If you’re asking how to sell your house or investment property in Covington, KY without using a real estate agent, this post will help give you answers.
Although we do cooperate with brokers, sometimes it’s best to avoid paying someone to be in the middle. It all depends on your situation. Do you want to try to sell fast with the least amount of hassle, or do you want to try put it on the market and get the most out of the property.
After all, paying 6% of the sale of a property in a commission, which is the standard rate in Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati, is a lot of money. In certain situations, KY and NKY brokers and real estate agents can be very useful and earn their commission. But, in other situations, it might not be in your best interests to use an agent.
At We Buy NKY Houses, we take the time to run comps and run the numbers by you so that you can make the best decision for selling your Covington home. So, if you’re asking, “how do I sell my house without an agent in Covington, KY”, read on for more tips.
How to avoid paying high real estate commissions in Covington KY.
First, let’s take a look at the FSBO scenario.
In most sales in Covington, roughly half of the commission you pay as the seller, when you use an agent, goes to pay for the buyer’s broker.
Doesn’t make much sense, right?
Why should you pay for the agent on the other side of the table?
Truthfully, it defies logic – it’s just what’s typically done.
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 Covington 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 3% 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. Just realize that the buyers who don’t have an agent are usually looking for a better deal. They may be sharks or lookie lous.
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 Covington.
Over 90% of transactions happen through the MLS – that’s the Multiple Listing Service. It’s the main database that all the brokers in Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati 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 Covington, there are a few brokers who will charge you a fee just to list your property on the MLS. You can go the route of these flat fee or limited service brokers and pay less to get your home marketed on the MLS.
This has a far better reach than any other print marketing you can do because the home will be syndicated on all of the major real estate sites.
All the major real estate search sites like Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, etc. get data from the MLS. Chances are good that when you submit your listing in Covington 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 Covington KY can be a great way to sell property, and sometimes they’re a waste of time. This goes for any type of marketing. The biggest impact on selling your home is going to be where you set the price and its condition.
If you plan on selling by owner, you need to do a great job of marketing.
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.
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.
But again – the condition of the home and where you price it is what matters most. The benefit of using a real estate agent is that they have the best data and the experience of interpreting that data to help you price your home accurately.
Another option to avoid real estate commissions: sell your Covington house to a CASH home buying company
At We Buy NKY Houses, we buy houses with cash and can close quickly. Many times, that may mean we can close in 7-10 days. Plus, we are real estate agents at Keller Williams. So, we will bring you all of the data and help you decide what is best. Do you want to sell fast? Great, we can buy with cash. Do you want to sell for top dollar? Great, we can help you list and market your home on the MLS.
Sometimes we’ll purchase Covington houses, fix them up, then rent it out. Sometimes we’ll fix them up and sell them to other people looking for great homes in the area, or work with one of our many, many investor partners. No matter what, we love helping sellers in Covington and NKY who need to sell their homes fast.
We grew up and live in this city, and we care deeply about the community. We’re investors who care a lot about Covington and all of NKY.
We close fast and pay cash in as little as just 3-5 days. Give us a call now at (859) 412-1940 or fill out the short form over here.