What Are the Benefits of Selling Off-Market?

Here are the benefits and drawbacks of selling your home off-market.

If you’re intrigued by the idea of selling your home as a pocket listing, there are a couple of advantages and disadvantages to this type of sale you should know before proceeding. 

First, let’s define “pocket listing.” This is a listing in which the agent doesn’t market the home on the MLS. It’s only listed to other agents and the listing agent’s database. Not being on the MLS means the home isn’t syndicated on sites like Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, etc.

Now let’s go over the two main advantages of selling off-market:

1. You don’t have to deal with as many showings. During this COVID-19 era, inventory is so low that you could easily have 40 to 100 showings within your home’s first few days on the market. Just thinking about that many buyers walking through their home is overwhelming to a lot of sellers. We find that with off-market properties, there aren’t as many buyers walking through your home, but they tend to be better qualified and more motivated. This leads me to my next point…

2. Buyers are more motivated. There’s a bidding war for almost every property on the market right now, and you can use that as a bargaining chip when negotiating with buyers. At the end of the day, no buyer wants to be in a multiple-offer situation, so if they don’t have to compete for your property, that will make them more motivated to pay top dollar for it.

“During this COVID-19 era, inventory is so low that you could easily have 40 to 100 showings.”

Here are the two main disadvantages of selling off-market: 

1. You may miss out. If you don’t put your home on the market, you’ll never know what you may have been able to get price-wise. This is why we advise all of our off-market sellers to ask for top dollar.

2. You won’t get as many showings. As I said, you’ll attract higher-quality buyers to walk through your home, but having fewer showings can also be a disadvantage. 

What kind of sellers list their homes off-market? To give you an idea, I’ll tell you about a couple of clients of mine who recently went the pocket listing route. The first had two kids under the age of five and animals living in their house, so it wasn’t feasible for them to host a lot of showings. Having a buyer willing to pay top dollar for their home without needing to keep it in showing condition all the time reduced their stress tremendously. 

Another client was moving all the way to the East Coast, so with everything they had to take care of to prepare for a cross-country move, the last thing they wanted was to deal with so many showings in a short time. 

At the end of the day, it all boils down to what you’re comfortable with as a seller. If you’d like a more detailed strategy of how we’d be able to sell your home off-market or want to be added to our VIP list of buyers who are privy to our upcoming off-market listings, call or email me today. 

As always, if you have any other real estate equations, feel free to reach out to me as well. I’m here to help.