If you’re looking to sell your house or investment property in Memphis without using a real estate agent, we can help. There are a few ways to avoid paying high commissions in your Tn sale.
First, there’s a tricky custom that you’ve gotta know about.
In most sales in Memphis, saving on real estate agent commission fees is the biggest appeal to selling by owner. But before you make the decision, make sure you have a good knowledge of the process and the amount of work involved. Roughly half of the commission you pay as the seller goes to pay for the buyer’s broker. This is because attorneys specialized in real estate, can help draft and interpret the endless stack of closing paperwork, including contracts and legal documents. It’s not cheap to hire an agent, for comparison, if you’re selling a $250,000 home, $15,000 (or 6%) goes to agent fees.
You can use that to your advantage in a few ways.
First, factor in the commissions paid when you’re looking at the comparable sales. If the properties similar to yours sold for prices that included commissions, take that into account.
Don’t underprice your property – be aware that a savvy buyer may expect to take a discount too. If you’re doing the work of one agent, you can expect to save that money.
Sometimes in Memphis, buyers who aren’t represented by an agent won’t remember to negotiate the buyer’s side commission out of the price for themselves, so don’t remind them if you don’t want to pay them. Just don’t be surprised if it comes up during the negotiation.
You may want to consider offering 2.5% to buyer’s agents who will bring their clients to show your property. Sure, it’s a lot of money. If you’re pricing your property including that commission, you can always negotiate a better deal for a purchaser who comes without an agent.
On the other hand, if you don’t leave room for the buyer’s agent’s commission, you’ll be excluding most of the buyers in the market in Memphis.
Over 90% of transactions happen through the MLS – that’s the Multiple Listing Service. It’s the main database that all the brokers in Memphis use to access information for their clients on the houses, condos, land and investment properties for sale, along with data on the sold prices.
Once upon a time, you had to pay a full commission to get your property on the MLS. Now in Memphis, there are a few brokers who will charge you a fee just to list your property on the MLS. Often, you spend a few hundred bucks and you only pay a commission if the sale closes.
Compared to the cost of a newspaper ad, the MLS is a cheap way to market your property to a very wide audience.
All the major real estate search sites like Realtor.com, Zillow, Yahoo Homes, etc. get data from the MLS. Chances are good that when you submit your listing in Memphis to the MLS, information on your property will end up on most of the major sites within a few days.
Each of those sites sells ads. They’ve got packages that let you pay to enhance your listing, feature it at the top of the search, and a lot of other bells and whistles that might or might not get an interested buyer to buy your property.
Advertising is a gamble. Sometimes open houses in Memphis, Tn can be a great way to sell a property, and sometimes they’re a waste of time. Same with newspaper ads, craigslist postings, fancy signs – sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t.
To show your home to a lot of potential buyers at once, you should host an open house. Here are some steps you can take to prepare so your property sells for top dollar:
- Make necessary repairs that you can afford. Buyers don’t want to spend money or time before moving in.
- Make your home look tidy. The brighter the better!
- Do a deep clean. Think about what your guests will see – clean those first!
- Plant new flowers, trim the shrubs, pressure wash the siding, to help make a home look loved and well-manicured.
- Stage ur home. Make your space look inviting and help potential buyers imagine themselves living there.
- Protect yourself. While most people are honest, it’s a good idea to lock up valuables, medication, or important documents when strangers are in your home.
To effectively sell your property on your own, you have to market it well.
Putting up fliers and signs around your neighborhood can generate some calls, and there’s a lot of free websites where you can post information. But often just putting up flyers and an open house isn’t enough if your house doesn’t appeal to the average home buyer. The first thing you should do is determine the fair market value of your home so you can list it for the best price. You can do this by looking at the recent selling price of similar properties in your area
In theory, real estate agents charge big commissions because they have to spend a lot of money up front to advertise your property. By advertising lots of properties at once, they expect to get more phone calls – and obviously, they’ll make good profits by selling lots of houses.
Certain properties might require thousands of dollars in advertising expenses before the right buyer happens to see the ad and call.
If you want to avoid paying any commissions, you can also sell your house to investors like us for CASH
We offer fair prices for properties – and we can close fast (in as little as 3-5 days if you need to).
Sometimes we’ll purchase Memphis houses, fix them up, then rent them out… sometimes we’ll fix them up and sell them to other people looking for great homes in the area, and a lot of other reasons, too – but we love to hear from people like you who are thinking of selling anywhere in Tn.
We’re investors who care a lot about Memphis.
We close fast and pay cash in as little as just 3-5 days. Give us a call now at 901-450-5179 or fill out the short form over here.