Avoid paying any commissions and trying to market your property – sell your house to investors like us for CASH!
You can sell your house on your own and save time and money, but there are some things you should think about before you jump in:
- Buyers agent commissions.
- Marketing (i.e. advertising) costs and efforts.
- Time. Lots of time.
M1 Home Buyers can take all of that off of your plate. We’re local investors who care a lot about Metro Detroit. We offer fair prices for properties – and we can close fast (in as little as 3-5 days if you need to). We purchase Metro Detroit houses, fix them up, then rent them out… sometimes we’ll fix them up and sell them to other people looking for great homes in the area, and a lot of other reasons, too – but we love to hear from people like you who are thinking of selling anywhere in Michigan.
We close fast and pay cash in as little as just 3-5 days. Give us a call now at 248-397-5800 or fill out the short form over here.
If you’re looking to sell your house or investment property in Metro Detroit without using a real estate agent, we can help.
In certain situations, Michigan brokers and real estate agents can be very useful and earn their commission. But sometimes it makes sense to avoid paying someone to be in the middle (although we do cooperate with brokers). But after all, paying 5-6% of the sale of a property in a commission is a lot of money.
How Do You Sell Your House Without An Agent in Metro Detroit?
There are a few ways to avoid paying high commissions in your Michigan sale. First, there’s a tricky custom that you’ve gotta know about: In most sales in Metro Detroit, roughly half of the commission you pay as the seller 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. However, you can use that to your advantage in a few ways.
- 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.
- 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. Don’t underprice your property!
Sometimes in Metro Detroit, 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 does come up during the negotiation.
You may want to consider offering 2.5% 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.
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 Metro Detroit.
The Multiple Listing Service (MLS)
Over 90% of transactions happen through the MLS – that’s the Multiple Listing Service. It’s the main database that all the brokers in Metro Detroit 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 Metro Detroit, there are a few brokers who will charge you a fee just to list your property on the MLS. Often, you spend a few hundred bucks and you only pay a commission if the sale closes.
To effectively sell your property on your own, you have to market it well.
Certain properties might require thousands of dollars in advertising expenses before the right buyer happens to see the ad and call.
Compared to the cost of a newspaper ad, the MLS is a cheap way to market your property to a very wide audience. All of the major real estate search sites like Realtor.com, Zillow, Yahoo Homes, etc. get data from the MLS. Chances are good that when you submit your listing in Metro Detroit 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 Metro Detroit Michigan can be a great way to sell a property, and sometimes they’re a waste of time. Same with newspaper ads, craigslist postings, fancy signs – sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t.
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.