ArroyoLaRue Realty

How Hard Is It To Sell Your Own Home?

The average real estate commission rate is around 5% to 6% of the selling price of the property.

This means that if you were to get a real estate agent to sell your $200,000 property for you, they would walk away with $10,000 as a commission. With rates that high, the question is how hard is it to sell your own house? 

Selling your house is a process that includes quite a few different steps along the way. This is why it’s important to take a closer look at the entire process before deciding how to sell your home. 

Have you ever asked yourself, is it hard to sell your own house? You’re in the right place. Here’s everything you need to know about selling your own home.

How Hard Is It to Sell Your Own House?

Selling your own home is a lengthy, difficult process. This is because selling a home is a lot more complex than you may think. While many may think you simply need to put your home on the market, selling your home includes tons of admin, marketing, and time to help secure a deal worth taking. 

Selling a home can cost you both money and time. This is because there are quite a few costs included in the process that you may not be aware of. These costs include paying a home inspector to value your home, essential maintenance you may want to do on the home before listing, and marketing expenses to advertise your listing.

While these costs can quickly add up, the time that you will have to spend on selling your home is significant as well. This is because it can end up taking weeks just to prepare your home before listing it on the market. Another aspect of the process that takes time is the paperwork. 

This is something that you’re going to want to take your time with as any mistakes that you may make will just add more time to the entire process. While real estate agents offer to do most of the heavy lifting for you, they also come at a major price. This means that you will have to give up 5% to 6% of your entire home just to have them handle the sale. 

However, real estate agents are more skilled at marketing your home as they market homes every day. Since there are so many classified sites that you could list your home on, the competition is fierce. This is why you may need to spend a bit more money to promote your listing on every website. 

This adds to the overall cost of selling your home by yourself.

Selling Your House Is Like a Full-Time Job

Selling your home by yourself takes up a lot of time. Even if you pay an inspector to do the inspection and pay a contractor to do the essential repairs, managing the sale can still end up taking up most of your day, every day. This is because it’s very unlikely that the first person that asks about the property will end up buying it. 

This means that you are going to have to talk to hundreds of people to hopefully find a serious buyer. Explaining the same things to hundreds of people does not just take a lot of time; it can also be incredibly frustrating to have to do it by yourself. While classified websites do help by giving people general information, most buyers may want to confirm the same information every time.

When a buyer is seriously considering the property, they may want to come and see the property in person. This means that you may have to take time off from work to prepare an open house for that potential buyer. This can end up being a massive waste of time if the buyer does not end up making an offer for the property. 

Since it’s unknown how many open houses you may have to host to find your buyer, this can end up taking up weeks of your time. 

Is It Harder to Sell a House With a Pool?

If your home has a pool, it may be more difficult to sell. While many may see a pool as a great addition to your home, it does come with more maintenance costs that buyers need to consider. In this way, they may be hesitant to buy a home that costs more to maintain every month unless they specifically want a pool. 

Is a 2-Bedroom House Hard to Sell?

Homes that have two bedrooms sell a lot faster than larger homes. This is because larger homes typically come with higher price tags, with fewer people being able to afford them. Two-bedroom homes are also the most popular configuration across the country, making them great for small families or as investment properties.

Getting Your Home Ready Is Important

Selling your home is a process that begins a lot earlier than you may think. This is because there are tons of decisions that you have to make before you put your home on the market. Whether selling your home by yourself or through a real estate agent, there are a few essential things to do to get your home ready for sale.

While some of these tasks are purely administrative, there are a few important decisions to make along the way. Here’s a quick look at the process of getting your home ready for sale.

Pre-Listing Inspection

The first thing many homeowners do when they decide to sell their homes is to conduct a pre-listing inspection. This involves contacting a certified home inspector to come and take a closer look at your home. Home inspectors will look through every room and inspect every aspect of your entire property. 

These inspectors will then compile a report for you on the state of your home. This report will include the current state of things around your home along with a guide on things you may want to get fixed before listing on the market. This guide is essential as many of these issues are difficult for homeowners to spot by themselves. 

The most important aspect of a pre-listing inspection is to get an accurate, unbiased opinion of your home. This opinion is also based on a rough valuation of the property. In this way, the pre-listing inspection acts as a rough guide on how much your property is worth and what issues are present around the home. 

Knowing these issues before you list your home gives you the opportunity to fix them before the sale. Fixing these may cost you a bit of money but can actually help you list the home at a higher price. This is because you get to tell the new owners that all maintenance is done, and they can move in tomorrow. 

Property Advertising

Once your home is ready for listing, the next step is to advertise the property on the market. If you’re thinking of listing the home yourself, you may want to invest in having a real estate photographer come and take a few professional photos of the place. This can help make your listing stand out from the rest of the ads online.

Platforms may charge you a small fee to list the property on their website, but they often charge an additional fee if you want your listing to be prioritized. While these costs can vary depending on how much you are willing to spend, they can add up and should be taken into account. 

Open Houses

If you get a lot of interest from potential buyers, you may want to host an open house for them to come and take a look at the place in person. You will rarely find someone that is willing to purchase the house entirely online. This is why you may have to take some time off to show your home to potential buyers. 

Why Listing and Waiting Doesn’t Work

While you may think that you can list your property on one of the classified sites and wait for a buyer, that’s not how it works. This is because while your listing is sitting in the queue, other listings are being promoted. This leaves your posts at the bottom of the search pile unless you decide to be active and even pay for some promotion on the website. 

At the end of the day, this is how these websites make most of their money, so they want you to pay them to promote your listing. The better way to sell your home would be to take an active role in advertising and marketing the property on multiple platforms and social media networks at the same time. However, this can quickly turn into a full-time job.

Consider These Points When Selling Your House

As you can see, selling your home by yourself is a major undertaking. In many cases, selling your home can accurately be portrayed as a full-time job. The process includes tons of admin and even a few expenses to get your home ready to list on the property market. 

Here are a few things to keep in mind when selling your home by yourself.

The Actual Value of Your Home

As mentioned above, the core benefit of a pre-listing inspection is to find the actual value of your home. This is important as you want to list your home accurately on the market. Overvaluing your home may require you to reduce the price later, taking even longer to actually sell the home.

Staging and Open Houses

When hosting open houses, remember to stage the home. This means that if you don’t have furniture in the property, you can hire some to help give prospective buyers a good idea of what the home may look like when they move in.

Paperwork for Selling Your House

There’s quite a bit of paperwork to get through when selling a home. These documents are incredibly important in transferring ownership to the buyer. However, it’s important to take your time with these documents as any mistake can end up costing you even more time and money.

Negotiations

When you receive an offer for your home, you don’t have to accept it right away. In most cases, you can negotiate with the buyer or the buyer’s agent to increase the price. These negotiations can take a bit of time, but it’s vital to counter their offer before deciding on a price that you can both agree on.

It Can Take a Long Time

If you decide to sell your home yourself, you should expect it to take a lot longer than if you were to sell it with a real estate agent or a platform like iBuyer.com. This is because you will have to do everything yourself. 

In most cases, you may be selling a home for the first time. This means that you will need to learn how to do everything at the same time, making the entire process even longer.

Sell Your Home With iBuyer.com

If you have ever wondered, how hard is it to sell your own house? The process can end up taking quite a while. Despite the help real estate agents may offer, their commission can end up costing you thousands of dollars.

This is why selling your home with an iBuyer is the better option. iBuyer.com can help you value your home online so that you can get in front of potential buyers in a fraction of the time. This can help you sell your home in no time.

The post How Hard Is It To Sell Your Own Home? appeared first on iBuyer Blog.

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