10. How Do I Sell My House Without An Agent In Connecticut?

How To Sell A House In Connecticut Without A Realtor?

You decided it is time to sell your house, but you don’t want to pay agent fees, so you take it upon yourself to get your house sold so that you don’t have to pay those annoying fees! Well, good for you! We can help!

Here is a step by step guide you can follow to sell your house without a realtor in Connecticut.

First we need to understand the process for selling a house without an agent here in CT and see what it involves. There is a reason real estate agents charge you a hefty commission getting your home sold here in Connecticut. Although not all agents are good, they are not the enemy. It can be a lot of work selling a house, and it could take you a while getting your house sold without a realtor. However with a bit of guidance and direction this could be very doable and you can skip those steep agent commissions.

14 Tips (And Typical Costs)To Sell A House Without A Realtor In CT.

More than just tips on how to get your house in Connecticut sold fast, this is a ordered checklist, a step by step procedure in order to make sure your house will get sold fast (without having to involve a realtor)!

1. Get Your Home Inspected!

I understand that you want to save money and that is the whole point to selling your house yourself. I get it. That said, GET AN INSPECTION! This is non negotiable, just suck it up and do it. The last thing you want, is doing all the work, the painting, the cleaning, the preparing, the repairing, and the marketing to finally get an interested buyer, then the deal suddenly falls through because you didn’t know you had termites in the basement, or that your 3 month-old brand new roof is leaking, or that you hired an unlicensed plumber to to your bathroom 3months ago, and they used a garden hose for plumbing pipes in the walls.

Know what to expect and know beforehand what the results will be when your buyer does his expectation on your home. What is a mere $400 dollars for an inspection when you are putting thousands of dollars on the line, selling your house yourself. But do you realize something else? It is not just for that reason you want an inspection done. Imagine you buy a house and on the surface, everything looks great, then you get an inspection done and suddenly, boom, foundation issues. Wouldn’t you be suspicious now? What else is the homeowner not telling? You lose the trust and motivation of your buyer if there is something wrong with the house and you didn’t disclose it!

The typical costs associated with getting a home inspection done in CT: $350 – $600 depending on the size of the house.

2. Check Out The Competition

Go undercover. Go to open houses. Go to zillow.com, realtor.com, trulia.com etc. and see how the other houses are staged, what condition they are in, and in what location they are in. You may not be able to change your home’s layout or location easily, however you can scope the competition to see if the house is staged, and if they got a new deck build, or if they put a fresh layer of pretty dark mulch in their flowerbeds. Knowledge is power, so get in the know! Try to one-up your competition.

A bit difficult to do now during COVID, but also ease drop on the people during the open house and try to listen in what they liked about the rooms they enter as they talk among themselves and see what maters to them buying a house.

3. Fix What Needs To Be Fixed!

Fix what absolutely needs to be fixed, and evaluate fixing what doesn’t have to necessarily be fixed. Some things you will need to fix, no debating this (like a leaking gas pipe), and other things may not necessarily need to be fixed, but it could be beneficial you fix them, like a slanted cabinet door. Leaving it like that makes the entire house seem shabby, and fixing it could be as simple as replacing a hinge.

4. Apply Some Elbow Grease

You fixed what absolutely needed to be fixed. I am talking about those things that if left unattended, no one would ever buy your house. If you want higher price for your house and more certainty your house will sell, consider giving your house a facelift with a fresh new coat of paint!

If you hate painting as much as I do, I know you will start sighing and start to get demotivated. However try not to be. I find painting the most annoying thing to do, ever, but it’s inexpensive and this instantly makes your house look brand new, fresh, airy, pleasant, inviting and happy, provided of course you pick the right color.

Go with a neutral palette. We have personally noticed that pastel colors have a very peaceful breezy soothing effect to the feel of the house and we love these colors.

Painting your house yourself is a breeze with the right preparation. Paint will cost you about $135 dollars/5 gallon bucket, and the average home owner would need about 3 of these buckets. You could easily get more offers and higher offers having a fresh coat of paint so it is definitely worth it.

5. Declutter Your Home

Now that the house has a fresh coat of paint (if it needed it), let’s put things back in their proper location, but not so fast. Before you put the things back in place make sure you give potential buyers their own vision. Make it easy for them to picture what the house would look like were they to buy it. Therefore remove personal pictures, personal items and art. Make the house as neutral as possible yet still showing off its unique features. Less is often more.

