How to Sell a House Without a Realtor in Alabama

• 

  Written by Alex Long

• 

  Edited by Lindsay Stefan

Should I sell without a realtor? | Cost of selling FSBO | How to sell without a realtor | FSBO paperwork | Best alternative: discount realtors | FAQs

Selling your home without a realtor means you won’t have to pay a listing commission, which in Alabama averages 2.7% of the sale price. Considering a typical Alabama house is worth about $207,000, that’s a savings of $5,630.

However, trying to sell a home For Sale by Owner (FSBO) can be tough. It will cost you a lot of time and energy.

In the end, selling a house without a real estate agent isn’t worth it for most homeowners in Alabama. Especially considering there are low commission real estate companies that offer professional assistance for a lower cost. 

If you’re considering FSBO in Alabama, read on to find out everything you need to know to do it successfully.

Should I sell my house without a realtor?

Selling a house for sale by owner in Alabama comes with many pros and cons. While it’s not recommended for everyone, FSBO can help experienced home sellers save on commission—but only if they know what they’re doing. 

✅Selling your home without a realtor might be right for you if…

• You want to save on commission
• You have plenty of time to take on the responsibilities of a real estate agent
• You already have a buyer lined up 
• You’re in a hot seller’s market and you have a desirable home

🚫 Selling without a realtor might not be right for you if…

• You don’t have a lot of free time
• You’ve never sold a home in Alabama
• You want to sell for market value – or higher

If you’re still not sure, check out our thorough guide to selling FSBO to help you decide. If you’re open to other options, some low-commission real estate companies, like Clever Real Estate, allow you to work with a top local real estate agent at half the typical cost.

Cost of selling a house without a realtor in Alabama

Below, you’ll find a list of prices for common services you might want to consider if you decide to sell without a realtor. However, know that if your home is in need of repairs or is in a buyer’s market, you might need to spend a lot more to prep and market your property.

💸 Common costs for FSBO sellers

Appraisal	$300 to $435	To price your home more accurately
Photography	$140	To compete with homes listed by agents
Staging	$1,529	To stand out to local buyers
Real estate attorney	$204 to $359 per hour	To assist with paperwork, contracts, and legal requirements
Flat fee MLS listing	$80 to $1,000	To get listed on the MLS
Buyer’s agent commission	2.7% of sale price	To compensate the agent that represents the buyer (it’s customary for the seller to pay)

Overall, on average, it costs 7.5% of the home price to sell by owner and about 10% of the home price to sell with a real estate agent. However, the amount you’ll actually save will depend on repairs you need to make, concessions, and other expenses.

Use our calculator to get an idea of how much you can expect to spend if you sell without a realtor.

If you’re considering selling without a realtor in Alabama, check out our friends at Clever Real Estate. Clever eliminates all the hassles and headaches of FSBO while helping you pay less than you would for a traditional realtor.

In Alabama, sellers pay an average of 2.7% to a listing agent. Considering the median home value in Alabama is $207,000, that amounts to $5,630. But with Clever, you can sell with a top local agent for just 1.5%, letting you keep more of your home’s equity in your pocket.

7 steps to sell a home in Alabama without a realtor

Selling a home without a realtor involves many of the same steps as selling with one, except you’re on your own. To learn more about the basic steps to sell, read our simple, 12-step guide to selling a house. 

For Alabama FSBO sellers, here’s what you need to know.

1. Get your home ready to sell

Before listing your home for sale by owner in Alabama, you’ll need to do some prep work. This could include:

• Making small repairs around the house
• Deep cleaning and decluttering 
• Adding a fresh coat of paint
• Enhancing the curb appeal

Try to minimize issues that could be a deal breaker for buyers, but don’t break the bank doing this. Not every fix will pay for itself when you sell, so try to keep the cost down when prepping your home.

Strive for cleanliness and simplicity. Use neutral paint colors and put your personal items away. You want your potential buyer to easily imagine the space as their own.

Arrange your home so that it shows and photographs well. A professional photographer in Alabama averages about $140 and a stager costs about $1,529. If you think you can do a quality job yourself, go ahead, but don’t cut corners. Photos and staging are big contributors to making a good impression on buyers.

If your home needs too much work to sell to a typical buyer, you might consider selling to a cash buyer. You can quickly compare cash buyer offers against your home’s value on the open market with Clever Offers. Try it for free with no obligation.

2. Price your home accurately

When figuring out how to sell your house by owner, it’s very important that you price it correctly the first time. Many FSBO sellers will price their home either too high or too low and end up costing themselves more money than they save by selling the house themselves.

