There is a question I get that sounds like it is setting a trap, and it is not one. What does a listing agent actually do that a cash buyer, somebody like me, does not? Haha. I am going to answer it honestly, and the honest answer does not flatter my side of the business.
Because it is a fair question. If you are choosing between the open market and one buyer, you should know what you are giving up before you hand it over.
So let us talk about the one thing the listing side does that I genuinely cannot, what it is worth when it works, and the parts of the faster road that people undersell.
A LISTING AGENT IS NOT REALLY SELLING YOUR HOUSE
It sounds like a riddle, so here is the plain version. A listing agent does not sell your house to one person. A listing agent’s whole job is to put your house in front of as many of the right people as possible at the same moment, and then let them want it at the same time.
The thing being sold, in other words, is not the house. It is the crowd. The photographs, the open house, the sign, the weekend of showings, the deadline for offers: every one of those exists to make more than one person want the same thing on the same day.
WHAT A CROWD ACTUALLY GETS YOU
A crowd does one useful thing, and it is not a small thing. When two households want the same house, the price stops being a number the seller hopes for and becomes a number somebody has to beat. That is the whole engine.
There is a second job wrapped around the first, and it is most of the work. Somebody has to price it, market it, hold the showings, read a stack of offers, tell the ones that will close from the ones that will not, and then keep the winner together through an appraisal, an inspection and a loan.
That last part is the unglamorous half. A house under contract is not a house that closed, and every step in between is a chance for the whole thing to come apart.
THE FARMERS MARKET COMPARISON, AND WHERE IT WALKS OFF
The picture I use for this is a produce stall. A listing agent is the farmers market: you set up your table, a few hundred shoppers wander past, and the price ends up being whatever the crowd will pay for the last box.
I am the wholesaler who pulls up to your gate, looks at the whole crop, and names one number for all of it today. Take it or leave it, and no queue of shoppers.
That is roughly true, and here is where it walks off the road. At a real market the tomatoes are interchangeable, so the shopper buys from whoever is cheapest. A house is one of one, and the shoppers in that crowd each have to bring a bank with them. They can walk away not because anything is wrong with the house, but because their loan did not happen, and that costs you the season.
The other half of it: a market runs for an afternoon, while a listing runs for as long as it runs, and every month in between the house is still yours to keep presentable and still yours to heat.
WHAT I CANNOT DO, SAID PLAINLY
So here is the honest column. I cannot manufacture a crowd. When you sell to me there is one buyer in the room and it is me, so nobody bids and no deadline makes the number climb.
I cannot promise you the top of the market either, because the top of the market is set by the household that falls in love and pays a little too much, and that household almost always turns up through a listing rather than through a letter in the mailbox.
And I am not going to tell you the listing side is the expensive option, because for a house that shows well and has time, a strong listing usually nets the most. I say some version of that in nearly every post here and I am not going to stop saying it in this one.
WHAT THE FASTER ROAD ACTUALLY BUYS
Now the other column, kept just as straight. What a cash buyer removes is everything that depends on somebody else’s schedule, starting with the showings. No strangers on a Sunday, no house kept presentable for a month, no sign in the yard.
No repairs to negotiate either, because the house is bought as it sits. No appraisal and no loan on my side, because there is no bank to convince. And a closing date you can plan around, rather than a chain of events you cannot see.
That is not the same as more money, and I will not dress it up as if it were. It is a different currency, and the currency is time, certainty, and a house you do not have to fix before anyone will take it.
THE TWO QUESTIONS THAT ACTUALLY SORT IT
Most of this falls out of two questions, and people usually skip both. They are also the two I would ask you first if we ever talked.
- Does the house need work before a stranger would buy it? The more it needs, the smaller the crowd gets, and the less the crowd is worth.
- Do you have the months to run a listing? A crowd takes time to gather, and it only helps if the market wants your house that month.
- Is the number the hard problem, or is the date? A listing is a poor tool for a deadline, and a cash sale is a poor tool for a price record.
If you want the money side of the comparison rather than the feeling side, here is how I would run the numbers. If you want the route where you test the open market first, there is a full page on that. If you want to see what I do and when, the process is written out here. And if you want the direct route in one place, this is what a direct sale involves.
Whether you need an agent at all is a different question, so I wrote about that one separately.
Anyway, thank you for reading a post that spends its first half arguing against my own pitch. That was on purpose. If the two roads were the same, you would not have a decision to make, and you do.
Question for you: if the crowd could add a little to the price but cost you three months of weekends, would you take the crowd, or would you take the date?
