How do I sell my house without an agent in Christchurch?

If you’re looking to sell your house or investment property in Christchurch without using a real estate agent, we can help.

Although we do cooperate with brokers, sometimes it’s best to avoid paying someone to be in the middle.

After all, paying 3-6% of the sale of a property in a commission is a lot of money. In certain situations, Christchurch brokers and real estate agents can be very useful and earn their commission. Not always.

There are a few ways to avoid paying high commissions in your Christchurch sale.

First, there’s a tricky custom that you’ve gotta know about.

In most sales in Christchurch, roughly half of the commission you pay as the seller goes to pay for the buyer’s broker.

Doesn’t make much sense, right?

Why should you pay for the agent on the other side of the table?

Truthfully, it defies logic – it’s just what’s typically done.

You can use that to your advantage in a few ways.

First, factor in the commissions paid when you’re looking at the comparable sales. If the properties similar to yours sold for prices that included commissions, take that into account.

Don’t underprice your property – be aware that a savvy buyer may expect to take a discount too. If you’re doing the work of one agent, you can expect to save that money.

Sometimes in Christchurch buyers who aren’t represented by an agent won’t remember to negotiate the buyer’s side commission out of the price for themselves, so don’t remind them if you don’t want to pay them. Just don’t be surprised if it comes up during the negotiation.

You may want to consider offering 2.5% to buyer’s agents who will bring their clients to show your property. Sure, it’s a lot of money. If you’re pricing your property including that commission, you can always negotiate a better deal for a purchaser who comes without an agent.

On the other hand, if you don’t leave room for the buyer’s agent’s commission, you’ll be excluding most of the buyers in the market in Christchurch.

Advertising is a gamble. Sometimes open houses in Christchurch can be a great way to sell the property, and sometimes they’re a waste of time. Same with newspaper ads, fancy signs – sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t.

To effectively sell your property on your own, you have to market it well.

Putting up fliers and signs around your neighborhood can generate some calls, and there’s a lot of free websites where you can post information. But often just putting up flyers and an open house isn’t enough if your house doesn’t appeal to the average home buyer.

In theory, real estate agents charge big commissions because they have to spend a lot of money up front to advertise your property. By advertising lots of properties at once, they expect to get more phone calls – and obviously, they’ll make good profits by selling lots of houses.

Certain properties might require thousands of dollars in advertising expenses before the right buyer happens to see the ad and call.

If you want to avoid paying any commissions, you can also sell your house to investors like us for CASH

We fair prices for properties – and we can close fast (in as little as 3-5 days if you need to).

Sometimes we’ll purchase Christchurch houses, fix them up, then rent them out… sometimes we’ll fix them up and sell them to other people looking for great homes in the area, and a lot of other reasons, too – but we love to hear from people like you who are thinking of selling anywhere in Christchurch.

We’re investors who care a lot about Christchurch.

We close fast and pay cash in as little as just 3-5 days. Give us a call now at 022 000 0033 or fill out the short form over here.