In fact, research suggests that the average FSBO seller gets between 5–26% less than comparable realtor-sold homes. This equates to about $10,000 to $51,800 on the average-priced Alabama home.

If you’re not sure how to determine the right price to list your Alabama FSBO home, we recommend using the strategies below.

Get a comparative market analysis (CMA)

A comparative market analysis is a great tool for estimating the fair market value of a home. This process involves finding properties similar to yours that have sold in the past few months in your area. Then, you use their sale prices to estimate what your home would likely sell for and then price it accordingly.

This is one of the services a realtor would usually provide, but you can also do it yourself — just be careful not to let your own biases cloud your judgment. Deciding which comparable homes to select and accounting for differences in homes involves a fair amount of guesswork. This leaves you vulnerable to fudging the numbers to make your home value look higher than it actually is.

A good way to eliminate bias is to have a flat fee MLS company conduct a CMA for you. This allows you to benefit from an objective analysis by a real estate professional, but without paying the fee for a full-service agent.

Hire an appraiser 

Getting a formal appraisal of your property is another great way to get a professional assessment of your home’s fair market value. An appraiser will do everything involved in a CMA, but they will also show up to your house and evaluate its features and condition. They will also apply their expert knowledge of the area and local real estate trends.

Appraisers value houses for a living, so this is probably the highest-quality valuation of your home you can get. You may even be able to offer the appraisal report to interested buyers so they don’t need to pay for one themselves.

The average appraisal in Alabama costs between $300 to $435, but this is well worth the cost for the thousands — or tens of thousands — it could save you.

» LEARN: Should I get an appraisal before selling?

When you decide the listing price of your home, be sure to familiarize yourself with any tax obligations that may arise when you receive the proceeds of your home sale.

3. List and market your home

Before listing your FSBO home, read the Alabama advertising regulations for real estate to ensure you’re complying with the law. This will help you avoid unnecessary legal issues.

When you’re ready to post your listing, a good place to start is on free websites such as:

• Facebook Marketplace
• Zillow or Trulia (in the FSBO section)
• Craigslist
• ForSaleByOwner.com

There are other great sites to list your FSBO property, but they may not all be free. Still, the cost could be worth the additional exposure, depending on your situation.

And, of course, you can always use word of mouth and yard signs to drum up a little extra interest.

If you want maximum exposure, think about working with an Alabama flat fee MLS company.

Alabama flat fee MLS companies

Flat fee MLS companies’ major purpose is to help non-realtors get their listings on the local MLS. Since this is the primary place realtors find listings to show their clients, it’s a big advantage to be listed there.

Some flat fee MLS companies offer different packages that include a variety of services related to selling your home, but getting on the MLS is the main reason these companies exist.

In Alabama, this will cost you about $80 to $1,000. Our top picks for flat fee MLS companies in Alabama are:

🥇 List with Freedom: Best for rock-bottom pricing
🥈 Flat Fee Group: Best for extra support
🥉 Flat Fee Realty: Best for no-frills package

Read our in-depth guide to Alabama’s flat fee MLS companies to decide which one works best for you.

Required Alabama Seller Disclosures

Since Alabama is a “buyer beware” state, providing a seller’s disclosure is not legally required. That said, you may want to provide one to buyers anyway. If you don’t know of any issues with the home, saying so in a disclosure will only increase the likelihood a buyer makes an offer. If you know of issues and keep it to yourself, you’re increasing the risk the deal falls through later if the buyer finds that issue during inspection.

Federal law still requires you to provide a Lead-based Paint Disclosure for any home built before 1978.

You can make disclosures available to interested buyers by attaching them to your listing, emailing them to the buyer, or bringing physical copies to showings. The most important thing is that they are shared prior to anyone signing a purchase agreement. 

4. Manage showings on your own

It can be stressful and time-consuming to manage your own showings, so it’s imperative you have a system to keep things organized.

At the very least, you should have a calendar dedicated to scheduling showings. A simple Google calendar could work fine, but something more advanced like Doodle might be even better.

You also want to keep track of interested buyers, their inquiries, and their contact information. A Google Sheet or Doc should be sufficient, but you could even just keep a notebook with this information.

If keeping track of everything is overwhelming, some flat fee MLS companies also offer packages that include add-on tools for managing showings.

