Disclaimer: HomeLight does not provide legal advice. While this is a general guide to selling a house by owner in Arizona, we always recommend that you look into the local regulations for your area and consult with a qualified legal professional before taking action. Arizona real estate is as hot as the desert sun. The median price for properties in the Phoenix metro hit $449,900 in Feb. 2022, a 28.5% increase from the year. The relatively affordable Tucson saw a 23.4% price increase, pushing median sale prices to upward of $350,000. With such impressive sales figures, some sellers may be curious about how to sell a house by owner in Arizona — a decision that could help them save on agent commissions. While FSBO can work, it does come with some risks, including the possibility of selling your house for less than market value.
In this guide on how to sell a house by owner in Arizona, we’ll cover what can be the most difficult aspects of selling by owner, including the steps that might be harder than you think. We’ll also provide a comprehensive overview on the full process to prep, market, and close on your home without the assistance of a real estate agent. Note: Once you’ve seen what’s required, you can roll up your sleeves and get started with your FSBO sale in Arizona. Or — in the event you’d prefer to work with a real estate agent — HomeLight would be happy to introduce you to highly-rated professionals who can help you command top dollar and provide a low-stress selling experience. FSBO is a method of selling your home without the involvement of a listing agent. In a FSBO scenario, the seller assumes the responsibilities that would normally fall to their agent such as pricing the home, arranging showings, and negotiating the deal. In an agent-assisted sale, the seller typically pays a commission amounting to around 6% of the sale price, which is then split 50/50 with the buyer’s agent. That 6% is deducted from the seller’s proceeds at closing. By selling FSBO, a seller can eliminate the cost of the listing agent commission (so around 3%), though they may still need to offer a buyer’s agent commission. Finally, a FSBO sale does not mean that a seller won’t need any professional assistance. Most people who sell by owner will need to hire an attorney to review and prepare key documents and make sure paperwork is filled out properly, such as the seller’s disclosures and purchase contract. By opting for a FSBO sale, you’re putting yourself in competition with homes that have the advantage of a real estate agent’s extensive marketing resources. These steps aim to give your home a better chance of resembling a professional listing and attracting the attention of potential buyers. FSBO sellers in Arizona may consider getting a home inspection prior to listing their home for sale. Addressing any issues upfront helps buyers have peace of mind when making an offer. However, be aware that if you get a pre-listing inspection, you will be required to share relevant findings with buyers and how you did or did not address them.
Below are some of the more common issues you may encounter with homes in Arizona: Even when you sell a house For Sale By Owner, Arizona law requires sellers to truthfully disclose important facts about the property. Sellers are asked to do this by filling out the Seller’s Property Disclosure Statement (SPDS) as thoroughly as possible and attaching relevant documents for the buyer. This may include warranties, invoices, and leases. A good time to fill out your Arizona property disclosure is prior to listing your home so that you know it’s taken care of. If you use the Residential Resale Real Estate Purchase Contract provided by the Arizona Association of Realtors, disclosures are due to the buyer no later than three days after contract acceptance. Arizona’s form will walk the seller through disclosing any known association fees, anticipated disputes, tax liens, or assessments affecting the property. The form also covers details about the property’s condition such as whether there have been any roof repairs, foundation cracks or settling, chimney or fireplace problems, or termite issues, among other items. Depending on the age of your home, you also may need to fill out a Lead-Based Paint Hazards disclosure for residential sales. It’s almost always advisable to engage the expertise of a real estate attorney to assist in this step in the process to minimize potential legal risk. According to Arizona’s disclosure form, “if you do not make the legally required disclosures, you may be subject to civil liability.” Research shows that deep cleaning and decluttering your home prior to listing will pay off in huge rewards. In fact, a HomeLight survey of top agents shows an estimated price increase of $1,728 for deep cleaning and $2,584 for decluttering. Well worth a weekend’s work! (Or the cost of a professional, if you so choose.) You may also want to consider strategically staging your home so that buyers can envision how each space could be used. One survey of Realtors found that staging can increase the sales price of a home by 1% to 5%, and 31% agree that a staged home sells significantly faster. Without the independent advice of a real estate agent, FSBO sellers can invite over friends and family for an honest opinion of how the house looks: Will it pass muster with buyers or do some spaces in the house need a bit more attention? Finally, don’t forget about the outdoors. Data from HomeLight’s 2022 Top Agents Insight Report shows that on average, “Buyers will pay 7% more for a house with great curb appeal versus a home with a neglected exterior.” Sellers in arid Arizona can check out our list of hardscaping ideas that add value. When selling a house by owner, you need to take care to set the right asking price for your home. Price too high and your property is likely to be on the market longer than necessary; price too low and you could significantly undersell your home. Follow these steps to price your Arizona house for the market: As a starting point, look at several online estimators for your home’s value. HomeLight’s Home Value Estimator aggregates publicly available data such as tax records and assessments, your home’s last sale price, and recent sales records for other properties in the same neighborhood of your Arizona home. Comps are recently sold homes comparable to yours in characteristics such as size, age, condition, and major features. The most reliable comps are going to be those within as close of a radius as possible to the location where you’re selling a property. Since you won’t be able to access MLS data without a real estate license, you’ll need to look at major home search sites to collect your data. Compare your home’s features against the nearby comps you collected. Hopefully, the houses you studied give an indication of an appropriate price range for your home. From there, you can make dollar adjustments based on characteristics that add value (pools, new floors, an extra bedroom) versus detract from it (a busy street, deferred maintenanced, less square footage). A DIY comps analysis is risky if you don’t have a ton of experience making sense of property data. Alternatively, you could pay for a pre-listing appraisal. An appraiser will combine desk research with an onsite visit of your home to provide a professional and independent opinion of value. Appraisals usually cost between $500-$600 and getting one doesn’t mean that a buyer’s lender won’t require a separate and independent appraisal before closing. But it can reduce some of the stress of pricing your home for sale since appraisers are licensed and trained for this work. For $100-$300 per shoot, FSBO sellers should consider the copious benefits of getting professional photos to include in their listing. A professional photographer will take steps to shoot each room from the best angle; ensure optimal interior and natural lighting; and edit for the ideal brightness and exposure.
A high quality camera with a wide angle lens is also essential to showcasing entire rooms rather than half or three-quarters of what’s there. For these reasons and more, professionally photographed homes can sell up to three weeks faster and bring in up to $11,000 more than their houses marketed without professional photos. In addition to professional photography, consider these additional add-ons to enhance your FSBO listing: Research shows that 51% of buyers find their homes via the internet. That means your home’s visual online presence is important! Even the best cell phone pictures can’t compete with professional images. Note: When selling a house by owner in Arizona, the seller will need to arrange for these marketing services on their own and budget for them as part of their listing expenses. When working with a full service real estate agent, professional listing photography is almost always going to be included — and many agents offer aerial photography and 3-D tours as well as part of their listing package. When it comes to marketing your home, you’ll do yourself a favor by posting across multiple platforms for visibility. Data indicates that 42% of FSBO sellers use online outlets, 26% set up yard signs, and 23% work to generate word of mouth through friends and neighbors. Listing on the multiple listing service (MLS) will get your property more visibility. As a FSBO seller, you can opt to have your property listed on the MLS for a flat fee (usually around $100-$200), or you can employ a listing service that will charge a percentage of the sales price for services that include MLS access. However, keep in mind that when posting on the MLS, a buyer’s broker commission will be required and the commission rate will need to be provided upfront upon entering into the MLS (an average of 2%-3%). Hopefully your marketing efforts lead to one or more offers on your Arizona property. But not every offer is a good offer. As a FSBO seller, you’ll be responsible for negotiating a contract you’re satisfied with. Price is a major factor, as are other details of the agreement such as whether you’ll cover any of the buyer’s closing costs, when you’ll agree to move out, and which contingencies will be included in the contract. Let’s review some of the top points of negotiation you may encounter: Buyers may ask for the offer to be contingent on other factors, such as the sale of their existing home or their ability to obtain financing. They are also likely to include a home inspection contingency, which is a stipulation in the purchase agreement that says the buyer can inspect the home, top to bottom, and then decide whether to move forward with the purchase. Finally, FSBO sellers should be aware of the home appraisal contingency, which buyers often add as a protection if the appraised value comes in lower than the purchase price. A contingency-free contract is rare, but In a seller’s market, buyers are more likely to waive one or more to strengthen their offer. Both buyer and seller will have costs to cover at settlement. However some of these costs — such as title fees, escrow fees, and transfer taxes — can be negotiated in many