Discussions

Can you sell your house privately without an agent? Any success stories? What do you need when showing your house? Paperwork wise

My husband and I have both bought homes privately before we were married. Generally, you can't list a private sale on MLS, but you can advertise on ebrandon, Kijiji, etc (the rules were supposed to change on that where you could pay a flat fee to list on MLS, but I don't know if they ever did).  
 
For paperwork, talk to a lawyer. They can advise you what you need.  
 
I see lots of houses around that sell privately. I found the advantage was that you could interact directly with the seller, which always revealed more information than if we're working with a realtor.

Sold mine, just had For Sale By Owner in window, showed lots, Sold in about 4 months.  
But being your own realtor was a bit of a pain, saved lots of money though..

Yes you can sell your house privately, just takes a bit more work. We sold our house privately back in 2008, house sold in about 2 months if I remember correctly. When you do get a buyer, that is when you need to get a lawyer, and they do the rest for you, easy peasey!! And, it can save you thousands, always a bonus

Pros and cons to it.  
 
We bought privately and I don't think I'd do it again. Lots of hoops to jump through that you don't have to with a realtor.

We have sold a few properties privately, we have never had a problem, we got an offer to purchase from our lawyer and after we accepted the offer we took it back to lawyer, very easy, it also gives the buyer a little more room to get seller to lower price because there are no realitor fees, very good for both buyer and seller.

We advertised our house on ebrandon back in '14. Cost $100. Had 3 good showings the first day and made the sale that day. Got the papers from lawyer, both parties signed and back to lawyer. It was easy for both parties. We sold in May.

We were pre-approved to about 40k over what we bought the house for when we bought. So everything was as good to go as it could be on our end.  
 
First the house had to be appraised, by an appraiser of my lender's choosing. Then it had to appraised again because it didn't auto approve with CMHC, which naturally takes time. I only had to pay for one appraisal though, CMHC paid for the one they required. All the while the seller is getting pushy because these things take time. My mortgage broker called them, explained why it was going so slowly.  
 
See when you list a house privately you can price it at whatever you want. But that doesn't mean it's worth it. So in my situation the lender would've only gave me up to the appraised price or purchase price, whichever was lower. So if I'd agreed to a price $20,000 more than what it was appraised at, I'm on the hook for the difference.  
 
All told it took about a month for everything to fall into place when buying our house, whereas it would've been a day or two at most for a realtor based sale.  
 
As a buyer there's absolutely no incentive to buy privately. My seller had a realtor stop by who said list it for X and sell it for Y, and I paid Y-$750. The seller isn't going to pass the commissions savings on to you, and you have to do 100% of the leg work yourself.

Trevor said "We were pre-approved to about 40k over what we bought the house for when we bought. So everything was as good to go as it could be on our end.     First the house had to be appraised, by an appraiser of my lender's choosing. Then it had to appraised again because it didn't auto approve with CMHC, which naturally takes time. I only had to pay for one appraisal though, CMHC paid for the one they required. All the while the seller is getting pushy because these things take time. My mortgage broker called them, explained why it was going so slowly.     See when you list a house privately you can price it at whatever you want. But that doesn't mean it's worth it. So in my situation the lender would've only gave me up to the appraised price or purchase price, whichever was lower. So if I'd agreed to a price $20,000 more than what it was appraised at, I'm on the hook for the difference.     All told it took about a month for everything to fall into place when buying our house, whereas it would've been a day or two at most for a realtor based sale.     As a buyer there's absolutely no incentive to buy privately. My seller had a realtor stop by who said list it for X and sell it for Y, and I paid Y-$750. The seller isn't going to pass the commissions savings on to you, and you have to do 100% of the leg work yourself. "

while there are pros and cons to buying and selling privately i have had the same appraisal issue with a realtor, the deal ended up falling through because it wasnt appraised high enough, so imo using a realtor wont protect you against that issue  
 
i also sold my home privately and did price it lower because i didnt have to pay commission, i got the advantage of a quick sale (and a bit more in my pocket) and the buyer also got a deal, BUT each individual sale is different, both privately and through an realtor