Sellers compare the wrong number. The listing price is not the comparison; the net is, and the date it arrives. Here is both routes run all the way through on the same house.
The house
A three bedroom in Toledo. Roof is at the end of its life, furnace is old, the interior is dated but nothing is falling down. Around the median for the city, call it $135,000 if it were fixed up and shown well.
Route A: list it with an agent
To get near $135,000 the house has to look like a $135,000 house. That means the roof, or a credit for it, plus paint, carpet and a cleanout. Say the work and the credits land at $12,000, which is conservative for that list.
- Sale price: $135,000
- Commission at the Ohio average of 5.90%: minus $7,965
- Conveyance fee, Lucas County at $4.00 per $1,000: minus $540
- Title, escrow and closing costs, your share: minus $1,200 (negotiable, varies)
- Repairs and post-inspection credits: minus $12,000
- Holding for three to four months, taxes, insurance, utilities, mortgage: minus $2,400
Net: roughly $110,900. Time to money: two to four months.
Route B: sell direct
The offer is below retail because the buyer is taking on the roof, the furnace, the cleanout and the carrying cost. Say $103,000 on this house, as it sits.
- Offer: $103,000
- Commission: $0. No agent on either side
- Repairs and credits: $0. Nothing is fixed, nothing is cleaned, nothing is renegotiated after an inspection
- Conveyance fee and title work: still exist, handled case by case and written into the offer before you sign
- Holding: about two weeks of it
Net: roughly $102,000 to $103,000. Time to money: 7 to 14 days.
So the listing wins
On these numbers, yes. About $8,000 more, for three or four extra months, $12,000 out of pocket first, and the risk that the appraisal or the inspection moves the number after you have committed.
We would rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise. If you have the time, the cash for the repairs, and no pressure, list it.
When the arithmetic flips
It flips, often, and here is where:
- You do not have the $12,000. Then the house does not sell at $135,000, it sells at whatever a buyer pays for a house with a bad roof, minus commission anyway
- The house is vacant. Four more months of a vacant house is insurance complications, break-ins and code violations, not just carrying cost
- There is a clock. Foreclosure, a tax deadline, a divorce timetable, a job that starts in another state in five weeks
- There are tenants. Financed buyers of a tenanted house are a small pool, and evicting to sell costs time and money
- You live somewhere else. Managing repairs and showings on a Toledo house from out of state is a job
- The repair list is bigger than it looks. When it is the roof and the furnace and the electrical, that $12,000 becomes $30,000 and the whole column collapses
How to run it on your own house
Get one honest contractor number on the big items. Take a realistic sale price, not a national estimate. Subtract 5.9%, the conveyance fee, your title share, the repair number, and the months of holding. Compare that to a direct offer.
The full list of what comes out of a listed sale is in what it actually costs to sell a house in Ohio, and how the direct number is built is in how a cash offer is calculated.
We buy in Toledo, Maumee, Perrysburg and Sylvania only, in any condition, with tenants in place and with back taxes owed. Send the address and put a real number in the second column. No obligation, and if column one wins we will say so.
General information, not financial advice. The figures above are an illustration, not a quote; every house is different.