instances. A buyer may request that you pay a portion of their closing costs, but in today’s seller’s market, it’s been more likely for sellers to either pay nothing or even ask that the buyer cover a portion of their costs as a condition of the sale. Following the inspection, a buyer may ask you to make necessary repairs or for monetary compensation based on an estimation of what the repair is likely to cost. You can either accommodate the request or do nothing, but the buyer can choose not to continue on with the purchase if the results of the inspection weren’t satisfactory (unless they waived the home inspection contingency) Closing dates can be subject to negotiation as well. Buyers may need longer to secure financing or sellers may ask for additional time to move out after closing. On the flip side, one party may ask for a quicker closing date to enable them to move faster if needed. The earnest money deposit is typically a small amount of money that goes into an escrow account to show that the buyer is serious. The amount is negotiable, and it always goes toward the purchase price. When buyers add contingencies to the contract, they are able to back out of the deal and get their earnest money back in certain circumstances, such as if anything unsatisfactory turns up on the inspection report. You’ll need to have a third party account set aside to hold this earnest money until closing (such as a title company). Remember that even if you come to terms with your buyer verbally at first, you’ll want to put the offer in writing using a residential real estate purchase contract, like this one that is specific to Arizona. A purchase contract is a legally binding document that protects the interests of both the seller and the buyer by specifically outlining expectations prior to closing. To reduce the risk of errors for your sale, hire a real estate attorney to review the contract for you; the attorney can also advise you on necessary steps in preparation for closing. A real estate attorney usually charges between $150 to $450 per hour. After you go under contract with the buyer and finalize the details of the purchase agreement, escrow opens. Real estate transactions in Arizona are typically closed by escrow agents and title companies. In Arizona, either buyer and seller can propose their choice of escrow but they must eventually decide on a company to go with. Before the deal is final, you can expect the following next steps to occur: Arizona is a “dry funding” state, meaning that “all parties get together to sign mortgage documents, but all of the paperwork required to officially close the loan doesn’t have to be completed at that time. Most importantly, no mortgage funds are distributed to the seller on that day,” according to mortgage company CMG Financial. Dry refers to waiting for the ink to proverbially dry before a deal is closed. The extra padding of the clock provides an additional layer of protection to ensure there aren’t any issues with the transaction. Be aware that closing as a FSBO seller does not mean that you avoid all closing fees. Common seller closing fees include prorated property taxes and settlement fees. One nice thing about selling real estate in Arizona is that the state barely charges any transfer taxes — only a tiny $2 flat fee. If a buyer uses an agent, a seller may also be asked to pay all or part of the buyer’s agent commission. Consult our guide on who pays for closing costs when selling a house by owner for more details. Next steps are likely to include: Reminders for closing: Some tenacious sellers may not bat an eyelash at the steps outlined above. But many FSBO sellers find the actual execution a lot more challenging. The possibility of underselling the home is one major concern. The National Association of Realtors (NAR), which has been tracking FSBO vs. Realtor industry data since 1981, found in its latest dataset that “FSBO homes sold at a median of $260,000 last year, significantly lower than the median of agent-assisted homes at $318,000.” An independent study from 2016 to 2017 bears this out: FSBO homes sold for an average of 5.5% less than agent-marketed sales. FSBO sellers also predominantly sell to a friend, family member, or neighbor. The same dataset from NAR shows that 51% of FSBO sellers knew their buyer, compared to 8% of all sellers. In addition, 22% of FSBOs occur in a rural area where residents may be more likely to know one another, compared to 15% of general home sales. A recent survey from NAR highlights which steps in the process FSBO sellers found to be the hardest: There’s more than one way to sell a house. In addition to FSBO, below we list out a few of the methods available to Arizona sellers. Another option for selling a house without a real estate agent is to work with an investor or house buying company purchasing homes for cash in your area. Saving on commissions is often top of mind for FSBO sellers, and selling your house for cash is another option where you can do that. A cash transaction can usually be turned over in as little as a week to two weeks, as it allows you to skip the mortgage process and the appraisal, which are typically the two most time-consuming steps. If this option interests you, consider requesting a cash offer through HomeLight’s Simple Sale platform. With Simple Sale, sellers receive an all-cash offer in as few as 48 hours — you can reduce the time and money spent on marketing the home FSBO. Sellers using the Simple Sale platform can close in as little as 10 days and have flexibility in selecting a move-out date.
