When should you fire your realtor and sell your property on your own? Hi, I’m Beth with TB Properties Buys Land and that’s the question for today.
Maybe you’ve got rural vacant land, you’ve got empty land and you’ve decided to sell it. Maybe you’ve already listed it with a realtor. The questions to ask yourself are, (1), do you list it with a realtor, and if you already have, (2), is it time to fire them and try to sell that property on your own?
Let’s keep in mind that when you’re selling rural vacant land, empty land, that oftentimes the sale price of that property is going to be much less than if a realtor was selling a house. What that translates to is that they’re going to make a lot less money. Oftentimes, instead of a 6% split between the realtors on the buy end and the sale end, it goes up to 10%, where each realtor would make 5% of the sale. For 5% of your sales price, selling your property, is it going to be worth it? Those are the questions to ask yourself.
If you’ve got a realtor that you’re considering, the question to ask them is, are they actually going to go out and visit the property? Rural land is sometimes outside of the big cities. It’s hard to get to, maybe the roads aren’t really great, maybe if they’ve got a sedan it’s not going to get out there real well and they would need a truck or a Jeep to get out there. The question is, are they going to get out to that land? Are they going to take pictures of the property?
I challenge you to go to Zillow and look for properties in your area. Instead of actual property pictures you might find a parcel pic. This is what I call it parcel pic: it’s where they take a snapshot of what the outline of the parcel looks like, using satellite images from something like Google Earth or Google Maps, and they put an outline of it and that’s what they’ve got to sell your property. Who’s going to want to buy your land when all they see is just a satellite image with lines around it? Are they going to have pictures of that property? Are they actually going to go out to that property?
Another question to ask that realtor is, are they going to show your property to other people? If they’re not going to go out there to take pictures, chances are, they’re not going to go out there and show people around. A lot of times, first-time land buyers aren’t real savvy. They get a little bit nervous driving out there into the middle of nowhere and they want some handholding. Is that realtor going to show them around the property? Are they going to know the area to answer those questions?
Another question to ask is, does this realtor specialize in selling land or are they going to be more focused on selling homes? If they’re professional land sellers, and there are professional land realtors out there who all they do is sell land, they know what the value is, they know how to talk to people, they know what to look for in rural land. Maybe you’ve got a type of tree that is marketable to buyers, but your average realtor may not know that. If your realtor isn’t specializing in land and they’re going to focus more on selling those homes where they’re going to make more money, if they’re not going to visit the property to begin with, maybe they’re not going to even take pictures of that property, then maybe they’re not a realtor that you want to spend 10% of your sale with. That might be a time where you consider selling that property on your own. You’re not going to have those realtor fees included in the cost of selling your property.
If you’re interested in selling your property quickly, again, look at Zillow or Realtor.com and see what the average days on market is for your area. You might think you’re going to list with a realtor, and bam, your property is going to be sold in two months and you’re going to have your money in maybe three months. It may not be that fast. I’ve looked at some of these properties online and sometimes they’re on there for a year, sometimes they’re on there for a year and a half. That is a possibility. Your property may be awesome and it may sell really fast with multiple offers, but I want you to be prepared that if your land’s been sitting there and it hasn’t been kept up, it’s been overgrown, you don’t have a good driveway put in, there’s not a great, great road to the property, it may not sell fast. If you’ve got time for it to sit on the MLS forever, then kudos to you and go ahead and do that.
If you’re looking for your property to sell quickly, you want cash in hand and you don’t want to mess around with that, there are real estate investors who would love to work with you. TB Properties Buys Land is one of those real estate investors. We close through a title company, you get cash when closing through title. We close as fast as two to three weeks. Lately, it’s been taking closer to three weeks with some of the title companies. This is a busy time of year, so it’s slowed down a little bit. But we will pay cash, we do close through title, we do close quickly, and we answer any questions that you might have. If you have any questions about how this works, how you can get paid faster, types of reviews that we’ve got, recommendations for working with TB Properties Buys Land, please reach out to us. We’re happy to answer any questions you might have. Thanks again for listening.