Tim discusses the difference in selling your land directly to a real estate investor and working with a realtor to sell your rural, vacant land.
Hey there. There is a question that I get from time to time, which is, do you have to sell your land through a realtor? Or can you sell it to an individual, or somebody who’s a real estate investor like TB Properties Buys Land? My name is Tim Brown and I’m the owner of TB Properties Buys Land, and I’m going to try to answer some of those questions for you here today.
So what is a real estate investor? A real estate investor is somebody who buys land themselves, they fix it up, they hold it or they give it to somebody else who then resells it. Everybody’s heard about for sale by owner, right? You have to be a realtor to sell somebody else’s property. However, if you buy property with your own money, you can then do whatever you want, fix it up, and then you can resell it on your own as for sale by owner.
As for a realtor, they can be really good, they can be great. I’ve used realtors many times over the years. For rural vacant land, a realtor can be quite expensive, it can cost at least 10% and usually does for commission, and costs can end up as high as 20%, depending on what they do. On top of that, it can take a long, long time before it’s finally sold. They do have all the paperwork and they do generally handle everything for you, but what you end up receiving after you pay that commission and other closing costs is often quite a bit less.
As you may know, when you list your rural, vacant land for sale with a realtor, it can often take several months, sometimes a year or more even, to sell your property. When you sell it to an individual or an investor, once you agree upon a price, the sale is done within two to four weeks, and it’s just really up to how quickly the title company can close the sale.
Now, a realtor would use a title company, and as an investor myself, I also use a title company. The title company handles all the legal work. They prepare the deed, I wire the funds to the title company, and once everything is done, the legal paperwork is complete, then the title company is who dispenses the proceeds to you, the seller. And then of course, as a buyer, I receive the deed.
And again, it’s usually done in about three weeks, worst case scenario, it usually doesn’t take any more than four. Just a reminder, you don’t pay any commissions or anything. The price we agree on is exactly what you end up with.
On occasion, people will want to use their own title company. We have title companies we’ve worked with many times that do a great job, but if you have a title company you’d rather use than one we prefer, that’s completely fine. The key thing for us is we just want you to feel comfortable and we want the process to be done properly, so that it is legally completed and both of us can walk away content. You have your funds, I have a deed to a property and everybody’s happy.
We have a handful of title companies that we’ve used over and over again. We like to use title companies because it keeps everything on the up and up. We want you to feel comfortable by using Title as a good third party intermediary. And when everything’s complete, you have the exact proceeds that we agreed upon, I have a deed, and everything’s done in a manner that’s legal and proper.
As you can see, you can definitely work through a realtor. If you have the time and the money and you don’t mind going through the process of trying to figure out who to use, then I would absolutely say, go for it.
However, if selling your land is something you just want to check off your to-do list, we would have funds to you in as little as two weeks. You’ll get a price that you feel is fair, that works for both of us and you can move on to things in life that are more important and more productive for you. If you have any questions about selling your rural, vacant land to an investor, give us a call at 214-699-4455, send us an email or reach out to us online. We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks.