Should You Consider An Open Listing When Selling Your Home?

The typical real estate listing agreement you'll see when you meet with any real estate agent to list your house is called an Exclusive Listing Agreement, and it guarantees your agent a commission no matter who brings the buyer and closes the sale. This type of listing agreement is preferred by the brokers and agents who want to know they have a good chance to earn a commission when they are showing your house.

But there is another type of listing agreement called an Open Listing that I often use when I want to sell my house quickly. Let me explain why I sometimes prefer an Open Listing Agreement. The main reason I like open listings is because I only have to pay an agent if that person brings me a buyer and closes the transaction for me. I do not have to pay if I find a buyer myself and do what it takes to get the sale closed on my own.

Fortunately, I have bought and sold many houses over the years, several hundred houses, and I know what needs to be done. A homeowner who has never walked through the process of selling a house, perhaps that person owns the house she lives in and has never sold a house previously, well, she is not going to find the process quite as easy until she learns the ropes.

She may find out that she has to pay a title company or even a lawyer to provide the legal documents and close the transaction with her buyer's mortgage lender. The only thing she will not pay is a real estate commission because she will not owe anyone a commission. But let's say, for example, that you have some previous experience selling a house and you are still interested in hearing me explain a little more about how to sell my house quickly using an Open Listing.

This is how I do it, and it's possible for you to follow my example if you have some experience in real estate yourself. First, I contact three real estate agents that I know and trust, people with whom I've worked in the past and they have done a good job for me. Next, I ask each agent if he or she has anyone in mind who might want a house like mine, then I describe my house and why it's a good value at the price I've selected.

If the agent says, "yes, I know someone who might be interested," then I ask that agent to provide me with an Open Listing Agreement for me to sign. Now I have given each individual agent an opportunity to earn a percentage of the sales price as a commission by signing the Open Listing Agreement, and I have received some information from each person.

That information is important because if an agent doesn't have a potential seller interested in my house I simply do not sign their Open Listing. In a way, the agent has obligated himself or herself to show my house at least to one person. Use of an Open Listing agreement has worked for me more than once. It is one way I've found to sell my house quickly when necessary.


------

Leo Kingston has 30 years of experience buying and selling homes as an investor in the Oklahoma City area. His company offers local home owners simple options for selling homes quickly for cash.