While most people anticipate having to negotiate with buyers when they are selling their home, many people forget or don’t prepare for negotiations that they might need to have with their actual real estate agent.
When selling your home, your real estate agent is going to ask a lot of you. So to make sure that you’re protecting yourself and getting what you want out of the process, you might need to ask your real estate agent to make some compromises about things like commissions.
To help you in doing this, here are three tips for negotiating with your real estate agent when selling your home.
Ask At The Right Time
If you’re wanting to get your real estate agent to come down on their normal commission rate, which is usually around six percent of the selling price of your home, you’re going to want to bring up this topic at the right time.
Generally, if your real estate agent gets a lot of work or is particularly busy, you won’t have much leverage in asking for a lower commission. But if you’re trying to sell your home during the off-season or to an agent that doesn’t have a lot of experience to be asking for a full commission, you may have a much better chance of having them come down a bit from their initial offering.
Take On Some Of The Work Yourself
Depending on your home and your exact situation, your real estate agent might be doing a lot of work for you. However, if your home is basically ready to sell, you know there is a lot of interest in buying homes in your area, or you’re willing to do a lot of the work of a real estate agent yourself, you might have some grounds for negotiating their commission rate. Just make sure that if you’re going to take on some of the work yourself, you actually do a good job so that you can still get the best possible offers on the sale of your home.
Price Out Other Agents
While six percent is a pretty standard commission for many real estate agents, you can get a variety of commissions from different agents in your area. Knowing this, you can use this variation to your advantage.
If you know that a certain agent in your area asks for a small commission, you can ask your real estate agent to meet their commission rate. While this isn’t guaranteed to work, if the agent thinks that you might go with the other agent to save yourself some money, your agent might be willing to negotiate with you.
If you’re wanting to negotiate with your real estate agent on their commission for the sale of your home, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you go about this successfully.
