For Sale Sign Marked Sold in front of a House

How Much Does it Cost to Sell Your House? A Simple Guide

It’s exciting when you start thinking about selling your home and you see a good estimate of how much your home value has increased over the years, but did you know it can cost you as much as 10% to sell your house? It’s important to be prepared and know how much it could cost you out of pocket. So how much does it cost to sell your house?

Glad you asked,

This article is going to go over that, so keep reading!

Basic Home Repairs

When looking at selling a home, there are most likely things you can do to improve the overall appearance and appeal to your house. We all put off things, such as fixing the shutters or repainting the bedroom. Now is the time to repair or improve on all of those things!

Home Inspection

If you choose to invest in a pre-home inspection, this could cost you around $400, but depending on your home’s condition, this could be very necessary. This will help you find out if there is any structural or mechanical issues with your home, so you can fix them before a buyer demands them.

House Staging

A home can have much more appeal to a buyer when they can envision what the house could be for them. Considering staging your home could attract the right buyer and help you sell your home faster for the price you wanted.

According to the National Association of REALTORS, a quarter of buyer’s agents said that staging a home increased the dollar value offered between one and five percent.

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Mortgage and Utilities

If you move out of your house before you sell, you will still need to continue paying for utilities such as water and electricity. You can’t expect to sell your property quickly if there is no air conditioning or lighting!

Along with that, if you don’t own the home, you will have to pay off the mortgage. When your house sells, the proceeds of the sale will be used to pay off the rest of your mortgage.

Commission Fees

This will most likely be your biggest fee when selling your house. The commission fee is usually around five to six percent for the realtor.

You can avoid this by listing your home as for sale by owner. However, this means you will basically be doing everything a real estate agent normally does, which is a lot!

Closing Costs

When you selling a house, there will always be a closing cost, which typically falls on the buyer. However, this can still be your responsibility, especially if it’s a buyer’s market. Sellers will have to pay between one and 3 percent on average for closing costs.

Tax

The last thing to consider when looking at how much it costs to sell a home, are taxes. If you sell your home for more then you paid, it will be counted as a capital gain and it will need to file in your next tax return.

Not only will you pay taxes on your homes sell, but also the property tax. You typically pay this in advance.

How Much Does It Cost to Sell Your House

Depending on your house and how you want to sell, it has a big contributing factor. So, how much does it cost to sell your house? Typically after everything, ten percent of the selling price is a good start.

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Now that you know what to consider and expect, try calculating your costs and find out exactly how much it will cost you to sell!