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In this post I’ll explain the entire experience of selling a house online, for sale by owner, comparing alternatives to real estate agents, researching how does Purple Bricks work and my Purple Bricks Reviews. The entire process from placing my home for sale with Purple Bricks to closing in escrow was 50 days and I only had to physically sign and notarize a document one time!
I ended up paying 3.24% in commission to sell my home with Purple bricks. The entire process was 50 days: 20 days on the market, while negotiating offers and 30 days in escrow. I sold my house for a quick sale at the target price I was looking for.
The whole experience was easy, fast and much cheaper than any traditional real estate agency! We’ll go over below my entire process when trying to sell my home without a real estate agent. When I first heard of Purpple Bricks I immediately researched: How does Purple bricks work? What is Purple Bricks?
I wanted to sell my home but I was dreading the 6% in commissions for the buying and selling agents. So I tried selling my home on my own and was bombarded by calls from agents with only 1 person checking out my place after 2 weeks. If they bought the place, I was prepared to give the 3% buying agent commission and pay for all the additional real estate documents and legal help.
This was getting more complicated and then I found Purplebricks. What is Purple Bricks commission? They have a flat rate price of $3600 which comes out to 1.24% for my home sale which was $290k. Much cheaper than the traditional 3%.
So I called them up and had a chat with Carla, the representative in my area, and she gave me a whole breakdown of the process. The biggest thing she told me was that she could set the buying agent fee to 2% (instead of 3%).
That made the total home sale 3.24% which is almost half of what everyone else is paying. I do like a good deal so I signed up for Purplebricks.
Since I was still living in my home, I just did the home showings myself. Purplebricks had a great scheduling system that would text me for potential buyers to come and check out my home. I gave them the hours I would be available and then potential buyers could block out those times to come and see my home. If I was unavailable, all I had to do was say no. This was all done through an automated text system.
I purchased these blue shoe covers so people could wear them in my home without getting the place dirty. Within a week, many people were coming by to check out my place. After 2 weeks I had an offer that worked really well for me.
Purplebricks does a lot of the paperwork online which made things quick and convenient. I only had to actually mail something in once via FedEx because I had to have my real signature along with a notary stamp. Other than that, everything was super easy!
When I bought my home through a traditional real estate agent, it took so long to physically sign every document and coordinate with the agent when to come in/meet. That was very time consuming and I’m happy Purplebricks has created a more modern and affordable experience.
Throughout the escrow process, my agent Carla kept me well informed and updated via text messages and email. This was great for me cause I prefer these “quick-to-the-point” process of communication rather than a phone call.
Overall, I’m extremely happy with my experience with Purplebricks and hope they overtake the traditional real estate agencies which are slower and more expensive.
First off, I sincerely believe real estate is a scam. Why would an agent get paid 10x more for selling a $1,000,000 house than a $100,000 house? The amount of work on their side is exactly the same. Real estate lobbies “donate” a lot to politicians to keep buying/selling homes incredibly difficult rather than making it easier for consumers.
During the 2008 housing crisis, bankers AND real estate agents were both pushing expensive homes on people with the idea of just paying off interest since the home value would just go up. This caused the U.S. economy to eventually crash. No one went to jail and the government bailed out the banks. When the same thing in Iceland happened, bankers went to jail. The difference is that you can “pay” for freedom in the U.S. if you have enough money.
I was looking for a home in 2008 and almost got talked into buying a house I didn’t like and that I couldn’t afford. After awhile I quickly realized that the real estate agent I had was incompetent and decided not to buy a house. After much research, I realized it’s super easy to become a real estate agent. Okay, that’s it for my crazy rant. Let’s get to the main topic.
This was my first time selling my home and from what I researched the seller was obligated to 6% in commission: 3% for the selling agent and 3% for the buying agent. That’s a lot of money! But that’s only if you are selling a house through real estate agents.
After some research I found out that a homeowner can sell their own home as “For Sale By Owner” to at least save that 3% in commissions. If I sold my home myself, I was going to have to pay 3% to the buying agent anyway so I wanted to keep my costs low. I would have to also buy any additional paperwork and hire a real estate lawyer to look over the documents.
The perfect situation would be selling your house on the internet. You wouldn’t need need a selling agent and you’d be able to find a buyer directly…without the need of a buying agent. That’s 6% of your home’s value back in your pocket if you don’t need anyone to help sell your house.
If you want to sell your home without an official real estate agent, there’s a right way and a wrong way. I have to sell my house and ended up starting with the wrong way.
My home selling journey began by using ForSaleByOwner.com to list my home. They had a 14-day free trial and they listed your place on Redfin and in the MLS.
