Selling a Stockton Home is a More Complex Process than Ever Before!
Sellers have so many options in 2020, some that didn’t even exist 10 years ago. Navigating those options can become a major hurdle for sellers. There’s so much that goes into selling a home, we want to reduce the stress of not fully understanding your options. Below you’ll find the three most common ways sellers put their home on the market, to help you figure out which option is best for you.
For-sale-by-owner
According to Investopedia, “For sale by owner or FSBO is when an owner of a piece of property chooses to sell the property on their own without hiring an agent or a broker to facilitate the sale … but most often a seller chooses to forgo the services of an agent or a broker because they want to avoid paying the commission for the transaction.”
It might seem like skipping the commission payment is an excellent idea, but consider what you’re missing out on: all the expertise in preparing your home for sale, navigating marketing trends, negotiation know-how and much more. Plus, agents tend to get a higher sales price.
Data from the 2019 National Association of Realtors’ Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers shows that for-sale-by-owner sales tend to sell for quite a bit less than an agent-aided sale. FSBOs sold for $80,000 less than the median agent-represented home sale, which sold for $280,000.
iBuying
Relatively new players to the real estate game, iBuyers offer homesellers certainty in the form of an instant home-sale offers often without using an agent. However, that offer price usually comes in lower than market value.
The idea is that the company will buy your home (instantly, OK, usually within a few days), and then the company will sell it for more than its purchase price.
Although sellers who take this route avoid paying agent commission, there are fees attached (those fees vary by company). Companies such as Zillow, Redfin, Offerpad and Opendoor all have iBuying options, and many traditional brokerages, such as Keller Williams and Realogy, are starting to offer them as well.
The Washington Realtors have complied a “State of the iBuyer footprint” to help you stay informed.
Typically, with the iBuyer route, sellers end up walking away with less money in their pocket from the sale; however, the quickness and certainty can be welcomed in a tight contingency deal, so depending on your situation, it might be worth looking into.
Agent
A local agent (if you don’t have one already, you can find one here) can guide you through market-specific variables on your home. A trusted agent can help you prepare your home for sale, price it competitively (statistically out-performing other options in final sale price as we saw above) and usher you through the legalities of the closing process.
However, according to the HomeLight’s Q4 report, sellers might get in their own way when it comes to getting top dollar for their home. The biggest risk to sellers, according to agents surveyed, is overpricing.
Although it’s a seller’s market in most areas of the nation still, agents are reporting a shift toward a balanced market. As prices flatten or even decline in some areas, sellers will need to be hyper-aware of their market’s conditions and what those conditions mean for their home’s pricing strategy.
Pricing too high leads to buyers being disinterested, which leads to price reductions, which leads to sitting on the market for longer periods of time — and all along the way, the sellers are carrying extra costs to just sit.
Finding a trusted top agent who will walk you through the process, help you come to the right price for your home and market, assist you in properly preparing your home for sale and handle the heavy lifting of negotiations along the way, is the easiest way to overcome this major challenge.