If you have made the difficult decision to sell your home due to financial hardship or for another reason, you might be wondering what costs are involved. Surprisingly, even though you receive money for your home, you also have to pay a great deal while you’re trying to sell it.
That might be the case with some home sale methods, but not with all. Below, you can learn all about the most common house selling costs and how you can avoid them.
Realtor Commissions
Realtors don’t work for free. Commissions are one of the biggest costs when selling a house. They want to be reimbursed for their time hosting open houses, working with prospective purchasers, and advertising it across multiple platforms. However, the amount of money they request upon the sale of your home can sometimes be astronomical.
In Canada, real estate fees can be between 3% and 7% of the sale price, which means you may be thousands of dollars out of pocket once the sale is complete.
Sellers have options to minimize or avoid realtor commissions when selling their homes. One approach is selling directly to a private home buyer, which eliminates the need for a real estate agent and the associated commission fees. Alternatively, opting for a For Sale By Owner (FSBO) approach allows homeowners to handle the sale independently, avoiding traditional realtor services and their accompanying fees. Additionally, some sellers choose to work with low-commission agents who offer reduced rates compared to standard commissions, providing a middle ground for those seeking professional assistance while mitigating overall costs in the home-selling process.
Advertising Fee
Advertising is another major cost when selling a house. Depending on the agent or agency you sign up with, you may be required to cover the costs of advertising your home above and beyond what you’re paying your realtor as commission once your house sells.
There are many different advertising platforms, such as online real estate platforms, social media, and newspapers, which means you may spend hundreds of dollars before you’ve even got a guaranteed buyer. These fees aren’t recoverable if you don’t sell your property.
Minimizing advertising costs for property listings can be achieved by leveraging free-to-use digital marketplaces like Kijiji or Facebook Marketplace. These platforms provide an accessible and cost-effective way for sellers to showcase their properties to a wide audience without incurring traditional advertising expenses.
Closing Costs
Closing costs tend to refer to the legal paperwork and back tax payments required to transfer ownership to the buyer. While these costs can be expected with almost all sales methods, including selling to home buyers, they can be even more costly when selling yourself or through an agent.
As buyers often like to negotiate, there can be custom clauses to add to a sales agreement. The more your lawyer is required to do, the greater your closing costs can be. When you sell through a professional home buyer, you generally find that they cover back taxes and many other closing costs for you to make sure the sales process is as straightforward as possible.
How to Avoid Fees When Selling Your House
One of the easiest ways to avoid fees and commissions when selling your house is to sell to a professional home buyer. As a point of difference, most will cover the fees related to the sale of your house.
Their goal is to make sure the sales process is as easy as possible. You can simply contact a house buyer, see if they want to buy your home, and request a cash offer. This offer reflects the convenience of the service, the lack of fees, and the speed at which you can be cashed up and moved out.
Within seven days, you can be free of your house title and ready to start your new chapter. If you were to sell through a realtor in Ontario, Canada, it may take upwards of 12 days, and closer to a month, to find an interested buyer ready to sign on the dotted line.
Selling a house can be expensive, which is counterintuitive when you’re selling your home to earn money. When you sell your home to SLG Home Buyer, you get to enjoy a fee-free selling process that’s fast, easy, and stress-free.