The Euribor continues to rise and mortgages are more expensive every day. To offset this increase, home buyers begin to make lower purchase offers, with a discount of around 20%. Thus, the average offer for a flat that is published in real estate portals for 200,000 euros is now approximately 160,000.
Does this mean that the sale price will be 20% lower? No, "the sale price will probably be an average value between what the seller is asking for and what the buyer is offering," say the specialists at the real estate comparator HelpMyCash.com. In the example cited above, the most likely sale price would be around 180,000 euros.
However, the expenses of the sale already represent between 5% and 15% of the price of the property, including documents, real estate commission and taxes. Can any of these expenses be reduced to offset the discount requested by buyers?
The real estate commission is one of the most representative expenses. In general, this ranges between 3% and 7% of the price of the house, plus VAT. There are, however, online real estate agencies that offer a specific service plan for a much lower price. Their fees can be up to 80% cheaper than those of traditional real estate, although they do not include all services: the owner must take care of the visits and the management of some documents.
Even if the owner opted for a real estate agency of a lifetime, the real estate commission can be negotiated. In general, the fees are higher if you do not accept an exclusivity commitment and lower if you do.
Even so, accepting it has some advantages: the main one is that the real estate commission is usually lower
Foreign buyers tend to have more solvent profiles, which is why they do not usually ask for a mortgage, or they do ask for one, but they provide a much larger initial capital. "Selling the house to a foreign buyer can mean selling for a higher price, since they are less affected by the rise in the Euribor," they point out from HelpMyCash. How to achieve it? There are real estate agencies specialized in foreign buyers. J'Achete is an example of this.
