4 Best Ways for Selling a Home in Texas

Selling your house privately means that you won’t have to spend your time and money on advertising to find a buyer and preparing your house for marketing.

It also helps you avoid a public listing and the need to open your house to strangers to tour on weekends to attract a buyer.

It won’t be necessary to have photos or videos of the interior of your home posted on the internet for all to see. And this is not the full list of benefits.

So, how to sell a property in Texas privately? Read on to learn more about it and about all of the pros and cons of this method.

What Are Home Buying Companies?

Selling a house privately means selling your home to an investor. Real estate investors, also called “cash house buyers,” are companies or individuals who operate as professional real estate buyers.

Real estate investors in Texas buy properties in as-is condition to repair and resell to other buyers. Cash real estate buyers are also interested in buying a rental property to keep as a source of income.

Cash house buyers also buy investment properties in Texas in turnkey condition to use them as rentals.

The unique value proposition of house buying companies is that they offer a sale that is easier and faster than a traditional real estate sale. Selling to an investor would work for homeowners who are:

• selling a house before foreclosure
• selling a house with tenants
• selling a house during bankruptcy
• selling a house in bad condition
• selling a house in a divorce process
• selling an inherited house
• selling house for job relocation
• selling a house with a tax lien
• selling a home to downsize

or who need a quick and easy sale for any other reason.

Cash investors work with local Texas investor-friendly title companies that have experience in closing cash sales and doing it quickly.

There are a number of benefits to selling your house privately to an investor.

Pros of Selling to a Home Buying Company

• A sale to a cash house buying company is a quick sale.
• You’ll avoid the wait time for loan approval and lender underwriting because your buyer uses cash instead of a mortgage.
• You won’t have to do any repairs. Even when selling a hoarder house, you won’t have to clean it.
• You’ll skip paying Realtor commissions. That’s about 3% of the sale price.
• Most cash buyers will pay home seller closing costs. Another major savings for sellers!

But cash house buying companies in Texas have their downsides as well.

Cons of Selling to a Home Buying Company

• Offers from cash real estate buyers in Texas don’t match market value.

This is because an investor needs to incorporate the costs of necessary repairs into their offer. They also need to account for their potential profit from the resale of your property.

However, if you consider the Realtor commission and other closing costs that you don’t have to pay, these savings significantly offset the difference between the investor’s offer and an offer an real estate agent would land for you.

How to Find an Ethical Home Buying Company

Unfortunately, not all real estate investors (just like real estate agents) act in good faith when serving home sellers.

It’s easy to find a handful of cash house buying companies online by typing “sell house fast for cash near me” in your browser.

But to find someone who will make you a fair offer and who will really handle the process fast and easily for you, you need to do some research.

First, look at the “About Us” page that identifies the investor by name and provides some background information about their training, expertise, and experience in real estate investing.

Check Google, Yelp, Trustpilot, Facebook, and Real Estate Bees for customer reviews about the company you are interested in.

Then it’s time to check the local Better Business Bureau to see if your prospects have any complaints filed against them.

Once you’ve narrowed your list, contact the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) to vet your remaining investors.

The OAG handles consumer complaints and allows consumers to make open-record requests about companies and investors.

If all this researching and vetting sounds like a lot of work, it is. You can skip that process by requesting a cash offer on your home on our website — HouseCashin.

HouseCashin has a nationwide network of cash home buyers. When accepting a company into our network, we do all the prescreening to make sure we connect home sellers with reputable investors.

No matter how many offers you receive, you won’t have to pay a dime, whether or not you decide to accept one or decline all of them.

Selling a house traditionally means hiring a real estate agent who will do most of the work for you.

Who Are Real Estate Agents?

Real estate agents are trained professionals who can represent you when selling a house in Texas.

Agents can assist you in listing and marketing your property, including negotiations with buyers, service providers, and other parties involved in the deal.

Your agent will also guide you through the title and escrow process in exchange for a negotiated commission.

Agents presenting themselves as Realtors are members of the Texas Realtors, a branch of the National Association of Realtors (NAR) trade group.

NAR members take an oath to uphold the highest level of business professionalism.

Pros of Using a Real Estate Agent

• A Realtor will fully guide you through the legally complex process of a real estate transaction.

• Realtors have access to proprietary information that can help you set an aggressive sales price that will still attract prospective buyers.

