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Is It Feasible to Sell San Antonio Home Without a Realtor?

Author: Erik McKenzie
by Erik McKenzie
Posted: Oct 27, 2016

SAN ANTONIO – The latest sign of just how much San Antonio is growing: hundreds of new houses proposed to be built on the far north side. The foreclosure rate in the San Antonio-New Braunfels area dropped in July for the 49th month in a row, remaining well below the nation's rate but above that of Texas.

San Antonio's housing market has been on the rise this year, helped by a healthy local economy and low interest rates. If you happen to be hoping to Sell your San Antonio house or investment property in San Antonio without using a realtor, we can help.

The San Antonio-New Braunfels delinquency rate, which shows the percentage of loans that are more than 90 days delinquent, was 2.5 percent, down from 2.87 percent last year. The rate has been dropping continuously since August 2012.

"The growth in San Antonio has been ongoing," neighbor Jose Navarro says – and it's only going to continue. "The traffic has always been difficult in San Antonio so this is another thing to overcome," Navarro says.

The delinquency rate was 2.36 percent in Texas and 2.82 percent in the U.S.

Our primary goal is to get you the most money possible so we prefer not to work with realtors, but we will if it's required.

After all, paying 5-6% of the sale of a house in a commission is a lot of money. In certain situations, brokers and real estate agents can be very useful and earn their commission. Not always.

The art to avoiding those bothersome realtor commissions.

Before we get going, there's one basic real estate norm you have to know about.

In most cases in Texas 1/2 of the 6-8% commission you pay as the seller goes to the buyer's broker.

Did that little tid-bit register… you are paying for your buyer's realtor.Let it sink in, you are literally paying for the buyer's agent to negotiate against you. Basically, you are negotiating against yourself. You are paying to lower the sales price of your property.

Why should you pay for the agent on the other side of the table?

In truth, it goes against logic – it's just what's commonly done.

You can use that to your advantage in a few ways.

First, take into account the commissions paid when you happen to be looking at the comparable sales. If the houses similar to yours sold for prices that included commissions, take that into account.

Please don't under price your property – be aware that an intelligent buyer might possibly expect to receive a discount too. If you're doing the work of one agent, you should expect to keep that money.

Many times in San Antonio, buyers who aren't represented by an agent won't remember to negotiate the buyer's side commission out of the price for themselves, so don't remind them if you don't want to pay them. Just don't be surprised if it comes up during the negotiation.

You may consider offering 2.5% to have real estate agents bring their clients to walk your property or home. Sure, it's a lot of money. If you are pricing your house including that commission, you can always give a more beneficial deal for a purchaser who comes without a broker.

Having said that, if you do not leave room for the buyer's realtor's commission, you'll be excluding most of the buyers in the market in San Antonio.

90 % of transactions take place through the MLS – that is the Multiple Listing Service. It's the main database that all the real estate brokers in San Antonio use to gain access to information for their clients on the houses, condos, land and investment properties for sale, along with data on the sold prices.

In the past, you had to pay a full commission to get your property or home on the MLS. Now in San Antonio, there are a few real estate brokers who will charge you a fee just to list your property on the MLS. Typically, you spend a few hundred bucks and you only pay commission if the sale closes.

Compared to the cost of a newspaper ad, the MLS is one of the cheapest ways to market your home to the largest audience.

Many of the important real estate web sites like Realtor.com, Zillow, Yahoo Homes, etc. receive data from the MLS. Chances are high that when you submit your house in San Antonio to the MLS, information on your house will end up on most of the major internet sites within two or three days.

Each of those sites sells ads. They've got packages that let you pay to enrich 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 house.

Advertising and marketing is really a gamble. Sometimes open houses in San Antonio can be a wonderful way to sell property, and many times they are a complete waste of time. It is the exact same with newspaper ads, craigslist postings, Fancy For Sale By Owner signs – sometimes they work, and oftentimes they don't.

To effectively sell your home all by yourself, you have to advertise it well.

Taping fliers and signs around your local community can generate a handful of calls, and there are a lot of free web sites where you can post information. But typically just putting up advertisements and having an open house isn't nearly enough if your house doesn't appeal to the standard home buyer.

In theory, real estate brokers charge sizeable commissions because they have to spend a good deal of money up front to publicize your house. By promoting lots of properties at once, they expect to get more calls – and obviously, they'll make good profits by selling lots of properties.

Selling properties is a numbers game. You have to go through a certain number of no's before the right buyer comes by and you get a yes. Think Goldilocks… Your buyer is Goldilocks and your home has to be just right.

If you want to avoid paying any kind of commissions, you can also sell your house to investors like us (www.GPBuysHomes.com) for CASH.

We present fair prices for houses – and we can close fast (in as little as 3-5 days if you need to).

Sometimes we'll purchase San Antonio houses, renovate them, then lease them… 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 San Antonio.

We're investors who care a lot about San Antonio.

About the Author

"Quite often investors are willing to pay cash for a home and with the recent tightening of financial restrictions, coupled with the growing number of complaints about low appraisals, having a cash buyer has become even more appealing."

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Author: Erik McKenzie

Erik McKenzie

Member since: Oct 21, 2016
Published articles: 20

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