The True Cost of Selling A Home

There’s a common misconception out there that there a relatively few costs of selling a home as long as you end up selling the home. However, these costs, while they may be appear to be small, could end up being significant in the whole scheme of things. This article highlights these “small” costs and why they may be bigger than they appear.

Agent Commission

It is still common these days to sell your home through a real estate agent. We often choose this option because the market knowledge and selling skills of a real estate agent will increase the chances of our home getting sold. However, it does come at a cost. The cost is a commission to the agent normally equivalent to 4% to 6% of the selling price of your home. Given that the average price of a home is nudging the $400,000 barrier today, this is roughly between $16,000 and $24,000 just to the agent. That’s a big amount of money if you think about it. The profit from your sale is diminished by thousands of dollars which is why many people have recently chosen to sell their home by themselves. Maybe this option is attractive to you too.

Closing Sale Costs

Ok, so you’ve sold your home and paid the agent the commission he’s entitled to. But that’s not the only cost of selling a home. You also need to pay any taxes related to the property and/or its sale as well as legal fees. This can all amount to potentially thousands of dollars. These costs are frequently overlooked or forgotten about when people decide to their home.

Renovation Costs

Before even putting your home on sale, you may need to fix up certain parts of the home to make it more attractive and marketable. Depending on the amount of work to be done, the cost can add up to thousands of dollars as well as time spent on the renovations.

Moving Costs

Selling your home will almost certainly involve moving to another home. This means paying for removalists to help you move your furniture and other goods from your old home to your new one. Once again, this could come with a hefty bill.

As you can see, there are many costs involved when selling a home and it’s only after taking this into account that we can work out the true cost of selling a home.