• They have fiduciary responsibilities to prioritize your best interests.

Cons of Using a Real Estate Agent

• You’ll pay a commission, somewhere in the range of 3%, for agent assistance. Knowing the cost of selling a house with a realtor can help you decide whether or not to hire an agent to assist you.

• You might not sell immediately. This may require your agent to hold your house open to the public and publicize your listing on websites.

• Most buyers need to apply for a mortgage to buy. That can take weeks for the application, house appraisal, and lender underwriting to finalize.

How to Find a Good Real Estate Agent

The most important step in how to sell a home in Texas is locating an experienced real estate agent to represent you.

You can develop a list of agent prospects by asking family and friends for recommendations. Collect names from the “sold” signs by properties in your neighborhood to add to your list. These agents have experience with your locality.

Vet agents by using the Texas Real Estate Commission (TREC) License Holder Search to ensure they are licensed and that their credential is active.

Use the database on the TREC for disciplinary actions to search for complaints filed against the agents on your list of prospects.

The Texas Better Business Bureau (BBB) is another resource that can provide information about complaints from unhappy clients.

When you’ve done your research, narrow your list to three agents who have a minimum of three years of experience in representing homes in your area.

Invite the agents to your home to do a listing presentation, and then select the one you think has the best communication skills and expertise to sell your property.

If you don’t want to pay a Realtor, you can offer your home for sale yourself in a for-sale-by-owner listing. This is known as “FSBO.”

A realtor won’t be there for you to find your home value and to guide you through the whole process. You will need to do research on all the formalities yourself.

Ways to Market Your House Yourself

Attracting buyers can be challenging for FSBO listers, but a few basics can help you put eyes on your property, including:

• Placing a professional-looking sign on your property.
• Producing a video tour of your home and post it on the internet.
• Creating a house flier that features the amenities your home offers.
• Advertising your listing on FSBO websites.
• Distributing fliers in the area at neighbors and local businesses.

Pros of Marketing Your House Yourself

There are a number of advantages when selling as an FSBO.

• You’ll skip real estate commissions when you handle the sale yourself. This is the highest fee among the closing costs in Texas for sellers.

• You are the boss of your listing. You determine the date you list, when you close, and how to market your property.

• You can devote all your time to selling your home. Agents have other clients that also demand their time. You have only your listing as your focus.

FSBO sales have a number of downsides, including some serious risks.

Cons of Marketing Your House Yourself

• You’ll need some skills to assist buyers who require a mortgage to purchase your home. That process can take weeks to finalize, so you’ll also have a delay in closing.

• You will be your only fiduciary to represent your interests during the sales transaction.

• If you make a mistake, it can delay your sale, or you may lose your buyer. You might overpay your FSBO closing costs and even end up in court if your buyer is extremely unhappy.

When you’ve located a property you want to buy, but haven’t yet put your current home on the market, there’s a sales option that might assist you in locking up that new sale without the stress of quickly selling your current residence.

iBuyer companies offer “buy before you sell” services to homeowners. This allows you to buy a new home and sell your current home at the same time.

iBuyers in Texas arrange to provide you cash by using the equity in your current home so you can make a cash offer on the house you’ve picked out.

You won’t need to ask the sellers for a contingency to wait for you to market your home in the hope you can quickly find a buyer.

Once you have finalized the sale on your new house, the iBuyer will then close on the contract on your former home.

Offering your home for sale requires following a few important steps. The first is to determine if you’re going to repair any damages or sell your property in as-is condition.

The next step is signing a listing agreement with a real estate agent or creating a formal sales offering for your property when selling a for-sale-by-owner listing.

However, you don’t need to go through the formal listing contract when you sell to a cash investor.

Before Signing a Purchase Contract

Section 5.008 of the Texas Property Code mandates all sellers complete a Seller’s Disclosure Notice and provide the buyer a copy of that written document.

This legal requirement includes disclosing any material damages to prospective buyers.

A material damage is anything that could reduce the value of the property, or risk the health and safety of the new owners.

You must address a long list of property conditions and disclose any defects or material damages. Learn more detail about this in our article on selling a house as is in Texas.

Marketing the Property

When advertising to the general public, you or your real estate agent will need to create a marketing plan to promote your property.