I started by cleaning up my home and taking decent pictures. My home was still partially furnished and I definitely wasn’t going to move everything out just to take pictures. That’s why they were “decent” pictures. There was definitely room for improvement. There’s a lot of videos online explaining how to take real estate photos and to touch them up to help sell your house.
After taking pictures, I edited the pictures to include my home’s features. It also included my email address and website information.
I also created a Facebook page for my property being sold since it was another strategy to target potential buyers especially locally. This was not successful but I didn’t pay to promote the page. I wasn’t exactly looking for a quick sale of my home, so there wasn’t a rush.
If you’ve Google’d “How To Sell Real Estate without an agent” I hope you came to this page instead of the other results. Most of the top results DO NOT explain the full process of selling your home. It’s click-bait with no decent content. Let me summarize what they’ll tell you:
I found all of these points obvious and not very helpful. How do I tell Google that the top results are absolute garbage?
MLS is good if you are targeting real estate agents. I’m targeting buyers. Real buyers in this modern era use the internet site like Zillow and Redfin. That’s where I have to sell my house.
I didn’t go through my own list. The costs with legal documents from ForSaleByOwner.com and hiring a real estate lawyer was going to add up in costs. Lots of people did not want to help me for free and insisted on a commission. This would bring my home sale from the minimum 3% to 4.5% and a lot of work on my side.
I was struggling with selling a house online and started researching my options…and I’m glad I did!
My For Sale By Owner listing was ready to go live. I didn’t see any photo compression limits on the ForSaleByOwner.com site but noticed not many people were going over 300kb per photo. So I kept my file sizes to that limit.
The next day, I checked out Redfin to see if I could find my listing. I found my listing but it had the WORST images! My pictures were compressed down to 30kb and everything looked so pixelated that you couldn’t even tell what my home looked like.
First, I thought maybe I made a mistake. I looked at the files I uploaded and they were at 300kb. Then I took another look at the photos to find the [For Sale By Owner] added a watermark to my photos and they were the cause of the poor photo compression.
Of course I contacted support about the issue and they got back to me a few days later saying it was my fault. This was irritating because I am very aware of what I uploaded and I definitely did not upload low quality photos with a For Sale By Owner watermark.
Irritated and agitated, I canceled the service immediately and went in a different direction.
I’m a big believer in blockchain technology. Transparency in transactions and higher security. Sounds good to me. I found out about a site that does real estate transactions on the blockchain so I researched it and thought it was going to work…until it didn’t.
Propy is still in it’s very beta stages. As of Late 2018, what it really does is list homes for sale. The promotional video leads you to believe that they manage home sales and transfers of property but it does not. It took a week to find this out!
The website wasn’t clear on all the details on how to sell a home on Propy so I contacted support. They gave me a brief overview of the process and said they’d get back to me in a few days with additional documents to help me with the process. No documents arrived. They then redirected me to a Propy Real Estate Agent who would be able to answer any questions I had.
My first question was what it Propy’s role in selling a home? Basically they’re a listing service at the moment, just like Zillow or Redfin. The Propy agent told me that they can’t actually process selling a house completely on the blockchain. This is due to the intricacies of real estate law that happens to be different from state to state and from country to country.
The Propy agent did offer to help me with the paperwork to sell my home for a 1% fee. That’s a lot for someone who would just be doing paperwork. She was located in San Francisco and would not be helping me locally. I declined this offer because I already knew of 1% home selling sources that included more services.
You can list your home as “For Sale By Owner” for free on Zillow. Most other platforms will charge a fee and your last resort would be listing with a realtor.
I listed my home on Zillow and after a week I noticed the listing had not gone live yet. To resolve this, I contacted support and after a day they were able to approve the listing.
The reason it wasn’t approved was that they weren’t sure if a real person was listing the home. I guess they have a lot of scams related to selling your home yourself online.
The next morning…I’m bombarded with telephone calls. I don’t answer my phone at all. It’s all real estate agents that want to be the selling agent for that easy commission. For the next few days I was getting 40+ calls each day from real estate agents. Each one was promising a quick sale and that they knew the area well. Most of them did not even say the street name correctly.
I had to change my voicemail to inform realtors to email me instead. Very few of them actually emailed me.
The classic scam pitch is to try and get on your target’s side. You first start by trying to befriend you or empathizing with your pains and struggles then present the easy solution. I did a lot of research on how to sell my home and how to be a real estate agent. There were a few YouTube videos that went into great detail on using psychological tactics to convert people from For Sale By Owner to list with a realtor. I absolutely wasn’t falling for any of this. It just made me angry cause they ALL had the classic scam pitch.
Some of the messages were clearly lies. One realtor called me up and said that they knew the neighborhood really well and sold a home on Gladyshade. There’s no street named that in the area. The is a nearby street named Shadyglade. If you knew the area well, you would actually know that.
