In my experience real estate agents just want to get a sale done and get their commission. I expect that is why when we interviewed the agents they wanted to list our house significantly lower than where we priced it.
That is their goal of course - but I do think that many people tend to overprice their home and they sit.
I see it in my neighborhood - If I see, and it’s like a chance me, it’s subjective - but if I look and have a good feel about the price based on things like square footage, # of garages, etc., I’m like - that’s good.
Others, I’m like shaking my head - $150K too high. That’s my neighbor right now - and I get why they don’t move.
It’s just like sometimes you see someone puts on their Chance Me - U Michigan likely and you just shake your head.
It’s hard for an outsider to view things fairly - but often times it’s really hard for that insider (owner) to do so and they overrate.
That’s very true. When I got two estimates in the same range, I figured that is a fair price. Real estate agents have their metric from knowing what buyers are looking for. There’s a wiggle room tho, I’d say within 5-10%. I counted on my agent to squeeze out that 5-10% more. That would pay the commisssion. Didn’t happen. The buyer offered a number I confided to my agent and stuck to it. My agent acted a bit funny relaying the offer as if I knew the number already. I believe my agent violated the code of conduct but not much I can do with mere hunch. Soon after, two of my neighbors asked me for a recommendation for an agent. It is an old neighborhood. One was moving to a retirement community. The other passed and the heirs needed to sell. I told them my agent will sell the house but they shouldn’t expect to get the best price. Since it is a seller’s market, selling isn’t really what people are concerned at the moment. They didn’t go with my agent needless to say.
When my agent had an potential buyer for my house, I told her it would be a conflict of interest. She agreed and said if they decided to make an offer, another agent from her office would represent the buyer.
I dislike the entire channel of communications for this process. I, as the seller, could only talk to my realtor who would then talk the the buyer’s realtor, who would then talk to the buyer. It felt like the childhood game of telephone, with stuff getting lost along the way. My agent was actually concerned the few times we had any contact with potential buyers and their agents, because we might say the wrong thing.
It was the same when we entered into inspection negotiation. I could only talk to my lawyer, who talked to their lawyer, who talked to the buyers. For that reason I emailed to at least have documented what I was saying.
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I don’t recall ever having an attorney involved in my sales short of title people.
But I bought both new and only sold one - to my company.
In some states, you have to have a lawyer for closing. In others, like in my state, there is no such requirement. We’ve sold 2 houses and bought 4 properties all without a lawyer involved.
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NJ is one of those states that require an attorney.
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CT also.
I think we involved a lawyer minimally when we sold our first house ourselves. The next two houses, without a lawyer. Our realtor told us we could get one if wanted but it’s rare in her sales that one gets involved - Ohio.
Any trend currently on who pays closing costs?
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Typically each party pays their own costs. The closing fee is split 50/50, the seller pays for a title insurance policy to insure the buyer is getting a clean title, and the buyer pays all of their own loan fees.
Often though, especially when the buyer is having trouble with the down payment, they’ll ask the seller to contribute to the buyer’s loan and/or closing costs. Often the seller will agree, but add it back on to the price. Essentially the seller is netting the same amount but it allows the buyer to minimize their out of pocket cost and add it to the loan.
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Closing costs associated with the mortgage? That would be the buyer. Lawyer for the sellers…the sellers. Lawyer for the buyers…the buyers.
What other closing costs are you talking about.
Sale of house closing costs.
Please give an example. Are you talking about property taxes? The commissions?
Commissions are paid by the buyer to their agent and by the seller to theirs. This is reconciled at the closing. Each party pays their own lawyer.
Please explain what you mean by “closing costs”.
Excise tax, loan payoff fees, various paperwork fees, seller’s escrow fees… All paid by the seller.
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Agree. But I think the bulk of the closing costs are paid by the buyer.
In our state, a lawyer handles the paperwork. Not sure I would include loan payoff anything as a “closing cost”
@jym626 what are you hoping your S the buyer can include? I don’t think these things are “negotiable”. If it’s a buyers bill…they pay. If it’s a sellers bill…they pay.
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The things I listed are the closing costs we paid as the sellers. Anything that comes on top (buyer) or out of (seller) the negotiated price is technically a closing cost.
Our local roughly 2% of the selling price excise tax really bites! The rest are small fees, a couple of thousands at max.
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My god, who would ever want to sell a home?
It sounds like divorce - there’s a lot of assets to begin with.
Pay the lawyer - in this case realtor - and all these other fees - and what’s left?
Does a cash buyer reduce costs? Or myself not having a loan to pay off reduce costs?
Selling a house is costly! We’ve been fortunate that our last couple of moves have been corporate relocations and the company took care of all the closing costs, inspections, fees, and commissions.
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My closing costs (sold in NJ in December) were - buyer and seller realtor fees, attorney fee (which included some silly stuff like funds transfer fee) and the “NJ goodbye tax” paid to the state based upon the selling price (state transfer tax). We were lucky to meet the over 62 age requirement to get a discount on that tax. But we had no mortgage to close, so no costs associated with that. The buyers had a full page of stuff they paid at closing. We did get from the buyer back our real estate tax paid in advance for that quarter.
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