6. Know What Your House Is Worth!

This one is quite obvious yet you’ll be surprised how many FSBO (For Sale By Owner) have no idea what their house is accurately worth. Personal opinion has nothing to do with this. Your fond memories of your home sadly does not make your home worth more. In order to sell your house fast in connecticut without a realtor, you need to know how much you should expect for your house. 

Now that your house has gone through an inspection, you cleaned it up, and fixed some things here and there, you know exactly what condition your house is in and now you can price it.

The way to figure out how much your house is currently worth as-is, is to do a Comparative Market Analysis. A real estate agent can help you with this, but it wouldn’t be fair to them to make them do work on your house for you, when you are not going to list it with them. So either do the analysis yourself, or give an agent a “reward” to do it for you. We have written a comprehensive step by step on how to get the market value of your house. Read it, learn it, master it, and get your house sold reliably! We highly recommend you do 2 sets of analysis. First do a CMA to determine what the current as is value of your house is, and secondly, do a CMA to determine how much the market value would be of your home as if it was completely updated and fixed up.

You get these numbers the exact same way. To find the current as-is value, you simply pick comparisons that are similar to the current condition of your home and to find the after repaired condition of your home you just chose comparisons that have similar characteristics of your home (same location, sixe, features) but the home is simply fixed, renovated or upgraded. Now you have a very clear understanding  of the potential of the home and why your buyers may like the home and this gives you ammunition for negotiating!

7. Price Your House Right!

Now that you know what your house is worth, now we can price it competitively. The roof is leaking? Driveway is full of potholes? That’s fine, just price it accordingly. Give the buyers a credit to fix these issues if you do not have the money to fix it yourself. The biggest mistake homeowners make when selling their house is thinking that their house is somehow special and worth more than the current market value of their house. Price it to sell, if you need it sold fast. 

8. Never Underestimate The Power Of Staging

Your home is now inspected, you are aware of what condition your home is in underneath the hood, and you have fixed what needs to be fixed. Your home looks great, and it is now in either sellable condition (good enough for people actually to be interested) or in great condition (if you went that extra mile to get as much as possible for your house… now what!? Learn how to stage your home for a quick sale! That’s what!

Now you dress up your house and present it to buyers! You’d be surprised how easy staging can be. Less is definitely more.

If your home you are trying to sell has been lived in, you most likely have plenty of furniture. Try to resist using old scruffy furniture as staging material, if you are very serious about getting your home sold as quickly as possible. Consider renting a storage unit and put old scruffy furniture away and hire a stager to give your home’s interior a facelift. A good stager will know how to use your homes interior features and bring out the best possible feel of your home to get it sold fast.

9. Take Awesome Pictures

Or, if you have a modest budget, hire a professional real estate photographer. Nowadays you can easily download an app to transform mediocre pictures into stunning real estate listing quality pictures with a click of a button (add a few apps here).

If you have a few hundred dollars available in your budget it would be a great investment to hire a professional of course… and take the guesswork out of how and of what to take your pictures.

But just in case you do not want to hire a photographer, here is a guide on how to take pictures that will have people knocking on your door and make you an offer.

10. Be Seen

(picture a cartoon of a house with a flag on the roof that says “LOOK AT MEEEEE!!!”  for sale and people all peek up over the fence, from their cars, dog walker bends down to take a look, the dog takes a look etc. etc. helicopter hovers over with the pilot looking at the house through binoculars, about to crash with an airplane )

Picture of the blue slanted line with social media logos all over the place with bubbles?

In order to get buyers for your house, buyers need to be able to find you. There are several ways you can do this.

1. Flat fee on the MLS (Beware!! If this worked, no one would hire an agent, right?)
2. Involve an agent
3. Social Media
4. Sell it to a cash home buyer
5. Wholesale the house with the help of an investor.
6. Put a sign in your yard

[Write articles on all 4 and link them]

Dress To Impress

Dress up your house to impress your potential buyers. Remember not all buyers have the same taste. Feature the house and play off its characteristics. Find out what buyers want. What the latest trends are and incorporate this as you spruce up your house.

11. Read Up On The Law

A not so obvious tip for sure. You don’t know what you don’t know right? How would you know what questions to ask, or where to look, if you don’t know what you are even looking for, or worse, if you don’t even know you were missing anything. There are strict laws to selling your home. 

Here are a few (not all) laws you need to be aware of selling your house in connecticut.

(Add a list of things like disclosures required).

