If you sign with an estate agent exclusively, costs may reduce to 3.5% but they would still pocket €6,000 + VAT.
If you’re well connected locally, you might know a “sensara” (meaning ‘broker’ or ‘intermediary’), who can sell the property by word of mouth. They will still charge you around 1% of the selling fee, or €2,000 + VAT on a €200,000 home.
Luckily, there are alternatives. At a basic level, you can put an ad in the paper, put up a for-sale sign and hope that buyers find you. Then there are sites like Maltapark where you can advertise your property for around €10, or even social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. However, these websites are not set up specifically to sell property; they are not user friendly and have no quality control. That’s important because when buyers are thinking about parting with thousands of Euros, they might feel anxious about shopping on a generalist site, without the security blanket of an estate agent.
That’s where No Agent Fees comes in. We offer a completely new model for the Maltese property market, with no commission. The site links together genuine buyers and sellers (as well as tenants and landlords) on one user-friendly website. Additionally, No Agent Fees will promote your property on a number of different channels to ensure that you get the maximum exposure for your property. No Agent Fees has over 10,000 visitors per month and the site is advertised intensively on local media. This will help people find your property and ensure they feel comfortable about entering into a contract to buy it. You can combine the platform with your own marketing efforts including putting up a sign, taking out an ad in the paper and spreading the word with friends and family or on social media. It might sound daunting, but it is actually remarkably easy to sell a property yourself.
Avoiding estate agent charges in this way could help you offer potential buyers a better deal. Let’s say your property is priced at €300,000; if you aren’t paying an agent, you’ll have €15,000 to play with, which you can use to reduce the price and finalise the sale… keep the cash and send yourself on a Caribbean holiday … or both!
