Selling a house or investment property in NWA without using a real estate agent can be tricky. The 'we buy houses' companies seem like a scam and other than Zillow or Craigslist, where are you supposed to go?
There are a few ways you can avoid paying high real estate commissions. Before we get there, however, I need to let you in on a little secret.
It's not necessarily a secret secret, but nobody really talks about it. In most real estate transactions, half of the commission paid by the seller (that's you) goes to the buyer's agent and broker. No, not the seller's broker, the buyer's broker. That's around 3% of the sale price of your house. Why should you pay for the agent and broker that's not representing you?
It just doesn't add up.
On top of that, the typical 6% commission on a home sale is high. And even though realtors do a lot of work, it's still a lot of money if you're already tight with cash. Sometimes realtors can increase your home's sale price to cover their commission, but that doesn't mean it's always the right decision.
There are a few key points to consider when you're trying to avoid paying a commission on your house. Before I get to the options you have, here are some important things to note when thinking through your next steps.
Keeping those in mind, here are the main options for selling a house without a real estate agent in NWA.
The first option is to sell your own house, also called For Sale By Owner (FSBO). Now before we go any further, if you choose this option, I would strongly advise you to do a lot of research into the home buying process. If you don't know what closing is or how to find and draw up a contract, you'll need to spend some time researching and getting prepared to handle about 50% of the transaction process. This goes back to my point about offering a commission to a buyer's agent...
Is it a lot of money? Yes. Does it open up many more buyers and help smooth out the process? Also yes.
Since most real estate transactions happen through the MLS (roughly 91% of sellers list their home with an agent!), it makes sense to work with the system rather than against it. I know, I know, the reason you're reading this is because you want to avoid those commissions. I hear you, and ultimately it's your decision to make. But I would strongly advise you to at least consider offering a commission to buyer's agents.
If you're reading this and aren't sure what the MLS is, it stands for Multiple Listings Service. It's really just a fancy way of saying the website where all realtors list their houses for sale. It's the "who's who" of homes for sale in Northwest Arkansas, which means it also has more eyeballs than any other service or website out there.
One important note is that only realtors are able to list a property on the MLS.
There are a few services and brokers who will list your property on the MLS for a flat fee - usually a few hundred dollars. The good part about this is that the MLS automatically sends listings to the popular websites - Realtor.com, Zillow, and more. If you end up going this route, your property will officially be listed on the MLS, but you'll still have to handle all of the communication with realtors, showings, and more. There are a few nuances to this process that make it a little clunky, but I personally know people who have done this successfully in NWA.
If you'd like to sell your own house in NWA or the surrounding areas, I put together a short outline of the process you can expect to follow:
This is a vast oversimplification of the process, but I didn't want to move on the next option without giving you an idea of all of the work involved in selling your own house.
There are a lot of reasons to sell to a local real estate investor. The biggest advantages that people find are the simple process and quick closing times. An investor generally has a lot of local knowledge, and can give you a fair price without the hassle of dealing with the long process I just described above.
We are a local house buying company and buy properties all across Northwest Arkansas. We only offer fair prices for properties and we can close fast (I mean really fast!) - in as little as ~5 days, if you need to.
Often we’ll purchase Northwest Arkansas houses, renovate them and then rent them out… other times we’ll fix up a house and sell it to other people who want to buy a house in the area. Regardless, we love to hear from our NWA neighbors if there's anything we can do to help you.
We care a lot about Northwest Arkansas (because we live here), and we want the area and residents to do well. If that's you, and you have any questions about FSBO or selling to an investor, even if it's not us, give us a call at 479-259-2633 or fill out the short form below.