Many of the promised would quickly claim “quicksell” or “fast home sale” just to get my attention. Many promises to sell my property quickly. I’d rather sell my home for full value.
Another person called and said they were doing a survey. I happened to answer the phone. He asked where I was moving to next and then said he was a realtor and could sell my place in the next 14 days.
Why are realtors so desperate to make a sale? Because it’s incredibly easy money for them. Can any realtor sell any house? Yes. There’s no significant difference. You just need a buyer, a target price. selling a hour yourself paperwork and an escrow service.
After listing with Purplebricks, I realized that real estate sites are scams. When I searched for my home on Zillow and Redfin, they don’t even show my listing agent as the top result. They make it look like another agent is representing the property. Selling house by owner online through these sites is not an option.
Because if you’re a potential buyer without an agent, you’re going to call a realtor that you believe is the selling agent, but is in fact just a realtor who will now represent the potential buyer to take that commission. It sounds a little confusing, but what they’re doing is adding themselves to the transaction.
Realtors can pay Zillow and other real estate sites to be one of the top realtors listed. That’s how these sites really make their money.
If your goal is to sell house yourself online you shouldn’t go through a real estate agent to create a listing for you. This is so you don’t get bombarded by other real estate agents soliciting their service. Selling own house online can be incredibly challenging with these hurdles.
It sucks, but you can’t get on the MLS (multi-listing service) for free. You have to pay a licensed real estate agent a few hundred bucks just to get on.
TheMLS.com is the real Multi-Listing Service website used by real estate agents throughout the United States.
MLS.com is the FAKE website that tricks potential buyers into using their real estate agents. Of course if you’re a realtor and want to get on this list, it comes at a price.
There’s multiple scams trying to deal with trying to sell house yourself online.
After a week of ignoring a massive amount of real estate agent calls, I became very fed up with the process. I had only 1 potential buyer come by to check out my home (with a real estate agent).
At this point I thought it was too late to pay for an agent to list my home under their name so I could get on the MLS and avoid any more realtor calls. So I started looking into flat rate real estate services.
After some Googling, I found Faira. A slightly shady practice. They several tiers of service and they market their “Free” service as being free, but there’s a 0.5% fee upon the closing of your home’s sale. I don’t like that.
Faira’s next tier of service takes a 1% flat rate commission and they take care of most of the home sale. They’ll have an agent with you throughout the process. As I was trying to find out more information, I was only able to talk to a support person from Faira and not a realtor.
Then I went to Purplebricks. I wanted to know more about the service and they scheduled a call with me and a local real estate agent. Over the phone the Purple Bricks agent explained that Purplebricks has a flat rate fee of $3600. That could be paid up front or at the end of the home sale. Once you sign on with Purplebricks, you have to pay that fee within 6 months even if you don’t sell your home. That does mean they would support you with your home sale for that duration of time.
I immediately signed up with Purplebricks when they told me they could bring down the buying agent’s commission down to 2% instead of the standard 3%! This was big! My home sold for 290k and since the fee for Purplebricks was $3600, that makes their commission 1.24%. Paying a grand total of 3.24% in real estate commission instead of the standard 6%.
It’s a more modern way to sell a home! With a flat rate of $3600, they are a full service real estate agency that provides photography, home showings, scheduling showing and all the paperwork is processed online! I only had to physically sign something once with a notary and everything else was done online.
It works just like a real estate agency but they do things just a little differently. They have flat rate pricing and use modern technology making the processing of selling a home incredibly easy.
Purple real estate made it easy to sell my home and quick. I didn’t expect to close on selling my home in just 50 days. 30 of those days was because the deal was in escrow.
You can use both Faira and Purplebricks to sell your house online. But they both have different pricing structures with the Faira price of 1% and the Purplebricks price of $3600.
Obviously 1% through Faira is lower than 1.24% from Purplebricks for my specific situation. Although, Faira didn’t tell me that we could bring the buying agent’s commission down to 2%. That means I would have paid 4% total with Faira while paying only 3.24% with Purplebricks! That is the best value for my specific situation.
If I did everything on my own, paid a real estate lawyer and wrangled my own legal documents, I would have ended up paying about the same amount with more of a hassle. How does Purple Bricks work? The answer is: It’s very easy and affordable.
Selling a house online is easy with Purple Bricks! You can bring the agent’s commission down to 2% in hire priced markets. There are modern real estate services that charge 1% or around that so you can cut your commission cost in half!
I sold my house for my target price! It didn’t take too long to reference recent sells in the area and since I had a townhome, several units in my complex were sold recently making pricing very easy to understand.
The entire process was incredibly easy. They turned the complexity of real estate into a simple house exchange.
Buying a house? If you go without an agent you can ask for 2-3% off the price since the seller would have paid that in commission!
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