Selling Home By Owner

Anyone have experience?

A dream home became available to us - and our friend advised us to list ours for sale by owner. It's the sellers market right now and I should be able to almost triple what we bought it for (comparing it with similar properties) because hobby farms are the "go to" thing right now.

Our friend is very smart (multi-business owner), but I'm just looking for other input/opinions.

We have an attorney available that can do the deed/title search and paperwork.

 

At a minimum have an attorney involved. I hate to say it but if it is a dream purchase I would be tempted to buck up and pay a realtor so a rookie error does not cause you to miss out on the property.

 

We do have an attorney ready. He is able to do the title/deed searches, too.

Property is from friend - he only bought it for the land - so it wont be going anywhere. (It's a great opportunity!)

 

We sold last home ourselves and bought all land around us no realities. It all depends on your cash available or your bank. A good land lawyer is a must and recorded abstract from a title company. Also shop for your surveyor . We being in construction had a one up as it were, ont this and saved us money. Now I won't say how, just that certain owner to buyer side deals are possible for financial benefits to be done without a realtor involved.

Also realitors are on commission...when we bought our sons home we wanted to low bid bank and realitors flipped out. They did not want to submit our bid. We insisted they do so, the bank countered with 2,000 above ours. We bought 5 acres 3200 square ft farm house ,garage and commercial building(they made turkey calls) for 36,000' half what the listed price was. It was a cash deal. Remember there is no such thing as the standard contract...ALL contracts are negotiable with the help of a good lawyer.

 

We had it surveyed within' the last five years - so that is still on file and should be good to go.

Only reason why I am really considering it is due to the realtor fees. Around here they're roughly 9% and with what we're looking at selling for - that's a huge chunk. I'd rather save half and just use an attorney if that is feasible. Market Place on Facebook seems to be the go-to place right now for selling homes (at least around here).

 

We went word of mouth and local penny savers.
When looking to buy we did have one issue. It was a contract based on our sale of home within a certain time. All contracts signed. The owner came to us hat in hand and asked to back out. They had an over seas buyers offer 20,000 above us. They were retiring to Florida and building new at a time when lumber sky rocketed due to hurricane down there. I just could not say no to them...Though I did make them sweat a week first. We ended up selling our place to a neighbor's kid a couple of weeks later making life a tad rough for us. We bought way lower in comfort, size and price but in a perfect location to expand and did.
Good luck...and read up on all state or local turn over requirements. Knowledge is your friend to avoid litigation a year down the road. Inspections.....

 

Thanks - husband has a realtor friend who is coming today at 230 to give him an idea on value/list price.

My aunt does realty in Florida and she said that we could list ourselves and allow realtor friend list it and just tell him that if he sells it - that his people would have to pay the fees and it wouldn't come out of our part. That may be of interest to me, too.

 

I sold my house in NY without a realtor. It was a very simple process with an attorney. No regrets. Sounds like a no brainer for you.

 

Thank you! Did you have anything take you by surprise that you may not have thought about during the process?

 

It does help a great deal that the seller is a friend, it is different than in the predatory real estate market we have now.

 

No, it was very easy. I pretty much vowed not to use a realtor again it was so easy.

 

that's bleeping insane. Never heard of anything more than 6% before.

 

We sold our house in 2019 ourselves. Posted it on Facebook, and within one day, we had 5 tours scheduled. First tour offered full asking price and we sold it. They used a realtor, and I used my lawyer's office to do the paperwork. Super easy.

 

I agree completely! A house down the road from mine went for sale Monday/Tuesday. It was sold by yesterday.

It's what I was told. I could be wrong - but I wouldn't be surprised, either...we always seem to be higher on the oddest things.

 

How much you pay their realtor?

 

From my understanding, they'd have to pay their own realtor.

Interested in this answer, as I am curious. I had one inquiry already on ours today! Heck, they even want some of the animals - I'm like, I can do this.

 

I didn't. That's a negotiable item. Sometimes you can offer seller's assist, but we didn't need to.

 

Well, it's officially listed online with a website that shares it for agricultural and hunting land.

We will see where it goes. Thanks for the advice all!

 

Good luck and hope for a bidding war.

 

Thanks - I had one couple drive almost two hours to see it today (called at 9pm to arrange it lol)....he loved it...his wife, I think is too much a city gal for it.