12. Know Your Contracts!

Your buyer, and heck not even you probably know much about contracts and contract lingo. If you can’t explain that jargon to a motivated buyer, they may lose faith in the legitimacy of the entire transaction and a deal could easily fall through. But not just for that reason should you know your contracts. You obviously need to protect yourself legally, and make it abundantly clear to the buyer what your expectations are and what theirs are. Buying/selling a house is not a small thing. It is a huge transaction where many things can go wrong. You need to make sure all your t’s are crossed and your i’s dotted so that nothing can go wrong. Make sure you have a legal qualified entity look over what ever contracts you use to make sure they would legally stand up in a court of law, and that you are fully protected and abide to all the laws here in Connecticut.

13. Keep It Clean People

Keep your house presentable at all times. This may actually be the most difficult task to do, especially if you have kids, (or a husband…). As it is you that wants your house sold fast with a high offer, it would be good to be able to show off your house at a moment’s notice, when a buyer just drives by your house and sees the “For Sale” sign and decides to stop by right then or there. Of course, you can always say “only by appointment” but you risk the interested buyer to drive off and then see another for sale sign down the street and they let him in and they fall in love with the house and you lost your opportunity to entertain motivated home buyers. Remember, always one-up your competition.

14. Learn The Basics Of Negotiating!

You did your market research. You know the status/condition of your house and you know what the houses in your area go for.

There is a reason I have asked you to learn how to find the market value of your house. There is also a reason why I asked you to check out your competition and check out the houses that have recently sold and for how much.

Negotiations are all about logic and data. It is hard to fight a buyers offer of $100K for your house when you have no clue what is a realistic number, what you can expect to get for your house and how much houses in your area are actually worth. But if you knew that your neighbors house that is half the size as yours in way worse condition than yours sold last week for $150K it is easy to tell that buyer he is out of his mind and to up his offer and not waste your time. Knowledge is power and with this comes success in negotiating. Use market data to justify your choices and responses and counter offers. As long as you have numbers to back you up, no one can touch you! Ultimately though what matters is how fast you want to sell your house and how much profits you want to make. You accept offers and negotiate numbers based on your goals.

We Buy Houses In Connecticut.  You have several options when it comes to selling your house in Connecticut. A popular option is selling your home through an agent. Although a lot of people choose this route, it certainly is not always your best option. If you do choose to go this route make sure you research the qualities of a top real estate agent before you just pick the first agent that comes your way.  If you’re looking to sell your home or investment property in Connecticut without using a real estate agent, then keep on reading. We are legitimate home buyers in CT and we can help.

Although we do cooperate with brokers, sometimes it’s best to avoid paying someone to be in the middle, don’t you agree? After all, paying 5-6% of the sale of a property in a commission is a lot of money. In certain situations, Connecticut brokers and real estate agents can be very useful and earn their commission. Not always.

Avoid paying high commissions in your Connecticut sale

Is selling with an agent really worth it? How do I sell my house without an agent in Connecticut? First, there’s a tricky custom that you’ve gotta know about.

In most sales in Connecticut, 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 in Connecticut 

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 Connecticut 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 Connecticut.

Over 90% of transactions happen through the MLS

that’s the Multiple Listing Service. It’s the main database that all the brokers in Connecticut use to access information for their clients on the property, condos, land and investment properties for sale, along with data on the sold prices.

Once upon a time, you had to pay a full commission to get your property on the MLS. Now in Connecticut, there are a few brokers who will charge you a fee just to list your property on the MLS. Often, you spend a few hundred bucks and you only pay a commission if the sale closes.

Compared to the cost of a newspaper ad, the MLS is a cheap way to market your property to a very wide audience.

All the major real estate search sites like Realtor.com, Zillow, Yahoo Homes, etc. get data from the MLS. Chances are good that when you submit your listing in Connecticut to the MLS, information on your property will end up on most of the major sites within a few days.

Each of those sites sells ads. They’ve got packages that let you pay to enhance your listing, feature it at the top of the search, and a lot of other bells and whistles that might or might not get an interested buyer to purchase your property.

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

Sell your property in CT on your own, 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 property 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 homes.

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

We Are Local Homebuyers in Connecticut

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

We pay fair prices for properties – and we can close fast (in as little as 3-5 days if you need to). Sometimes we’ll purchase homes in Connecticut, 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 CT.

We’re investors who care a lot about Connecticut. We close fast and pay cash in as little as just 3-5 days. Give us a call now at (203) 529-4712 or fill out the short form over here.

Sell Your Connecticut House Fast – Get A Cash Offer Today

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