We often think of real estate agents as simply obligatory parts of the home selling process. When you sell your house, the first thing you may want to do is get in touch with a listing agent. However, this often isn’t the case when you’re trying to sell a house for cash. Cash buyers often work outside of the traditional market, which means that homeowners approach them directly more often than not.
While this can come with a lot of advantages, with cash buyers moving much more quickly as they don’t need to wait for the 30 to 45 day-long loan approval process to take place, it’s understandable if you’re worried about working without a real estate agent. Though lots of homeowners choose the for sale by owner option, if you’ve never done so before you may be looking at the cons more than the pros. In reality, if you prepare carefully and do your research ahead of time, you may find that there are more benefits to selling your home without a real estate agent than there are to working with one.
1. You Don’t Need To Pay Commission
One of the biggest benefits of working without a real estate agent when you sell your house is that you stand to make a bigger profit. When real estate agents sell homes, they take commission out of the sale. This means that a percentage of the profit you would be receiving goes to the real estate agent. If you’re trying to sell your home for cash and eke out the best possible profit margin, this can be quite discouraging. Furthermore, if you’re selling directly to an investor, the real estate agent isn’t even necessary and therefore their commission is something of a wasted loss for you. If you want to make the most possible money off of your home’s sale, working without a real estate agent is a better bet.
2. You Don’t Need To Deal With Bad Agents
Real estate agents are human beings, and some of them are better at their jobs than others. It can be quite awkward to essentially fire a real estate agent that is trying their best and simply not doing a good job. However, it’s extremely frustrating to work with a real estate agent that is purposefully not prioritizing your property as well. Either issue can come up when you work with an agent. Either way, it’s time spent on a problem that you wouldn’t have to worry about if you decided to sell your house on your own.
3. Your Listing Won’t Be Competing For Attention
One of the main reasons why a real estate agent may choose to not prioritize your home is that they’re simply overwhelmed with other listings. If you’re considering selling your home for cash, you’re probably selling it for a lower price than lots of homes on the traditional market. Therefore, your real estate agent may pay more attention to those other homes, with your property ultimately falling to the wayside. If your goal is to sell your house fast, this can be incredibly frustrating. The only way that you can ensure that your home will not be competing with other listings for a real estate agent’s attention is to simply forego a real estate agent altogether.
4. You’re In Control
Deciding to sell FSBO is actually fairly liberating for a lot of property owners, and understandably so. You don’t need to abide by a real estate agent’s rules, and you’ll be in complete control of the selling process. The success of your home’s sale will be in many ways up to you. While this can be daunting at first, ultimately you may have much more success when you handle the task on your own, rather than passing it off to a real estate agent.
Working without a real estate agent for the first time may come with a bit of confusion at first. But once you find the right buyer for your home, you may be surprised by how straightforward the process really is. Why not consider forgoing a real estate agent and selling your home on your own?