Category: Uncategorized

If you’ve sold a house (or houses) before, but always through a realtor, you may find the idea of not working with a realtor to be a bit scary and intimidating. Selling Your Home.

The realtor coached you on preparing the house, handled the marketing, babysat the buyers through showing the house, and dealt with offers and counter-offers.

The realtor handled listing the house on MLS and elsewhere and dealt with other realtors. You may be thinking “Heavens, I can’t do all that!”.

 

There is an easy way to sell without a realtor, one that requires little, if any, expertise, virtually no marketing, and no investment in preparing the house to sell. Working through a realtor involves far more work, time, and money from you than the other alternative I will propose.

 

Realtors are selling to home-buyers who are looking for move-in-ready houses.  That why working with a realtor to sell your home is just that – work!

• Deciding what condition shortfalls you are going to address before the sale.
• Getting the work done – and paying for it.
• Clearing out your clutter and over-supply of furniture.
• Deciding what upgrades to do for marketing – replace carpet? paint? more?
• Staging the house – flowers – color schemes – appealing furniture arrangement.
• Keeping everything perfect for showing, every day – not just cleaning, but orderly closets and cupboards as well. And, corralling the pets!
• Evacuating the house – leaving it neat and tidy behind you – whenever the realtor has a showing. Interruptions in your evenings and weekends when you are relaxing from work.
• Fielding offers – making counter-offers – handling negotiations and decisions.

 

In addition, working with a realtor is an open-ended time commitment – one that often has heavy expenses attached until the final closing.

• Waiting in suspense for an unknown amount of time before the perfect buyer with the perfect offer happens through your door.
• Waiting on buyer financing.
• Keeping up with the mortgage payments and other expenses while you wait.
• Giving up part of the sales price to realtor commissions and closing costs that can total 8% to 14%.

 

There is another way! Choose to work without a realtor and without expensive, time-consuming preparation and marketing.

 

Cash buyers such as PDX Renovations take on houses as-is, without you doing preparation, staging, or marketing. Because they are professional fixers and sellers, they don’t need all the preparation above to attract a traditional home-buyer who just wants to move in and go on with their life. There are no realtor’s commissions, no waiting on buyer financing.

 

PDX Renovations will come to see your property and make our own assessment of the work needed. Often you’ll have an offer within 24 hours or just a few days. You won’t have laid out any of your own cash or time – once you accept the offer, you’ll close within the next few days. You walk away with the cash, and the cash buyer takes on the house in the condition it is today.

 

=======================================

Question or Prompt for Response – open-ended, relevant

Have you sold through a realtor?  If you could do it over, would you consider a cash offer instead?

 

Call to Action

Do you have real estate (house, lot, or land) you’d like to sell fast?  Fill out our Sell Fast Form and get a cash offer within one hour of us viewing the property. https://patient-liger-dev.10web.site/sell-house-quick/we-buy-homes-bring-us-a-deal/

As I pointed out in my recent blog post “When is Selling Your Home Without a Realtor Easier in Phoenix?” (or “… Portland?”), working with a realtor is just that – a lot of work! And expense and time on your part, especially compared with accepting an offer from a cash buyer without fixing or preparing the property.

 

What are the costs and risks of selling your house through a realtor? A reputable, professional realtor has their place in the housing market, and many do an excellent job of putting home-buyers in house of their dreams. But if you just want to sell your house as-is, without marketing to buyers expecting a move-in ready house, a realtor has costs and risks that are important to consider.

 

Significant costs include:

• The realtor’s commission is the highest direct cost, customarily 6% off the top of the sales price. Regardless of whether you sell at a profit or a loss, the realtor gets the contractually-agreed 6% of the sale.
• Once you add closing costs of 3% to 8% of the sales price, the total cost with realtor’s commission can be up to 14% of the sales price.
• Marketing to buyers wanting an attractive, move-in ready home without major issues can mean costs in the thousands to prepare the house for sale through a realtor.

 

A major risk to the seller is the unknown amount of time it takes to sell through a realtor.

• Average marketing time is often about 120 days, with another 45-60 days for closing.
• If you have made high-dollar investments in preparation and staging and your house sells in as little as 30-60 days, you are still waiting for 2 months, often much more, until closing.
• The longer the time to close, the more likely market prices and interest rates can change, affecting the entire selling strategy and your final closing proceeds.
• The longer the time to close, the more chance for something to go wrong with the house that is costly to fix, and may affect the sales price or selling strategy. You can fix a water heater and go on as you were, but a major thunderstorm that washes away half the yard is another matter.
• While you are waiting you must continue to make the mortgage payments, as well as meet the other ordinary expenses of upkeep.

 

Time, in short, represents an important risk – a risk markets and interest rates change, demand changes, the house needs a costly repair, and of course continuing to pay interest and principal on your mortgage loan. Added to the costs that are already part of a realtor contract, working with a realtor can be quite costly with no promises for your dreams of “top dollar” on your sale.

 

=======================================

Question or Prompt for Response – open ended, relevant

What is your greatest concern if it takes longer than you expected to sell your house?

 

Call to Action

Do you have real estate (house, lot, or land) you’d like to sell fast?  Fill out our Sell Fast Form and get a cash offer within one hour of us viewing the property. https://patient-liger-dev.10web.site/sell-house-quick/we-buy-homes-bring-us-a-deal/

My blog post “The Top 3 Mistakes When Trying to Sell Your Home Fast Through a Realtor” gives details on what causes disappointing results for sellers who were hoping to get top dollar through a realtor sale, without putting much preparation into their house.

Why is it that buyers looking at MLS houses sold through realtors, and often working with a realtor themselves, so rarely see the possibilities and make an offer on a house with minimal, if any, marketing preparation? Why don’t they believe they can get a better sale price if they will put a little work into it themselves?

Traditional home-buyers who work through realtors are usually not experienced or comfortable with “fixer-uppers”. They look for move-in ready homes for themselves, and want an attractive house they can proudly show their friends and family. Such buyers are likely to be intimidated by the idea of getting into fix-it projects, and they have other choices that aren’t so demanding.

The kinds of buyers who are most willing to make an offer on houses in poorer condition do so only because they have experience and knowledge such houses. Professional house-flippers understand what they are getting into and have low-cost strategies for fixing it up and putting it back on the market to consumers.

But professionals who value “fixer-uppers” tend to avoid working through realtors because they want to keep their costs lower. Not only could avoiding realtor commissions increase their profits, but the lower buying cost also helps keep a cushion against surprise defects that will cost them more than they planned. They anticipate unanticipated problems, as it were. When the unforeseen problem happens, they may not make as much on the house, but they aren’t as likely to lose money.

For these reasons it isn’t realistic to list a “fixer-upper” with little preparation through a realtor and expect good offers to come in quickly. Traditional home-buyers working through realtors shy away from big projects, and prefer attractive, move-in ready houses. The professional buyers willing to take on such projects often avoid working through realtors to keep their costs down. If you understandably just want a quick, fair offer without having to invest in marketing preparation, going straight to the cash buyer or wholesaler market – especially to PDX Renovations – is your best bet.

=======================================

Question or Prompt for Response – open ended, relevant

Of the people you know who are not house-flipping professionals, do you think they would be willing to take on a major fix-it project for their next home?

Call to Action

Do you have real estate (house, lot, or land) you’d like to sell fast?  Fill out our Sell Fast Form and get a cash offer within one hour of us viewing the property. https://patient-liger-dev.10web.site/sell-house-quick/we-buy-homes-bring-us-a-deal/