My wife and I are selling a house worth $230k-$260k. Its a rental. Should we use an agent, limited service listing agent, or FSBO?
The answers you'll receive are going to be largely subjective. I can't tell you which option would be best for you, but there are plenty of things to consider.  Do you know how to sell a home? If your market is hot enough, FSBO may make sense as you won't need the marketing power and expertise of an agent. In very hot markets, you'll end up with potential bidding wars if you price your house correctly. But that's where things start getting tricky. Do you know what your house is realistically worth in your market, or are you making assumptions based on Zillow (or similar)? Do you know what paper work is needed to complete a FSBO sale? Are you any good at negotiating? There are certainly plenty of resources out there for FSBO sellers to learn how to do it, but it can be overwhelming.  FSBO isn't really fee free. If the buyer has an agent, they'll want a percentage (3%) for setting up their part of the sale. Without experience in negotiation, you may be leaving a decent amount of money on the table. Also, in negotiations, an experienced agent may nickel & dime you with contingencies all the way up until closing. Then there's anything you might need to pay for marketing materials and time off from work (if needed) to have the house shown. However, if you're in a market where people are literally walking up to your door to ask if you'd consider selling and for how much (which just happened to a friend of mine), then it might actually be a pretty painless process.  Traditional agents charge a fee, but that fee goes towards marketing and their experience in sales and negotiations. They do the work of getting your property in front of the right people and setting up house showings. The work is done on your behalf, and you won't need to alter your personal work schedule anywhere near as much as you would with FSBO. They only get paid if the house sells. Limited service agents are a bit of an unknown to me, but it's more than likely the buyer will have an agent, so assume the higher fee. It also appears that the LSA gets paid at least $500 no matter what happens, so they're certainly not putting in any extra effort to help get your house sold. It appears that you're simply paying to get on their list of homes and get some marketing from them, but that's about it. I'd imagine you could get the same exposure as a well educated FSBO seller.
"In the course of one's spending, it's not tough to find things that are going to be that expensive.  A median income is in the $50K range in the US. The diamond folk advertise that one should spend 3 month's salary on an engagement ring. Even with a decent income, I spent zero. My wife was practical, not interested in jewelry, and wanted a big house. The money went to the downpayment. The house cost 2.5 years salary at that time.  A car, even used, will cost some month's salary.  If that $50K earner is saving, has an emergency account, and is on track with their financial long term goals, a week's pay can buy a nice sized TV.  A nice vacation can cost a week's pay to a month's pay.  Your question is great, although it shows a concern that's typical very early on in one's career. There are related question here about ""how can I spend more?"" They tend to come from someone living on a student budget that now has an adult's income from a desirable job. The answer is to sit down, list your monthly spending, properly budget a decent portion for savings, and see how much you have for frivolous spending. Keep in mind, it's easier to sock it away now. No house, no kids, etc. When we were first married, we lived on my wife's income (in effect) and socked mine away. The house tightened the budget, as did the kid.  In the end, the PS4 is less about the $400 than it is about the rest of your finances." Anecdotally, we recently bought a house in a really hot labor market. Our agent told us that she has a lot of people who are looking to sell (enough to start working with an agent) but are refusing to list their houses because the prices keep going up. She is begging them to list but they keep waiting, driving up prices even further. Database For Business connects its users to Dubai real estate information, analysis, data, news and opportunities, you should select the right business directory in Dubai, that's capable for better service of real estate database. We have a more database service such as mobile database, business database, email marketing database and we provide new technology service with UAE real estate database.  It is a trustable place for you in Dubai, we have different service of database in lowest price which is essential for your real estate business. The Database For Business is a collaboration of real estate agents and always help you to keep secure data of real estate business. We offer an extensive database of Dubai properties to our clients. You should consider using a lawyer as your agent. We once talked to one who was willing to act as our agent for a fixed fee. Not all attorneys can do it where we live, but there are plenty that can. We ended up going another route, but since then we have found a seller's agent that charges us a fixed fee of one thousand dollars (a great deal for us). We are using her again right now.  