ArcaMax

Q: I enjoy reading your column. I recently moved, and listed my home in as-is condition on Facebook. I also have a “for sale by owner” sign on my lawn. I’ve had no serious offers in the past six weeks.

Last week, an agent stopped by and proposed listing my home. She would pay for some repairs, cleaning, and replace a few old appliances. I told her I was “anti-agent,” which was why I was selling my home by owner.

However, her proposal seems too good to be true. Surely she would expect me to reimburse her for the expenses incurred while making those improvements?

Nope. She said I could cancel at any time, and only then would I be responsible for the expenses. I told her I would only pay her a 2% commission on the sale price, and the buyer would have to pick up the rest. She said that was fine.

Most importantly, by listing with her brokerage, my home would be listed on all of the major real estate websites, which would trigger more interest. At present, my attorney is perusing the contract draft the agent prepared. If it’s legit, 2% is a small price to pay for selling my house.

Is this a new trend? I couldn’t find any similar instances online. What are your thoughts?

A: Given how hot the market has been, it’s interesting that you’ve been unable to sell by owner. Either your local market has slowed down, you haven’t marketed the home appropriately (despite the sign in your front yard), or you’ve mispriced your home. Any or all of these can be true.

We’d like to note that you can list your property yourself Z — as you did — and also get the listing out on many online websites. While your home may not make it onto the individual brokerage company sites if it is not listed with the local multiple listing service (MLS), there are other ways to broadcast the listing. If you are selling by owner and list on sites like Zillow.com, that listing will populate through many other online listing sites. Also, Zillow gets over 200 million page views per month, and homebuyers often start their search at that site, or at Zillow’s sister site, Trulia. In short, it should get noticed.

That doesn’t mean the property will sell. According to the National Association of Realtors, less than 10% of homes are sold by owner, which is why many agents will reach out to form a relationship with sellers who list their own homes.

About the deal this agent has offered: We suspect your home is probably worth a good deal of money. A 2% commission on a $1 million sale would generate a $20,000 fee for the agent. If the agent spends $5,000 fixing items in your home, they could still net $15,000 as a fee. (If the agent works for a brokerage company, then that fee might be split in some way between the parties.)

So, the deal seems reasonable. However, the agent will need to find a buyer who is willing to pay a fee to their agent.

Typically, sellers pay a 4% to 6% commission to the listing agent. The listing agent then shares that commission with the agent who brings the buyer. These days, buyers are typically spending every last cent to purchase the home. They don’t generally have an extra 2% of the sales price just lying around. When they make an offer, they will expect the seller to pay their share of the commission as part of the sale, or they will reduce their offer by the amount of the commission owed to their buyer broker.

In this situation, if you pay your agent 2% and the buyer’s broker 2%, you’ll pay a total of 4% in commission to sell your home. That amount would be more in line with what you encountered when you last considered selling.

Would you sell a $1 million home if you had to pay $40,000 in commission instead of $20,000? You could turn down the buyer, but then you’d owe your agent whatever they spent to fix up your home. Or, you can ask the buyer to deduct the commission from the sales price.

Or, you can just wait and hope that a different buyer comes along, perhaps one that doesn’t have an agent signed, and your agent can facilitate the deal for the 2% commission.

Good luck. We’d love to know how things turn out.

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(Ilyce Glink is the author of “100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask (4th Edition).” She writes the Love, Money + Real Estate Newsletter, available at Glink.Substack.com. Samuel J. Tamkin is a Chicago-based real estate attorney. Contact Ilyce and Sam through her website, ThinkGlink.com.)

©2025 Ilyce R. Glink and Samuel J. Tamkin. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.