Regardless of your system, there are some things you’ll want to do to get the most out of these showings:

• Schedule the showings close together for efficiency
• Leave a 10–15 minute gap between showings to avoid overlap
• Turn on lights and open shades before interested buyers arrive
• Set the thermostat to a comfortable temperature at least 30 minutes before the first showing
• Make any documents you wish to share easily available

You’ll also want to be available to answer questions if possible, but preferably not physically present. Buyers often feel uncomfortable looking through your home and discussing their thoughts in front of the seller. Using a lockbox is a good way to allow realtors to enter for showings without you being there personally.

Be sure that you’re prepared to answer questions about the house, your desired timeline to close, and the neighborhood before, during, and after the showing. 

5. Review and negotiate offers

Once buyers begin submitting offers, you’ll need to review them and decide what to do. Offers are usually submitted as purchase and sale agreements. These will specify not only the offered purchase price, but also a closing timeline, earnest money details, and any contingencies. 

You should read the purchase agreement carefully before signing or making a counteroffer. If anything in the agreement is confusing to you, reach out to the buyer’s agent or a real estate attorney for clarity. In fact, Alabama requires an attorney to prepare legal paperwork in real estate anyway, so it may be wise to hire one early on in the process.

Notable details to look for in a purchase agreement include:

• Purchase price
• If the purchase is traditionally financed or a cash offer
• If the financed offer includes a letter of pre-approval
• Contingencies
• Expectations regarding repairs and seller credits

Remember that all of these factors affect how appealing the deal looks to your buyer, and you can use some aspects of the deal to leverage a better purchase price, or vice versa.

Check out our article on negotiation strategies for more ideas on how you can get the best deal possible when selling your home.

6. Allow the buyer to conduct due diligence

After the purchase agreement has been signed, the buyer enters the due diligence period. This is when they will conduct any inspections, appraisals, and title search on the property. If it’s a cash offer, the buyer could skip some or all of these steps, but that will be specified in the purchase agreement.

For traditionally financed homes, the steps are usually the following:

• Inspection
• Appraisal
• Mortgage underwriting
• Property title search
• Final walkthrough

If a contingency clause is triggered at any point during due diligence, like an appraisal comes back low, then you will need to renegotiate the deal. This could involve lowering the purchase price, including seller concessions, or sticking with the original terms and the buyer covering any additional costs discovered during due diligence.

If you wish to back out of the deal without allowing a contingency, you should speak to a real estate attorney to figure out what the repercussions may be.

If no issues arise during the due diligence, you will be cleared to close.

7. Close

The closing will take place on the date specified in the purchase agreement, unless all parties agree to push it back for some reason.

Closing appointments are conducted by a third party such as a title company or real estate attorney. During these appointments, you and the buyer will likely appear in person and sign a lot of paperwork, including the deed to transfer ownership.

You will also go over and receive a closing statement which accounts for all the expenses and credits that factor into the purchase. It will give a final sum that the seller needs to pay to complete the sale — everyone should know this amount in advance of closing.

Since Alabama is a wet-funding state, you will receive the proceeds of your sale on the day of closing.

For sale by owner paperwork in Alabama

Here’s a list of the Alabama paperwork you’ll need to sell your home without a realtor.

• Purchase Agreement
• Seller Disclosure Form (optional)
• Lead-Based Paint Disclosure

Not finding what you’re looking for? Check out our comprehensive list of paperwork for selling your house without a realtor.

Best alternative: work with a discount broker

For many people, trying to sell without an agent isn’t worth the hassle. If you think you’ll need some help along the way, a discount broker is a good alternative.

Discount brokers are full-service real estate agents who are willing to work for a reduced commission rate. Sellers can save thousands while still receiving assistance from an expert local agent.

» READ: The Best Discount Real Estate Brokers in Alabama

For discount broker services, we highly recommend our friends at Clever! Clever pre-negotiates with top agents to offer you low commission rates without compromising on service quality.

Related links

If you’d like some more advice about selling your home, here are a few great resources to check out:

How realtor commissions work in Alabama: Even if you decide to sell your house without an agent, it’s still a good idea to offer commission to the buyer’s agent. Learn how much realtors expect to earn and what you can do to make your listing more appealing to agents and their clients.

Top We Buy Houses Companies in Alabama REVEALED: If you need to sell your home in a hurry, a We Buy Houses company may purchase your house as-is for a reduced rate. Find out if this option could be the best option for you here!

How Much Does it Cost to Sell a House? True Costs Revealed: Wondering how much you’ll have to pay to sell your house? Check out this article to calculate your repair budget, closing fees, marketing expenses, and more.