Ok, resurrecting this thread. I could have sworn we had another thread specifically about whether real estate agents were a scam, but I can't find it. I swear I remember someone talking about meeting someone on a plane form Denver or something that had sold their house to one of these realtor alternative services, because it stuck in my head.
I just got through using one of them, so wanted to share my experience, because as I recall, several of us were intrigued by the idea, but nobody had first hand experience. This is not an endorsement, but I remember the discussion and there was some curiosity. Otherwise, skip it...definitely a TLDR.
Background...we were looking to move, and would need to sell our house we've been in for 18 years. House is at low end of desirability in the neighborhood (no basement, stucco exterior, etc). On top of that, we'd done minimal upgrades...slightly upgraded vinyl and laminate in places, granite countertops, better light fixtures) but no hardwoods, carpet from 7-20 years old, hadn't painted since we moved in (and not neutral colors), wallpaper borders in some rooms that were peeling. In addition, I was never really great at non-essential maintenance, so there were a lot of little things here and there. Basically, in the rush of life, we hadn't really kept it up. We didn't really realize it, until we started researching and saw what other houses for sale in the neighborhood looked like in the listing photos.
We had been sort of ballparking somewhere between $300-320 based on what other houses were selling for, our house's position in the neighborhood desirability etc. We had a realtor that specializes in our neighborhood and took a look around and threw water all over that. Said that we needed to have everything moved out, replace all the carpet, paint everything, fix everything, and she'd list it at $285k and we should anticipate $275k.
So I had gotten a postcard from this service that said they'd buy the house, which I had originally dismissed as one of these "we buy ugly houses" type services that offered you <50% of value. But that's not exactly it. They offered $302k, minus their "fee", and repairs.
That was good enough for us. Their price was at the low end of what we'd originally hoped, but more than what a realtor told us to expect. Their "fee" was 6%, the same as a full service realtor, but obviously more than you'd pay with a low commission or FSBO. Their position on the repairs was that they wanted either a fix, or a deduction, for anything that needed REPAIR, but did not ask for compensation on cosmetics. We ended up getting dinged for about $10k there. The majority of that was two items. One legit...we still had the original 20+ year old HVAC. I had no doubt that any way we sold, I was going to have to replace that or give a concession on it. The other was legit-ish...they dinged us for painting the exterior. Legit because it was more than due based on time...it didn't look glaringly bad, but it was absolutely due and might have triggered a concession from a buyer...but on the other hand, it did seem to fall into the "cosmetic" category that by the letter of their terms, so I was hoping to escape that.
If I'd gotten by on the exterior paint, I'd have been thrilled, but I was ok with it. Didn't have to replace carpet, paint, fix nail holes, fix all the little things around the house, replace a 20+ year old oven, etc. No closing costs to the buyer or anything like that.
Process was smooth, you can close whenever you want. We had a really long timeline, but I think they can turn the whole thing around in a week or two from calling if that's what you want.
Overall, I'm decently satisfied. If the house had been sell-ready shape and I could have listed it FSBO or low-comission broker, I could have done better, and I kind of regret that. But it was better than going through the whole realtor and prepping and listing process, having it drag out, and then having to get rid of it for less than we wanted six months later, or having to carry two mortgages for months. For our exact situation, it worked out pretty well.
