How Realtors’ Fees & Other Expenses Lower Your Home Sale Profits
For most homeowners, their house is their biggest asset, and understandably, they want to get the highest profit possible out of it when they’re selling it.
Opening Doors Properties believes in the importance of transparency. Over the many years of investing in properties in North Carolina, we’ve seen how realtor’s fees and other expenses involved in the traditional home selling process lower profits for the sellers.
Before you decide how to sell your home, you should be aware of what real estate agencies offer and which expenses are involved. In most cases, realtors might not tell the entire truth and have hidden fees in their contracts.
Let’s take a look at the things that can make you lose money in the selling process:
- Multiple listings don’t come up for free
The leading technique realtors use to sell houses are website listings. Experienced agencies have multiple listings, and they have to pay for maintenance, subscription fees, etc. These fees come out of the homeowners’ pocket.
Make sure to check your realtor’s listing agreement before signing it. Along with commissions, there could be an administration fee, which in some cases, realtors add to cover up the cost of participating in the listing websites.
- Realtors’ fees are not negotiable
Although you may find several articles or stories from homeowners saying they managed to negotiate and lower the realtor’s fees, this is not universal.
Selling a home takes a lot of time, and like you, realtors want to get paid for their hard work; at the end of the day, it’s how they make their livings. The only occasions where they might be more open to negotiating is when they are sure that the sale can be made fast and when the house’s value is above the average.
A realtor’s commission is approximately 6% over the total sale price. Putting it into real numbers, if you sell your home for $250K, you’ll be paying $15K in commissions, aside from any other fees the agency might have stipulated in the contract.
- Many times the homeowner pays for the home appraisal
It’s rare to find a lender willing to approve a loan without a home appraisal. Although the buyer is generally the one who pays for it, the homeowner often ends up paying for the house evaluation.
Appraisals are expensive; they can cost thousands of dollars depending on how big the home is. In some cases, realtors may push home sellers to get an appraisal done in advance, with the excuse of being better prepared when a buyer is found.
A Transparent Way to Sell With No Hidden Fees
There’s a different way to sell your home with no hidden fees or extra expenses.
Homebuyers or property investors have become more popular over the past years for their fast and transparent cash offers. They offer numerous benefits and are a solution to avoid paying the expenses involved in the traditional home selling process.
Some of the benefits homebuyers offer are immediate offers, no appraisals, no commissions or hidden fees. More importantly, they make the whole selling process faster and stress-free.
How can they make the selling process easy peasy?
Home buying companies work on their own; they count with enough equity to purchase properties without the involvement of banks. Buying and selling houses is what they do. They manage the market and know how to speed up the selling process, even for people under financial conflicts, like late mortgage payments or at risk of foreclosure.
- Homebuyers buy houses as-is
One way they make the process more simple is by not requesting repairs or financing contingency agreements. A homebuyer will purchase your property, no matter the condition and how many repairs it needs.
- They take care of and pay closing costs
Even if you have a realtor helping you out to sell your home, when it comes to closing the sale, usually, the homeowner is the one who pays for closing costs. However, homebuyers take full responsibility for getting the lawyer, working with a trusted titled company, and paying all closing costs.
To get an idea of how much you could save by selling your home to a homebuyer, we invite you to contact Opening Doors Properties. We will gladly and with no obligation make you an offer and explain the way we work.