How much it costs to sell a home

By Finance News On Jun 29, 2024

Buying a home and maintaining it is expensive, but selling it is costly, too, according to a new report.

It typically costs $54,616 to sell a house in 2024, according to a June 17 report from Clever Real Estate. Almost half of surveyed home sellers, or 42%, said their costs to sell were higher than expected, the report found.

“When people think about selling their home, they’re thinking about how much money they’re going to make from their home sale, and not how much they’re going to spend,” said Jaime Dunaway-Seale, data writer at Clever Real Estate.

“That cost does end up being very high and then they’re caught off guard and disappointed because that’s going to take a cut out of their profit,” Dunaway-Seale said.

In May, Clever Real Estate polled 1,014 Americans who sold a home between 2022 and 2024 about their attitudes related to the home-selling process. It also conducted an analysis of seller costs based on median real estate prices in May.

About 39% of the total cost — $21,603 — is spent on real estate agent commissions, according to the report.

However, as a landmark case involving real estate agent commission fees will soon take effect, sellers will no longer be required to pick up the entire tab. If a seller decides not to pay the buyer’s real estate agent’s commission, it could “drop their cost by about $10,000,” Dunaway-Seale said.

Other typical expenses include doing some home repairs both ahead of the listing and in response to inspections, which Clever Real Estate estimates to cost $10,000; closing costs ($8,000); buyer concessions, or expenses the seller agrees to pay for the buyer to reduce upfront purchase costs, ($7,200); moving costs ($3,250); marketing and advertising costs ($2,300); and staging costs ($2,263).

But home sellers should focus on “maximizing the efficiency of the transaction,” and “not just trying to save on costs,” said Mark Hamrick, senior analyst at Bankrate.

“Ultimately, [with] many of these fees, there’s no harm in trying to negotiate, and that includes real estate commissions,” Hamrick said.

‘There are plenty of costs involved’

Cost-constrained homebuyers in today’s housing market do not want to inherit homes in need of renovations, according to the Clever Real Estate report.

“There are plenty of costs involved,” said certified financial planner Kashif A. Ahmed, founder and president of American Private Wealth in Bedford, Massachusetts. “You might have to do some renovations to sell it.”

If a buyer makes it as far as the home inspection process and sees issues in the house that were not noticeable during the initial walkthrough nor disclosed, they may have room to ask the seller to do the necessary repairs, Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, recently told CNBC.

That is especially true in housing markets where listed homes are…