fast is now easier than ever before. So how does one go about selling their house, anyway?
To Hire or Not to Hire a Realtor
To break it down, there are two ways of going about selling a house. The first is to do it alongside a realtor, a real estate professional whose job it is to assess a property and accurately convey any relevant information about it to potential buyers. The other option is to fly solo and sell your home by yourself. This is known as FSBO (for sale by owner). There are arguments to be made for both ways of selling your house, so let’s explore the reasons to consider selling a house by owner or selling it through a realtor.
Selling a House by Realtor
While the open access of the Internet has made it easier than every before to sell a home, economic complexities as well as an over-saturated market have brought with them their own difficulties. This is partially why hiring a professional realtor is a good, safe option for those unfamiliar with or unwilling to learn about the process of selling a house.
Good realtors have an understanding of the market and are experienced with selling homes of all kinds. Additionally, realtors do a lot of the groundwork and paperwork for you, meaning less of a headache when it comes to the dirty work of finding potential buyers, negotiating, filling out tax forms, etc. One thing to keep in mind before seeking a realtor is that, like any professional, they come with a price. On average a realtor collects 6% commission of the final sale of the home, meaning $6,000 of a home worth $100,000, to make the math simple. This small percentage can add up depending on the value of the home, and for some the additional cost is too much.
Selling a House by Owner
More and more people have been going the route of selling a house by owner to avoid these commission costs. Saving tens of thousands of dollars is definitely a major perk of selling a house by yourself. The thing to consider with this method, of course, is that now a lot more of the legwork falls on you. This means doing some research into your local housing market, calculating a fair and marketable price for your home, listing it online and in community ads, filing paperwork, making phone calls, and more. If this kind of work doesn’t bother you, and you find it more than worth it to partake in all this to save potentially upwards of $10,000 then FSBO is the way to go.
It may also be worth looking into some “We Buy Houses for Cash” ads and similar offers to see what immediate options are out there. This might also be a good way to measure how much your home is worth before listing it online with a certain price point. If you’re considering selling your house without the aid of a realtor, do as much research online as you can until you feel comfortable and confident enough to begin this journey.
