If you’re thinking of selling your house in Hawaii, you’ll likely connect with people who want to help you out. Some may be real estate agents and some may be investors. Check out this blog post to read about 3 ways to tell real estate agents and investors apart in Hawaii, and to help you understand why you might want to work with one versus the other…
Thinking about selling your house? You might be approached by a few different people who all offer to help you sell. But not everyone who offers to help will help in exactly the same way. Some are real estate agents, other are real estate investors and they’ll help you in different ways. Here are 3 ways to tell real estate agents and investors apart in Hawaii.
Ways To Tell Real Estate Agents And Investors Apart In Hawaii: List Versus Buy
The easiest way to tell agents from investors is to ask what they are going to do with your house – are they going to list it or are they offering to buy it? A real estate agent will list your house on their particular island’s listing service (MLS) and they’ll try to find a buyer. They might need to show it to several people and hold multiple open houses in order to find that one buyer.
An investor, on the other hand, isn’t going to list your house – the investor is an actual buyer and they will offer to buy your house from you directly. (That’s what we do at Oahu Home Buyers – we’re buyers and we buy houses in Hawaii. If you want to sell your house, click here and enter your information to find out how much we can pay).
If you can get your hands on your specific island’s MLS, you’ll likely see many of the same names popping up – these are realtors (agents) who will try to find a buyer for your property. Investors, however, may not get as much ‘face time’ as agents, but you can usually find them easily enough by looking at local Craigslist ads, searching Google for ‘we buy houses Hawaii’, etc.
Ways To Tell Real Estate Agents And Investors Apart In Hawaii: Timeline To Sell
The next way to tell an agent apart from an investor is to ask about their timeline to buy. An agent won’t know because they have to find the buyer first. In many cases, they might be looking at 3-9 months during which they’ll show the house to multiple potential buyers (as of this writing, most houses on Oahu go into escrow in roughly 30-40 days but there are still many houses that have been on the market for 120 days or longer). It all depends on how desirable the property is (location, condition, etc.), whether the client is asking the agent to price it reasonably and the local market conditions.
An investor, though, will know exactly how long it will take to buy your house since they’re the ones who will actually buy it. They will have an exact timeline (which could depend on you and how quickly you want to sell). You can expect to sell in under 30 days, in most cases, sometimes much faster than that (especially if you’re trying to avoid a foreclosure).
Ways To Tell Real Estate Agents And Investors Apart In Hawaii: Commission Versus No Commission
This one is crucial! An agent makes their money when they find a qualified buyer and then you have to pay them a commission on the house (which could be somewhere around 6% of the sale price… on Oahu, that’s easily $40,000 for a median single family house).
An investor, however, isn’t listing your house so there aren’t any commissions coming out of your pocket. That’s because an investor will make money by either renting the house to a tenant or fixing up the house and re-selling it… so they make their money in a different way. Regardless, there’s no commission to you, the home seller, because the investor is the actual buyer.
There are other ways to tell an agent or investor apart, of course. The best thing to do is just ask… they’ll tell you!
Which Is Right For You?
Now that we’ve clearly explained the difference between real estate agent and investor, you may still be wondering which one is better for you? Of course, there’s no easy answer. If you’re looking to test the market, don’t mind waiting 6 months for a high offer and are ok with the public coming through your front door every Sunday until you sell, then perhaps listing your house with an agent is ok.
However, if privacy is important, if selling your house quickly is important, and if your property is less than desirable (in bad shape), then selling your house to an investor may be the #1 best option for you.
Still not sure? Talk to us about it!