Beth:
Hi, I’m Beth with TB Properties Buys Land. In the last several videos, we have discussed the real estate market and how it may impact you as a land seller in getting your property ready to list on the market. We discussed how long you may expect for your property to sit on the market before it goes under contract. We discussed what might delay the sale of your property once it’s under contract. We also discussed a few ways in which you might be able to speed up the sale of your land, so that yours is not the property that’s sitting out there on the market for six months, a year, 18 months, or maybe you just keep dropping the sale or listing of your price until you’re not making the value that you think it’s worth. We want you to avoid that by making you aware of what is going on in real estate today. In our discussion today, we will cover another way in which you can speed up the sale of your vacant land which is to consider hiring a vacant land realtor.
When you’re selling your house, most of the time you’re going to employ a realtor. They help you prep your house, they take the pictures, they get it ready, they schedule the showings and make sure that they’re able to sell your property quickly. When selling land, it’s a little bit different. Your land may be way out there, a far drive from most buyers. On top of that, it may be difficult to find. People who want to see your property may want to get out there, but there’s probably no address yet, which makes it difficult to drop in Google Maps to get out and just go. Most vacant land properties don’t have an address just yet until you’ve built a structure. When it comes to listing your vacant land with a realtor, you want to make sure that you’ve got a realtor who’s going to represent you well and who will be able to show off your property and make it appealing to potential land buyers. It’s important to recognize that not all realtors are the same. Some realtors will represent vacant land, but they also sell homes. If they have the opportunity to show a quarter million dollar home, or even a $500,000 home, or your $50,000 piece of land, what do you think they’re going to spend their time on?
They’re going to make more money selling the home. Consider this, they’re probably not going to put as much time into selling your property as they would a home. Getting about in the city to sell a house is easier and more convenient. It’s less dirty; it can be safer and faster to get to. When compared to showing land, there’s less risk showing a home than driving out maybe an hour or so into the wilderness and tromping around in the mud or in the dirt to show a property. There’s a lot of time and effort that it takes in order to sell land. With this said, you want to make sure that you find a land realtor, one that specifically sells land. On top of that you need to vet them and make sure they’re good. Check out the pictures of their properties. Are they just Google Earth / satellite images? Or are there actual real pictures of the property? Do they include drone shots? Is there video? How well are they marketing your property? This is really, really important to know when hiring a realtor to market your property.
This is a potential way for you to speed up the sale of your land. Still, it is not without a cost. To compare, when you are enlisting the help of a realtor to sell your home, oftentimes the split of commissions is 6% of the property sale. However, when it comes to vacant land, because your land is not as expensive as say a home, and because there’s a lot of time and effort that goes into selling and marketing your vacant land property, they’re going to charge 10% of the sale price. If you need the money, it is extremely important to recognize and factor this into your price and your expectation of what you might bring home. If your property is listed for, say, $100,000, that’s $10,000 that’s going to go to the realtors off the top. That’s not counting the deductions from covering your closing costs. Be sure to factor in the survey cost, the escrow fees, the title insurance that you as a seller have to pay for, recording fees, transfer taxes, any of that. Some of that may be negotiable when it comes to selling but then you may find yourself responsible for all of it in order to get it under contract, depending on your market! Also, understand that you may have to drop the price of your property over time if it fails to get the attention it needs to in order to sell.
Even with a really awesome realtor, you may have to drop your price in order to sell your property quickly. The longer your property sits on the market, the more people are going to want to offer you less money. You want to sell it quickly. You don’t want it sit sitting there for very long. Again, no matter what that value is, using a land realtor means they are going to take 10% off the top, then further deduct closing costs and all that good stuff. Still, it is a way to speed up the sale of your land.
There is an even faster and more sure way though. Consider selling your land to a real estate investor like TB Properties Buys Land. That way you don’t even have to worry about it being on the market at all. We buy off-market property and we pay in cash, and we close quickly. Here at TB Properties Buys Land, we’re not the same as other real estate investors.
We will always close through a title company for your safety and for ours. Because we pay in cash, we are not waiting on a bank loan. We don’t have to find a buyer for your property before willing to pay for your property. We’re going to buy your property outright through a local and reputable title company and paying in cash allows us to close quick, say in about a month to five, six weeks at the most, depending on title company, basically.
When working with a real estate investor like TB Properties Buys Land, you’re not running the risk of your property sitting in the market for too long. You don’t have to worry about how far you may have to drop your pricing to over time. You don’t need to hire that surveyor and pay thousands out of your pocket for that up front and you don’t have to worry about paying a realtor. We cover all closing costs. This means that whatever we offer you is what you’re going to get. You’re going to walk away with that dollar value. But don’t take our word for that. Reach out to us and ask questions. Talk to title companies that we’ve worked with, check out testimonials of people who’ve worked with us and those who have sold their properties to us. We’re happy to work with you and answer any questions that you might have. Thanks again for listening, and I hope this helps you get your property ready to sell quickly. Thanks again.