Selling Your House Without a Real Estate Agent in Chicago, IL directly – without an agent or negotiator – can be a tempting option.
This is also known as FSBO (For Sale By Owner), this approach allows you to avoid losing a substantial portion of the sale of your home to an agent or broker.
In most cases, agents keep around 6% or higher of the sale price of the home. For a home that sells for $250k, that comes out to $15k.
That extra money may be appealing, but there are a number of setbacks to FSBO. Most homeowners underestimate the hassle and difficulty of managing a real estate sale on their own.
Here’s what you should know before deciding to sell your home in Chicago without a real estate agent or broker:
Price
If you choose to go FSBO, you will have to set a price for your property, which requires some research on your part.
You’ll have to spend some time looking at comparable homes in your area to decide what is standard for the housing market in Chicago. You may want to seek advice from a listing expert. You may also want to get a home appraisal to get an objective opinion on the value of your property.
Finally, you might consider offering added incentives to the sale of your home, such as paying for the cost of closing, or offering to pay for inspections and repairs.
Setting a price for your home can be tricky. You don’t want to set the price too low, or you’ll lose cash. But set the price too high, and you won’t get very much interest in your property.
Advertising
FSBO also requires that you advertise the sale of your home. This will require you to hire a professional photographer to take photos of the exterior and interior of your home. You may even want to hire someone to take overhead photos of your home with a drone.
Once you have photos and a print description of your home, you might want to print flyers, publish an online listing, and display “For Sale” signage on your property and on your street corner.
But be prepared for surprise visitors. When you list your home as “For Sale,” potential buyers will often expect to be able to come inside to look at the house at any time.
Staging
Regardless of whether you use an agent or not, you will have to clean up your home substantially, pack up your personal items, and perform necessary repairs and upgrades to make it presentable to potential buyers.
This could include:
- Cleaning or replacing flooring and carpets
- Washing windows and power-washing exterior walls
- Clearing all rooms of clutter and depersonalizing
- Repairing cracked walls and tiles
- Upgrading light fixtures and hardware
- Repainting walls
- Reupholstering furniture (or purchasing new furniture)
- Landscaping your front and backyard
- Replacing or repairing any fencing
- And more…
This critical step can make your home far more appealing for potential buyers. Just be aware that it could take many months and cost a substantial amount of money.
Lastly, Move Out & Pay Monthly Costs
Lastly, you’ll most likely need to move out of your house in order to put it on the market for sale.
However, while your home is on the market, you’ll still need to pay utility fees, insurance, and property taxes. You’ll also need to make sure that the property continues to be cleaned and maintained.
Selling your house FSBO can save you the cost of paying for an agent or broker. But it can also require a substantial amount of time, work, and money from you upfront.
Thankfully, there is another option for you to sell your home in Chicago directly without an intermediary: Selling your property directly to a company that buys homes.
This is a fast, easy, and relatively painless process that allows you to skip the hassle of preparation and cleaning, extra fees paid to an agent or broker, and months of waiting.
If you’d like to learn more about how to sell your home without a real estate agent in Chicago “as-is,” contact us. We’d love to hear more about your home, and talk about how we can quickly buy your home without requiring you to perform repairs or cleanup.
