There is no way you can sell a home for free! It costs money to hire a realtor, cover closing costs, home staging, and do home repairs!

I understand that might sound crazy, but hear me out.

This is Kevin Spivey here with the Spivey Realty Group. And today, I want to discuss how to sell your home for free.

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Okay, so you want to sell your home but are worried about the costs associated with selling. After all, selling in general can cost up to 3% of the sale price. Not to mention those pesky realtor fees, which could be anywhere from 5-7% and beyond. Adding up all the costs to sell might be somewhere around 10%.

In fact, that’s the rule of thumb we at SRG tell our sellers to figure. It’s usually a bit lower, closer to 8%, but 10% an easy round number to use to calculate costs to sell.

Wait a minute, didn’t I say I’d sell your house for free? Why am I talking about the costs to sell?

I totally get it. Selling a house can be one of the biggest transactions in your life, and ideally you would maximize your return when you sell. Maybe you’ve sold a couple homes yourself – or maybe you know a friend or some family that have sold. They tell you it wasn’t too bad, maybe even easy!

Here’s a statistic:
The National Association of Realtors® did a study on average sale prices of agent-sold homes versus for-sale-by-owner. The study found that agent-sold homes sold for, on average, 36% more than FSBO. 36%!

I just went over the costs to sell – rule of thumb 10%. What kind of return would you get on your decision to use a qualified Realtor® to sell your home versus selling yourself?

You would save time.
You’d save heartache and stress.
You’d also make more money.

If you could sell, on average, for 36% or so more than on your own, and it costs anywhere from 5-7% ish to use a Realtor®, by choosing to use a good real estate agent you will have improved your profit margin by upwards of 25% or more. AND you wouldn’t have to do any of the work!

We recently helped a seller looking to move out of the area. They bought their home about 10 years ago, right around the height of the market before the so called Great Recession.

Well, after talking about prepping for sale, getting the listing together – I point-blank asked: what do you think your home is worth? What would you like to sell for?

The home was on the hill in Hoquiam, so no flood zone, over 2,000 square feet. Hadn’t been updated in awhile, but very well cared for.

She said 180,000! And I was like, whew, I’m so happy I’m here today. This is my favorite thing to do – to sit here and tell you – someone who was retirement age, looking to downsize and move with her kids – that you’re about to sell for a whole heck of a lot more than you thought.

We sold for $230,000 in just a few days on the market!

Using an agent may not technically be free, but the cost vs reward makes using on as good as FREE.

A great place to start is to reach out to a Realtor® and ask them to conduct a market analysis on your home. Ask them to go over everything they plan to do to prepare your home for sale, and how they’re going to position the home on the market and make sure it sells for the most money in the shortest amount of time.

Thanks a lot for supporting us. Until next time, Kevin Spivey here with the Spivey Realty Group. Real Estate Made Simple.

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