Listing with a real estate agent can be a great way to put your property in front of a large audience of potential buyers. This also means that there can be additional expenses that may not be fully apparent at the time of listing your property. Here are a few potentially hidden costs
One hidden cost of working with a Austin real estate agent is photography fees. Adding high-quality photos to your listing can help your Realtor get you prospective buyers coming in the door. Realtors usually have a preferred or recommended photographer they work with and they trust, but having professional pictures taken of your property could cost you. Preferred wide-angle shot of all of the rooms, and a 360-degree photo if possible, that way it can be uploaded into a program to take a virtual tour of each room. Your realtor may also suggest having a virtual tour of your property done, especially when it is not ideal to be around more people than necessary these days. The more features the photography package has may help sell your house faster, but they most likely won’t come for free.
Something else that may be costly and to keep in mind is staging. If you do not leave furnishings or the right type of furnishings in your property when it is being marketed for sale, your real estate agent may suggest property staging. This can help a potential buyer imagine themselves living at this property and can sell the house faster. Realtors will often suggest a professional interior design service to come in and stage the house for you. You will often have to rent or even purchase the furniture and decor they plan to use to stage your property.
Let’s talk Curb Appeal. Real estate agents will often suggest better curb appeal of the property. Your property will most likely sell faster because of the enhanced beauty of a fresh coat of paint, pops of color in the flower beds complete with new mulch, and adding or subtracting shrubbery or trees, but all of this adds up. Painting a home, installing new plants, laying mulch, pressure washing the driveway and other visual improvements could cost hundreds of dollars.
Fixing up the inside and the outside of a house is another added cost. Your real estate agent may talk to you about installing new flooring, painting the walls a neutral color, updating lighting and fixtures throughout the house, fix anything that is broken, installing new energy saving windows, and much more. All of this could cost you thousands of dollars and eat into your pocket book even before the house sells.
Another cost of working with a Austin real estate agent is a property inspection and/or a survey. A number of real estate agents like to entice buyers with this extra perk in the listing. Having a property inspected recently or a survey is a wonderful selling tool, especially if the property has no major issues and no property line encroachments. This gives buyers the confidence to submit a decent offer, but it will cost you.
A big hidden cost of working with a Austin real estate agent is their commission. This, of course, is negotiated at the time of signing the listing agreement with your agent, but it’s easy to forget about that while your property is being marketed. Not only does you realest agent get a commission, but the buyers real estate agent gets a commission. You may not truly feel the impact of the brokerage fees until it’s time to sign the closing papers. Here you see all of your fees taken out of your sale proceeds, this will include the brokerage commission and may also include any inspections or reports pulled on your property that you agreed to pay for as well as other closing costs.