It's all about the contract. Whatever you can legally negotiate is possible - which is yet another reason to consider finding a real estate attorney. Whether or not you use a real estate agent, at some stage most people use a lawyer to do the actual buying and selling and set up the agreements. If you've never dealt with a lawyer directly before it's probably because your agent has acted as a front-person for the lawyer. If you go to a lawyer and tell them what you want to do they will sort it out, and should tell you in advance how much it will cost. You and your friend will probably need one each. You can explore the scenarios in which it is better to rent or to buy using this application: http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/BuyOrRentInvestmentReturnCalculator/ In the possibly unlikely scenario shown below, at the term of the mortgage (20 years) the tenant and the buyer have practically the same return on investment.  At this point the tenant's savings would be sufficient to buy a house equivalent to the buyer's, and this would be the advisable course of action (based on the figures alone). "A lower price is likely to be slightly more attractive to sellers than paying an equivalent amount in closing costs. The seller is going to be paying the realtor(s) commission on the higher ""sale"" price and will net slightly less money. It is common in my experience to ask for closing costs.  The generic answer for your questions about how it is spent depends on the bank and type of loan. In general you will not be able to walk away with the cash if closing costs are less than the concession but they can be applied to funding escrow and points transfer fees etc.. There is the potential to lose the concession if there aren't sufficient closing costs. I am fairly certain that there isn't any tax differences between the two in the US." "I don't have a direct answer for you, but here are some other things you might consider to help you decide on a course of action in addition to Joe's note about consulting a CPA...  Get a couple contractors out to look the place over and give you some quotes on the work needed, most will do so for free, or a nominal fee.  Everything about the extent and cost of repairs is complete guess work until you have some firm numbers. You might also consider getting an up-to-date appraisal, particularly if you can find someone willing to give you an ""after improvements"" estimate as well.  The housing market has fluctuated a bunch in the last couple years, your current value may have shifted significantly from where you think it is if you haven't done one recently.  You will definitely have to pay for this service, I would estimate around $500 based on one I got in St Louis a few months ago.   You might also consider reaching out to a local property management company to find out where they think you would fall in the scope of the current rental market and what improvements they would recommend.  You will probably want to be onsite to talk to any of the above people about the work they are proposing, and your intended goals, so figure some travel costs and time into your evaluation. As one of your noted concerns was the state of the roof, I can tell you that in St Louis County, and the spec sheet for most shingle manufacturers, you are limited to two layers of shingles, then the roof is supposed to be stripped and redone from the bare wood.  Personally, I won't even do the second layer, I always go to bare wood and start over, if for no other reason than it gives me an opportunity to inspect the deck and deal with any minor problem areas before they become big problems. I don't know Greene County to know what the local code may be like, but odds are high that the shingle manufacture would not honor any warranty with this installation. Another potential gotcha that may be lurking out there is your ex may still have a lingering claim to the home if you go to sell it.  I don't know the rules in Missouri off hand, but where I grew up (with family in the real estate and title insurance businesses) there was a law regarding homestead rights.  If a spouse spent even one night in a property, they had an interest in it and an explicit waiver had to be signed to release said interest.  Review your divorce settlement and/or contact your attorney to confirm your status in this regard. Also consider the potential of refinancing your mortgage to either reduce the payment, or get funds for the improvements/repairs.   Final note, I understand wanting to help out a friend (I have done similar things more times than I can count), but seriously look at the situation and see if you can't get the rent or other compensation up to the level of the mortgage at least.   You mentioned that you have belongings still on the property, what would a storage unit for said items cost? In terms of juggling the numbers you could potentially use that value as justification to adjust the friends rent as a caretaker fee without any issue.  (Verify with your CPA) Talk to the friend and see if there are other parts of the job they would be willing and able to take on as consideration for the reduced rent (make sure you have at least a simple contract on any such agreement).   Or if none of the above are sufficient to balance the numbers, see if they would be willing to take on an actual room mate to help make up the difference."