So, you are looking to sell your Chicago house and want to focus on putting your proceeds from the sale into your pocket. If you have found this post it means you have sold a house before and realized that the money you get in your pocket is very different than your sale price.
Or maybe it is your first time selling a house and discovered before hand that selling a house in IL involves paying numerous fees. In this blog post we’ll take a look at all of the fees involved in selling a house in IL through an agent versus directly to an investor.
What Are The Different Fees Paid To Agents Versus Paid To Investors? — Agent Fees
An agent is a salesperson and they will try to find a buyer to buy your house. In order to do this, they will list your house in a listing service and use various marketing efforts to try and find a buyer.
So you’ll end up having to pay some fees to the agent. Those fees usually include a commission if they can sell the house (this is the highest amount of money you’ll have to pay and it’s often about 6% of the sale price of the house, or about $6,000 for a $100,000). There may be other fees you have to pay as well, and these might include different advertising fees or other costs associated with selling your house. There might be a fee to list your house, or there might be a fee to the agent’s brokerage or there might be a fee to get a sign in front of your house or there might be a fee for the title company… the list goes on and on. You can ask the agent about these and they should tell you.
Now that we have covered the fees you will be responsible for paying if you list with an agent lets take a look at the other costs that you will responsible for as a seller in the Chicago area. Most towns including the city of Chicago will charge you a local real estate transfer fee in addition to what the county and state will charge you.
You’ll also be responsible for paying a survey, owners title policy, any back taxes, a tax proration, miscellaneous title fees, inspection credits for repairs, and then any ongoing maintained – utilities – repairs required while trying to sell the house.
What Are The Different Fees Paid To Agents Versus Paid To Investors? — Investor Fees
This is the part that surprises most house-sellers: for most investors, there are rarely any fees to cover. Investors will usually take care of all fees associated with selling. Plus there’s no commission to pay because they’re not agents so they’re not listing your house. You might be responsible for closing costs but this depends on the investor so make sure you ask the investor who pays for those costs.
The One “Fee” You May Not Be Thinking Of
There’s one more cost (“fee”) that you might not be thinking of: when you work with an agent, they’ll get you to fix up your house and then you’ll have to pay bills and taxes for as long as it takes the agent to find a buyer. So although this isn’t a fee to the agent, it’s a cost you’ll have to pay because of the agent… yet when you sell the house to an investor, they buy quickly so you end up saving this cost as well.
So what’s right for you? It depends on how much you’re willing to pay and how quickly you need to sell.
If you want to go over this in more detail or confirm that we won’t charge you any fees if you sell your house to us then please get in touch and we’ll be happy to walk you through it.