This might include a lawn sign, advertisements in local media publications, broker previews, public open houses, and an online promotion program by using real estate websites.

In a hot real estate market, your home could sell quickly if enough prospects from the local buyer pool tour your house. In slower markets, your house could take months to sell.

If your house is in need of major repairs, a sale could take a year or more to attract a traditional buyer. They typically aren’t interested in purchasing fixers.

Cash investors are interested in fixers and hard-to-sell properties. They can close quickly on a sale because they purchase with cash. That prevents the normal delay that obtaining a mortgage requires.

However, you won’t need to market your home to real estate investors. They have an investment strategy and a price to offer for any house.

Accepting an Offer

Your buyer may present a contract of sale through a real estate agent to your agent, if you are represented by one. You can counter that offer when the terms or the price aren’t acceptable.

The buyer can then counter your counter. This process happens until both buyer and seller are happy with the price and terms of the sale.

If you’re selling to an investor or representing yourself as an FSBO without using an agent, the cash buyer will present an offer directly to you.

Texas buyers must present a written offer that has all the elements of a legal contract.

You should see a contract date, legal description and location of the property, closing date for the sale, financing information, and notification of an earnest money deposit that accompanies the sales agreement.

The contract should also have the appropriate signatures of the buyers and the buyer’s agent, when represented by one.

Earnest money is a cash deposit made by the buyer that accompanies the sales offer.

This check must be put into a special brokerage account that’s then transferred to the title company to be applied to the sale when you accept the buyer’s offer and sign the sales contract.

This deposit is done when your agent, or you in an FSBO sale, open escrow through a Texas title company.

Escrow is a process where a neutral third party to the sale handles the financial transfer of money to complete the sale. Escrow agents also manage all the legal paperwork involved in the sale.

Title companies are licensed firms that trace property ownership over time and issue insurance policies to protect both buyers and sellers from potential fraud.

Texas title companies typically handle the escrow step in real estate transactions.

Buyer Due Diligence Period

After you’ve accepted the buyer’s offer and escrow has been opened, you’ll then have a period where your buyer does due diligence to investigate statements made on the property disclosure.

You’ll need to make sure that the agreements you’ve made with your buyer to do repairs are completed before it’s time to close. If your buyer is an investor, you’ll skip this step.

Buyers will arrange for their funding during this period. Lenders will take applications and qualify buyers, and then will order a property appraisal to ensure the value meets or exceeds the purchase price.

When you’re taking cash equity out of your house and using it to buy another property, you’ll examine the mortgage paperwork and the cash buyer equity documents during this period.

This due diligence period allows buyers to examine the sale property by hiring home inspectors.

It’s also a time for both buyer and seller to review escrow documents to identify any errors in the mortgage and sales agreements.

You can make changes to terms or wording in the agreements during this time — when both parties to the sale agree, or when the lender approves the changes.

Changes are typically made in the form of an amendment to either the sales contract or as a correction amendment to the loan paperwork. Some lenders, however, require a complete redo.

The Lone Star State requires a Closing Disclosure Checklist. It itemizes all of your fees and charges, and you’ll need to review those costs before going to the final closing appointment.

Closing

Your real estate or title agent will contact you to set a date to review and sign your closing documents.

It’s then time to attend the final closing where you’ll meet with the buyer’s lender (if there is one), title company representatives, and the real estate agents (if you and your buyer used agents).

Both buyer and seller sign final escrow documents at this formal meeting.

When your buyer signs the loan documents, or brings cash in the case of an investor sale, the title company will transfer the cash and the deed to the property.

Your final closing costs are also now due. If you’re selling as an FSBO or with an agent, you’ll pay these costs — or have proceeds of your sale transferred to pay the charges.

When you sell to an investor, your cash buyer typically covers closing costs for both sides in the transaction.

You’ll then turn over the keys to the home to the new owner or the agent representing the new owner. Some title companies will take charge of the key transfer.

After Closing

The last formal step for the title company is to record the signed and notarized deed with the clerk of the county where the property is located.

It’s wise to make sure this is done ASAP since the ownership isn’t legally established until the deed is filed.

Now you know what the Texas house selling process entails and the four ways to sell your home.

The next step will be contacting investors and iBuyers to shop for offers and real estate agents to get quotes for their commission fees.

Since you are already on our website, start with requesting cash offers from HouseCashin investors!