If you’re saying “What’s the best way to sell my house without a realtor in Baltimore, Maryland?” we can help.
The best way to get the most money out of selling your own house is to cut the middle man out and avoid paying brokers. Wouldn’t you be able to do a bunch of things if you are able to get an extra 5-6% of the sale of a property in commissions ? In certain situations, Maryland brokers and real estate agents can be very useful if you are a first time home buyer or have a unique situation.
How Do I Sell My House Without A Realtor in Baltimore, Maryland?
There are a few ways to avoid paying high commissions in your Maryland sale.
First, there’s a tricky custom that you’ve gotta know about.
In most sales in Baltimore, the seller is responsible for both buyerr’s side of commissions and the seller’s agent side of commissions.
Doesn’t make much sense, right?
Why should you pay for the agent who you have to negotiate against?
Truthfully, it defies logic – it’s just what’s typically done.
You can use that to your advantage in a few ways.
First, factor in the commissions that your agent or broker requires is 100% negotiable. Even though they might tell you that 6% is “customary”, often times you can bargain with them especially due to today’s market being so hot you will be hard pressed to find a realtor turn down a listing.
Don’t underprice your property – this is the easiest way to throw away equity from your home. If you’re doing the work of listing yourself, be sure to get valuation opinions from your local realtor. That is one thing they are good for which is keeping a pulse on the current market.
When you are selling your house without a realtor in Baltimore, don’t forget some buyer’s will not have representation or an agent. This is a perfect opportunity to save money from not paying their side of realtor’s commission.
Marketing and spreading the word is a good way to find potential buyers for your home in Baltimore, Maryland. Often times, you can provide incentives such as 2.5% for bringing a buyer or a $1000 flat commission for essentially providing an a la carte service. Everything is negotiable.
On the other hand, if you don’t leave room for the buyer’s agent’s commission, you’ll be excluding most of the buyers in the market in Baltimore.
Over 90% of transactions happen through the MLS – that’s the Multiple Listing Service. It’s the main database that all the brokers in Baltimore 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 Baltimore, 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 MLS is a cheap way to market your property to a very wide audience.
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 Baltimore to the MLS, information on your property will end up on most of the major sites within a few days.
A great way to get stop saying sell my house without a realtor in Baltimore, is by simply hiring a flat fee service. Some of which I have used in the past is Mister Lister or Net Realty Now.
Each of those sites sells ads. They’ve got packages that let you pay to enhance your listing, feature it at the top of the search, and a lot of other bells and whistles that might or might not get an interested buyer to buy your property.
Advertising is a gamble. Sometimes open houses in Baltimore Maryland can be a great way to sell a property, and sometimes they’re a waste of time. Same with newspaper ads, craigslist postings, fancy signs – sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t.
To effectively sell your property on your own, you have to market it well.
Putting up fliers and signs around your neighborhood can generate some calls, and there’s a lot of free websites where you can post information. But often just putting up flyers and an open house isn’t enough if your house doesn’t appeal to the average home buyer.
In theory, real estate agents charge big commissions because they have to spend a lot of money up front to advertise your property. By advertising lots of properties at once, they expect to get more phone calls – and obviously, they’ll make good profits by selling lots of houses.
Certain properties might require thousands of dollars in advertising expenses before the right buyer happens to see the ad and call.
If you want to avoid paying any commissions, you can also sell your house to investors like us for CASH
We fair prices for properties – and we can close fast (in as little as 3-5 days if you need to).
Sometimes we’ll purchase Baltimore 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 Maryland.
We’re investors who care a lot about Baltimore.
We close fast and pay cash in as little as just 3-5 days. Give us a call now at (443) 383-4535 or fill out the short form over here.