Realtors are generally scam artists. 6% for nothing. These days sellers and buyers want more control.
You can always use a flat fee realtor listing that basically lets you put your house in MLS through their realtor company but they offer you no services you show the house they may or may offer you contracts. You can then decide what commission to pay the buyers broker but let me just tell you that if you decide you're going to pay the buyers broker 1% and everybody else is paying the buyers broker 3% guess who that broker is going to show a house to. Their clients are only going to see the houses that have 3% and the broker is going to tell them that your house is already under contract even if it's not. I know it sounds terrible but the truth of the matter is MLS is the way 90% of homes are sold and most buyers go through Realtors who are on mls. So as a seller you might think oh great I can save money selling my house but you won't get any buyers looking. The only buyer is brave enough to buy your house without a realtor are going to be people who want to buy it for very much less do something to it and flip it and so you won't get a good price. if you want the floodgates to open for a lot of buyers to have a bidding war in your house the only way to do that is to go through MLS which means use a realtor. The cheapest thing to do is to get one of those flat fee $500 sell your own Home realtors that will list your house on MLS. But then you do have to do a lot of stuff and if you do do that I would still offer a full two and a half to 3% to the buyers broker so you're going to end up paying $500 plus two and a half to 3%, so why not go ahead and just pay the 6% and have somebody do it all for you.
The one thing I absolutely would not do is sign a long-term contract with a real estate agent. You only sign it with them for as short a period of time as possible and tell them you will extend it if they're bringing in lots of buyers and offers. Real estate agents won't like that but you won't like it if you're stuck with a bad real estate agent that doesn't get things moving and you signed a 6-month listing. so sign is short a listing as possible and say look if you get a lot of people in the door and we're getting offers of course I'll extend it and of course I'll give you the right to sell it and close and make the commission for anybody you show it to during your short period of time even if they close 2 months later. That's only fair.
this is a well thought-out and honest answer
Lots of my neighbors sold. I know what worked and what didn't. The people who got by far the most money for their homes were the ones who used traditional real estate agents with the large commissions. Everybody hates it but that's the way it is. The multiple listing service completely dominates the market. And the buyers are almost all represented by real estate agents who will not show your house unless they're going to get the customary commission of two and a half to 3%. And if they go to her house that's a for sale by owner that's offering two and a half to 3%, their view of it is they're going to do 6% commission worth of work meaning all the work of both the buyer and the seller agent and they're only getting half price so they're not happy with that either. So you know just for an example one person did an auction and got 375 everybody else used full full commission real estate agents and got 495 and 550 and 485 and 49 0. now I will say this at the closings sometimes fell through for the full service real estate agents because you're going with buyers who have to go out and get loans based on a drastically increased home price. So if you're trying to get a higher price for your home in an area that is not had a lot of recent sales at the new higher price levels you may find that your first buyer gets crucified by the lender who can't get an appraisal for anywhere near that high price so they can't approve the loan. But if you're going for that mystical all cash buyer which everybody claims to be now but you find out actually isn't an all cash buyer and they're all going to get loans anyway you know then well you take what you can get. So you really have to prepare yourself that once you get an offer that the closing might take two or three months and the buyer might either fail to get the loan or it might take two or three lenders tries to get the loan. But in any case you're probably looking at a two to three month closing. If you use a full service broker but you're going to get much much higher prices. That's what I've seen in my neighborhood.
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