List HomeGuide for homeowners in Canada |
List Your Home For Sale in Canada
If you’re thinking about listing your home in Canada then you’ve more then likely have found a good real estate agent and they’ve brought up several options to you in which you can list your home on the market. However you might not fully understand those types of listings. This guide is presented to go over the different types of listings available to you including open listings, exclusive agent listings and exclusive right-to-sell listings.
Open listings give the owner full command on selling their home by themselves. This is a non-exclusive agreement which means that the owner may have to execute open listings with more than one real estate broker. With this situation the owner will only have to pay the broker who brings a buyer that makes an offer the owner accepts. A big different in having in open listing is that the owner will generally only have to pay the selling broker’s commission. This will eliminate about half the typical fees that can be found in other listings. The reason there are less fees is because the owner is unrepresented. If the owner is able to avoid using a real estate broker as a whole and is able to find a buyer themselves then they owe nobody commission. Although open listings sound great due how you’ll make out in the end, they are not expected to be easy and are often not favored by real estate brokers as a whole.
Exclusive agency listing on the other hand share many similarities with open listings. The major difference between the two is that there is representation involved. Although the owner still has a lot more freedom compared to other listing options, the real estate broker will represent the owner in this type of listing. Owners are still allowed to sell the property by themselves and are not obligated to pay a commission. The real estate broker involved in this situation has freedom as well though as they are allowed to communicate with other brokers. This means that another broker on the outside is allowed to bring the owner potential buyers as well. Exclusive agency listings usually include the owner paying a listing commission to the broker, so if there are multiple brokers involved then more fees will be charged.
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When you are ready to take the step of adding your list home to the market, there is an array of great viable options to consider when placing that listing. Many people today are looking to try and save money during the whole process now. Private listings are becoming more popular all the time thanks to free classified advertising sites such as Kijiji. The way people will save money on these listings is they avoid having to pay a real estate agent any commission on the sale of the list home. Placing a house for sale by owner sign on the front of the property combined with a newspaper listing is relatively inexpensive. People who are able to sell their homes on this basis can better put this money to another part of the selling expenses, such as legal fees.
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Alternatively, the tried and true method of selling your list home is through a real estate agent. The real estate agent brings a wealth of expertise from your local market and the drive to sell your place. What is great about having an Agent sell your list home is that they will take care of much of the leg work that would have to be done in the selling process. Where the Agent earns their money is through a percentage of the commission on the sale price of the home. Thanks to multi-listing services available everywhere now, agents will work cooperatively with other agents to sell the list home, splitting the commissions. Agents will place the necessary advertisements in the local real estate pages as well as through their own company websites. You as the seller essentially sign a contract outlining the responsibilities you are bestowing upon the agent.
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If you should choose to go this route during the list home process, ask around locally for a referral. The best agents are the ones who will spend little money on advertising thanks to word of mouth referrals.
Whether you want to take on the challenge of selling the list home yourself or retaining a real estate agent, listing your home will be a task requiring attention to detail and a clear goal in mind for how the listing will look.
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