Inside: Have you heard of Homie? Maybe you’ve seen all those billboards around and wondered what the deal is? Well, Homie is an amazing company that helps you sell your house yourself. We’ve worked with Homie to sell our home and save lots of money in the process (no realtor fees here!). I’m sharing all the ins and outs and why you should use Homie to sell your house!
You already know by now that we’re building a new house (yay!), but I haven’t shared a lot about the process we went through to sell our first home. While we’re pretty confident with the home-buying and building process, we had NO idea where to start with how to sell my house and what the cost of selling a house would be.
Can I Sell my House Without a Realtor?
We talked to lots of friends who had listed their house for sale by owner (my parents actually did that with their first home) and while we wanted to take advantage of the major savings that come when you sell your house yourself, it sounded like a lot of paperwork that we had no experience with. Not to mention the horror story my parent’s shared about how their buyer backed out a few weeks before closing because his financing fell through. Yikes!
My husband and I weighed all of our options and decided to list our house by ourselves with the help of Homie! We had seen billboards and Facebook advertisements for Homie, and while we hadn’t talked to anyone who had actually used the service, we felt it was worth a try to potentially save thousands of dollars.
Related: Try These Thrifty Packing And Moving Tips To Save Money
What Is Homie?
Homie is a technology company that automates and streamlines real estate transactions. Basically, it’s a company that offers all of the perks of working with a real estate agent, without the hefty commission fees! It enables you to sell a house yourself with full confidence. You pay a flat fee to sell your home with Homie that doesn’t change based on how much you’re selling your home for. It’s the perfect compromise between for sale by owner and using a realtor.
With a traditional agent, they get a 3% cut on the final sale price when you sell your house. So if you sell your home for $300k, they get $9000. If you sell your home for $600k, they get $18,000!!! With Homie, the fee to list and sell your home is the same, no matter what price the buyer pays.
Right now, Homie is only available in Utah and Arizona, but if you want them to come to your state (and why wouldn’t you??) you should send an email to support@homie.com.
How Does The Homie Process Work?
The process to get your home listed on Homie is actually VERY easy! We needed to list our home rather quickly because we had to provide proof of our listing to our builder to keep our new house under contract. Thankfully Homie got our listing up in 4 short days!
To start, you’ll click on the List Your Home button on the Homie website. The Homie website makes the listing process very easy to follow as they have specific tasks you have to complete and they list each one in order.
First, you fill out information about the condition of your home, the details about your home (bathrooms, bedrooms, etc.), and you’ll sign documents agreeing to let Homie list and sell your home for you.
This part of the process took the most work because we had to find all of the papers from when we first bought the house that listed what type of material our roof was made out of and what type of foundation we had. We also got to choose how much of a commission we would give to the buyer’s agent who brought us the sale. It was really nice to have control over that aspect of the transaction.
We also wrote the description for our home that would be shown on all of the listing websites. Since I wanted to have control over how our home was presented, I was so glad I got to craft this description myself.
Once we had all of our paperwork filled out and submitted, we got to schedule a time to have a professional photographer come out to take pictures of our home. It was SO nice not to have to worry about taking the photos myself! Getting my home completely clean and free from clutter, was probably the most stressful part of the whole process, ha! Once the pictures were done, we were one step closer to getting our house listed.
Homie also prepares a very extensive value report for you so you know how to price your home. This value report was key for us getting a higher price than what the appraised value of our home came in at (more on that later!).
Also during this time, Homie mailed us a yard sign and had someone come out to install a lockbox and yard post in our front yard.
Related: When To Refinance A Home? 3 Mortgage Tips To Consider
Shortly after, we got a notification when our pictures were done and edited, and then we picked which photos we liked the best and selected the order the photos would be shown for our listing. After that, we clicked the button and our listing went live on all of the major websites: the Utah MLS, Zillow, KSL homes for sale, and Facebook.
Homie even uses some of the flat fee you pay to boost the Facebook listing for your house on Facebook. As someone who uses social media for my job, I really appreciate that Homie is aware of current trends in social media advertising and realizes the value of Facebook ads to get your listing in front of more potential buyers.
Once our listing was live, we were in the waiting game. My husband and I were nervous that no one would want to see our house and that we wouldn’t get any offers. However, after just two days on the market, we started getting showing requests!
Homie uses a scheduling software that puts the seller in complete control of when people come to see your home. Since I work from home, I really appreciated the fact that I could make sure potential buyers were coming at the most convenient time for me and my family.
The very first weekend, we had four showings for our house! My husband and I were even more excited when we started getting offers on our home!
Having never seen a Real Estate Purchase Contract before, my husband and I had NO idea what we were looking at and whether the offer was good or not. Thankfully, Homie assigned us a whole team of real estate agents who helped explain each offer we got and answered any questions we had.
In the end, we got 4 offers on our home, we accepted two offers (one fell through), and were under contract with a buyer just 14 days after our listing went live! Homie enables you to sell your house fast and without all the stress of the for sale by owner process.
Related: 9 Easy Tasks That Should Be On Every New Homeowner Checklist
The Benefits Of Working With Homie
There were SO many benefits of working with Homie to get our home sold. Here are just a few:
- The flat rate fee. Homie saved us $6845 on the sale of our home! That’s thousands of dollars we were able to put toward a down payment on our new house! For us, the cost to sell a house without a traditional realtor and with Homie was totally worth it!
- The control we had over selling our home. I loved being able to choose the listing description, which photos were shown, and when people could come to visit. If you want to be in charge of listing your house without the hassle of having to coordinate with a traditional realtor, Homie is for you!
- The streamlined process. From having a step-by-step process to get all of our documents filled out, to the scheduling software, we loved how easy it was to list our home with Homie and how we always knew what the next step would be.
- The dedicated team. We really enjoyed having the Homie team to help us out along the way. Their support team was always quick to respond with any questions we had and we LOVED having our own dedicated team of real estate agents. They helped us understand all of the documents that were unfamiliar to us and even fought to get us more money for our home when our appraisal came in low. They were a great support and listened to our concerns every step of the way.
Yes, You CAN Sell Your House Yourself!
We knew that if we took the traditional route, the cost of selling a house with a realtor was going to be thousands of dollars. We took a leap of faith working with Homie and it totally paid off in the end! I’m so happy we decided against using a realtor or going the for sale by owner route.
With Homie, you CAN sell your house yourself and save thousands without all the stress and headaches!
Want More?
I hope you’ve enjoyed my tips for how to sell your house yourself. I’ve got even more great home ownership knowledge to share! If you’ve ever wondered about the home building process, check out my Steps to Building a Home: The First Time Buyers Guide!
Your Turn
If you’re looking to sell a home in Utah or Arizona, I definitely recommend listing your home with Homie. And if you’re not in one of those areas, don’t forget to email support@homie.com to see when they’ll be coming to your neighborhood! Do you have any questions about what to do to sell your house that I didn’t address in this post? Let me know in the comments!
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