If you’re looking to sell your house or investment property in Boston without using a real estate agent, we offer a solution that can meet your needs.
While we do collaborate with real estate agents, there are times when circumventing third-party fees may be beneficial.
Paying a substantial 5-6% commission on a property sale can be significant. In some cases, brokers and agents in MA prove invaluable and justify their fees, but not always.
How Do I Sell My House Without An Agent in Boston?
Learn strategies to reduce high commissions when selling real estate in MA.
Understanding a unique practice can be crucial.
In numerous Boston real estate deals, approximately half of the commission paid by the seller is allocated to cover the buyer’s agent fees.
May seem unconventional, right?
The rationale behind covering the buyer’s agent expenses?
While it may appear counterintuitive, it can be one of the most effective methods to sell your property for various reasons, which I will elaborate on in a future blog post.
You can use this to your advantage in multiple ways.
Begin by considering these commissions when evaluating comparable sales. If past sale prices factored in commissions, take this into account.
Avoid undervaluing your property – remember that an informed buyer may expect a reduction. By managing the normal responsibilities of an agent yourself, as the seller, you now have the opportunity to retain that money that would’ve gone out to a third party.
In Boston, unrepresented buyers may overlook negotiating the buyer’s side commission, so refrain from mentioning it if you wish to avoid payment. However, be ready for it to come up during negotiations, everyone is trying to squeeze the other side for as much as they can when they understand the markets and transaction norms.
You might consider offering a 2.5% commission to buyer’s agents who bring clients to view your property. While this may seem substantial, if you price your property with this commission in mind, you can negotiate a better deal with a buyer who comes without representation.
Conversely, if you exclude the buyer’s agent commission from the equation, you may eliminate a significant portion of potential buyers in the Boston market.
Over 90% of transactions happen through the MLS – that’s the Multiple Listing Service. It’s the main database that all the brokers in Boston 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 Boston, 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.
Compared to the cost of a newspaper ad, the flat fee MLS is definitely the cheapest way to market your property and get the widest audience possible but the downside is… you now have to do all the work that would otherwise have been done by your realtor throughout the process.
All 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 Boston to the MLS, information on your property will end up on most of the major sites within a few days or hours.
Each of those sites also sells ads. They have a variety of different packages that let you pay to enhance your listing, feature it at the top of search results, and many other bells and whistles that may or may not get your property in front of the right, interested buyer leading them to buy your property.
Advertising is a gamble. Sometimes open houses in Boston MA can be a great way to sell a property, but sometimes they can also be a waste of time. The same goes for newspaper ads, craigslist postings, fancy signs, etc – sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t.
To effectively sell your property on your own, you have to market it well.
Implementing a well-rounded marketing approach is crucial for attracting the ideal buyers to your property. While traditional tactics such as distributing flyers, using signage, and conducting open houses can be beneficial, they may not always be enough to capture the interest of the typical homebuyer looking for a turnkey home.
Real estate agents commonly impose significant fees to account for the initial expenses involved in promoting properties. By marketing multiple listings concurrently, their goal is to generate a larger number of inquiries, ultimately resulting in successful transactions and profits.
For certain properties, a substantial advertising investment, often amounting to thousands of dollars, may be essential to connect with the right buyer through marketing campaigns.
If you want to avoid paying any commissions, you can sell your house to investors like us for CASH
We offer fair prices for properties – and we can close fast (in as little as 3-5 days if you need to).
Sometimes we’ll purchase Boston 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 MA.
We’re investors who care a lot about Boston.
We close fast and pay cash in as little as just 3-5 days. Give us a call now at (781) 258-6976 or fill out the short form over here.