Learning how to sell a condo in NYC is critical if you want to avoid wasting months of your life in an unsuccessful For Sale By Owner (“FSBO”) attempt.
Most articles on the topic of how to sell a condo in NYC will simply be advertisements for brokerages charging the standard 6% commission to sellers. If you ask your real estate broker friends, you’ll be sad to find out that most of them will try to convince you that paying 6% of your sale price in agent fees is some sort of law you must follow.
Fortunately, you can avoid these common real estate agent lies and quickly learn how to sell a condo in NYC through the steps below and by perusing our extensive blog.
Table of Contents:
How to Sell a Condo in NYC If You’re Too Busy for Showings
Just because you’re a busy working professional who can’t step out at odd hours during the work day to show your apartment doesn’t mean you have to succumb to paying 6% commission.
You can work with a top rated, local REBNY Member Firm for only a 1% listing fee. Best of all, the sale process will be identical to what you would have received by paying 6% commission!
Our brand name, highly experienced and highly rated partner brokers have discreetly agreed to a reduction in listing agent commission.
They will conduct all showings and open houses, manage and negotiate all inquiries and keep in touch with you as the manager of your sale process.
Best of all, your listing will appear exactly the same as our partner brokers’ other full commission listings.
The fact that you aren’t paying full commission can only be revealed by looking at your listing agreement. It’ll be our little secret!
A Full Service Listing for 1%
Sell your home with a traditional full service listing for just one percent commission.
How to Sell a Condo in NYC If You Can Show Your Own Home
If you happen to have flexible working hours or the ability to work from home, then you’re in luck!
With Hauseit’s flat fee MLS listing service, you have the ability to thoroughly syndicate your listing to every broker database and search website that a traditional broker would.
Our flat fee MLS listing service enables home sellers to list their home on the RLS (REBNY Listing Service) which is the equivalent of the NYC Multiple Listing Service as well as many popular sites such as the New York Times, Homes.com, StreetEasy, Zillow, Trulia, New York Times and more.
Sellers only pay a one time fee of $399 and can potentially save on all 6% of the traditional broker fee if they find an unrepresented buyer. Sellers will only be liable for the 2-3% commission they’ve offered buyers’ agents on RLS if they end up doing a deal with a represented buyer.
Best of all, your listing will appear the same as our highly rated partner brokers’ other full commission listings. However, because you will be responding to inquiries, it’s important that you learn how to deal with buyers’ agents before you begin.
Just remember, there’s no upside for you to reveal to buyers’ agents that you aren’t paying full commission! Just let them do their jobs and show your home to their buyers!
Make Sure Your Home Is in Viewing Condition
Windows – this will cost you several hundred dollars (nothing is cheap in New York) but will be well worth it to have your windows cleaned. This is especially important if your apartment has a nice view or gets great light that you want to show off. A good view is extremely valuable, why would you want to hide it?
Home cleaning – this is a small investment (under $200) and self-explanatory. Hire a team of maids to thoroughly clean your apartment before you have your apartment professional photographed.
Floors – if your floors are particularly scratched up, consider having your entire floor re-sanded if you have hardwood floors. You can do it yourself, or more likely hire a contractor or your building superintendent to do this.
Pro Tip: Your home has seen some wear and tear. You’ll want to make sure it’s in sparkling condition before you put it on the market. Though it will be more work for you, polishing up your apartment will be a trivial investment compared to the potential payoff of selling your multi-million dollar apartment for a higher price.
Our Discretion, Your Advantage
Our traditional partner brokers never openly discount which means less disruption and better execution for you.
Take Professional Photographs of Your Home
There is a tremendous difference between digitally re-touched, professionally taken photographs vs amateur cell phone snapshots taken by an owner. Just take a look at these before and after photos:
Sometimes, it takes direct feedback from buyers about how horrible their photos are for FSBO sellers to realize that professional photos are truly worthwhile.
However, by the time they invest a few hundred dollars in stunning new photos of their home, they’ve already wasted weeks or months of time on market. It’s one of the three most common FSBO seller mistakes made in NYC!
Save 2% On Your Home Purchase
Save thousands on your home purchase with a buyer agent commission rebate from Hauseit
Have a Floor Plan Drawn and Measured of Your Home
If you’re not sure that you the rights to your apartment’s floorplan listed online, then you should have a new one drawn and measured.
If you’ve ordered Hauseit’s professional photography product, we can arrange to have a floorplan drawn at the same time as your photography appointment for an additional fee. Standard floorplans will have measurements and be 2-D black and white.
Write a Beautiful Listing Description
Our guide to how to sell a condo in NYC wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t include advice about how to write a property listing description!
To sell a condo in NYC you need a well crafted, informative but short paragraph or two about your home. Most of the description should be about your home itself, and the last part can include information about your building or neighborhood.
For inspiration, take a look at current and past listing descriptions written by professionals in your building!
Sample online listing description
Get two bedroom apartment for the price of a studio! Move right into this convertible two (junior four) in a luxury doorman cooperative on Manhattan’s coveted Upper West Side. Apartment features open kitchen with stainless steel appliances and granite counter-tops, luxurious bathroom with rain shower head, custom-designed closets, cherry red wood floors and an office that is convertible to a second bedroom! This is a 10% down building with a newly renovated lobby, beautifully planted roof garden, garage, bike, laundry and storage rooms. Pets, pied-a-terres, guarantors and co-purchasers are welcome. This building currently has an assessment. The maintenance is $1,500 while the assessment is $2,000 a month.
Make sure you understand what qualifies as a legal bedroom in NYC! FSBO sellers often overstate how many bedrooms their apartment has.
If you overstate the number of bedrooms in your apartment, your listing may be reported by an angry buyer or real estate agent to the website it’s posted on. We’ve seen many cases of the real estate search website correcting the number of bedrooms on a seller’s behalf.
A Full Service Listing for 1%
Sell your home with a traditional full service listing for just one percent commission.
Disclosure: Commissions are not set by law or any Realtor® association or MLS and are fully negotiable. No representation, guarantee or warranty of any kind is made regarding the completeness or accuracy of information provided. Square footage numbers are only estimates and should be independently verified. No legal, tax, financial or accounting advice provided.
