Want to sell your home in Philly without using a real estate agent?
Well, we don’t blame you.
The standard commission for a real estate agent is 6% of the sale price of your home. That might not sound like much, but on a $250,000, that’s $15,000! Unfortunately, using a real estate agent can really cut into how much money you make off the sale of your home.
But money isn’t the only problem.
You also have to find an agent that you can trust.
If you’ve worked with a real estate agent in the past who was dishonest or tried to push you to do something you didn’t want to do, you wouldn’t be the first.
Not all real estate agents are this way, of course, but some of them are. And it’s figuring out who you can trust that’s the real problem.
Point is, while some people might disagree, you have a lot of good reasons for not wanting to work with a real estate agent in Philly.
But… how do you sell your house on your own?
Unfortunately, wanting to sell your house without a real estate agent doesn’t automatically give you the knowledge you need to make it happen.
At Guardian Property Solutions, we’ve worked with tons of homeowners who didn’t want to go the traditional selling route. We’ve helped people sell their homes as-is for cash without a real estate agent.
So here’s some advice from our years of experience!
Option 1. List as For-Sale-By-Owner
This is probably the option that you’re primarily considering — you want to sell your house the traditional way, but without using a real estate agent.
You probably want to still list on the MLS, market to a large buyer network, and maybe you’re even open to working with a real estate agent on the buyer’s side.
Your first step, then, is to prepare your home for marketing and selling. This means fixing anything that’s broken, updating appliances, deep cleaning, and staging your home so that it’s appealing.
Just think of how you would want the home to look if you were a potential buyer — then make it look like that.
And don’t forget to fix and update the outside of your home as well — the yard, the drive-way, the roof, and paint. That’s the first thing buyers will see so it’s important.
Next, you’ll want to do some research to figure out what a fair price is for your home.
The easiest way to do this is to look at nearby homes that are similar and have sold recently (you can do this on Zillow) to see what price they sold for. The bigger your sample size, the more recently the homes sold, and the more similar they are to your own home, the more accurate this estimate will be.
Finally, hire someone to take professional photos of your home or do this yourself, write a description, and pay the MLS listing fee.
Many FSBO sellers don’t list on the MLS and that’s a big reason why the average time on market for FSBO homes is 68 days longer than those sold by realtors.
In order to sell as FSBO, you definitely want to list on the MLS — this will help you sell much faster than you would otherwise.
From there, it’s really all about marketing your property, holding open houses, negotiating with buyers, and speaking with buyer’s real estate agents.
It’ll take some time, but eventually, you’ll be able to sell your home without a real estate agent in Philly!
Option 2. Sell As-Is for Cash to a Professional Homebuyer
You might not realize it, but listing your home on the MLS, working with buyer agents, and going the FSBO route isn’t your only option.
There’s one other way that you can sell your home without a real estate agent in Philly.
Actually, it’s even easier!
You can sell to a professional homebuyer.
What’s a professional homebuyer? Well, they are real estate investors who purchase homes as-is for cash. Typically, they can close in just a couple of weeks and they pay closing costs as well.
In fact, we at Guardian Property Solutions are professional home buyers!
We’ve worked with a lot of different folks in Philly who didn’t want to use a real estate agent to sell their home. We made them fair cash offers, many of them accepted, and they were able to sell their home in just a couple of weeks!
Does that interest you?
Our process is really simple…
- Give us a call at (610) 569-9042 and we’ll explain the process to you and answer any questions you have.
- We’ll evaluate your property and make you a fair no-obligation cash offer within just a few days.
- You can accept, reject, or negotiate our offer — we’ve got thick skin 😉
- If we come to an agreement, we’ll buy your house as-is within just a few weeks and pay all closing costs.
If you want to learn more, just give us a call at (610) 569-9042 and we’ll answer any questions you have.
We understand that selling your home without a real estate agent is a priority for you, and we want to make that process as simple as possible.
We hope this guide has helped you and we we hope we’ll be hearing from you soon!
Steve is our founder. If you call Guardian Property Solutions to sell a house, Steve is the person you get to meet with. Steve is a graduate of Penn State and lives in Chester County with his beautiful wife Hillary and three children- Olivia, Ava, and Ethan. He loves to meet new people, enjoys cooking, and has a passion for fishing and the outdoors. He’s looking forward to meeting with you about your property.
We named our company “guardian” because our mission is to put people before profits and to carefully guard the resources with which we’ve been entrusted. We’re a family-owned business based in Chester County, Pennsylvania with a focus on helping property owners find solutions.