Due to the relatively high number of investors looking to purchase in Arizona, sellers may find that online cash offers come in at a competitive number. In fact, cash purchases are on the rise in Arizona, with a 28.7% increase year over year in January 2022. That said, it’s important to know that investors typically pay under market value for the homes they purchase, and sometimes significantly so. Simple Sale shows you a side-by-side comparison of your cash offer amount against an estimation of what you could list for on the open market to help you make an informed decision. If you’re trying to sell your current home in order to buy a new one, you may realize that timing both deals right is going to be tricky. Many people need the funds from their sale to come in first, in order to complete the purchase of their new home. FSBO can complicate that timeline because of the extra time and hassle required. HomeLight Trade-In allows you to buy a new home before selling your old one. We work with your real estate agent to make an offer on your current home, freeing you up to bid on the home of your dreams with no lending or home sale contingency. This means you’re more likely to close and can do so on your timeline. When you have an offer accepted on a new home, we then buy your current home at the purchase price so you receive the cash to close. Then we complete the process by working with your agent to list your previous home. If the home sells for more than we paid for it, we give you the additional proceeds minus selling costs and program fees. For more information on how HomeLight Trade-In can work for you, begin with this contact form. As explored earlier, research shows that agents statistically help homes sell for quite a bit more, helping to offset or even exceed the amount paid in commission fees. And they do it while wrapping your entire listing and selling process in absolute professionalism.
Work with a top-rated agent, and the results are likely to be even better. Internal transaction data at HomeLight finds that the top 5% of real estate agents sell homes for as much as 10% more. A real estate agent helps you fetch the highest sale price by putting together a beautiful listing, advising you on targeted upgrades, and negotiating the best price — and that’s just scratching the surface of their expertise. If you’d like to explore the option of working with a top agent further, HomeLight would be happy to make an introduction. Whatever direction you choose, we hope that selling your Arizona home goes smoothly! You’ve certainly picked a great time to sell.Fast Fasts for Selling a House in Arizona
Median sales price:
$449,900 (Feb. 2022 for Phoenix metro)
Average days on market:
36 (April 2022)
For Sale signs in the yard:
Generally allowed, but regulations vary by jurisdiction concerning size, placement, and other limitations.
Disclosures:
Arizona law requires sellers to disclose material facts about the property through the Residential Seller Disclosure.
Is a real estate attorney required?
Real estate attorneys are not considered essential for closing in the state of Arizona. But hiring an attorney when selling by owner is almost always advisable in order to avoid an abundance of legal risk.
Real estate transfer taxes?
$2 flat fee on the entire transaction (so basically nothing!)
Quick FSBO overview
How to sell a house by owner in Arizona
Step 1: Address needed repairs and maintenance
Step 2: Fill out your disclosure form(s)
Step 3: Declutter, clean, stage, and add curb appeal
Step 4: Price your home competitively
Start with a free online home value estimate
Gather your comps
Conduct your own comps analysis
Get a pre-listing appraisal
Step 5: Arrange for professional photography
Step 6: Market your home to buyers
Step 7: Field and negotiate offers
Contingencies
Closing costs
Repairs
Closing date
Earnest money
Step 8: Complete steps to closing
Step 9: Close the sale
Who Is Buying Homes in Arizona?
Challenges Arizona FSBO sellers face
Alternatives to selling a house by owner
Option 1: Request a cash offer for your home.
Option 2: Consider HomeLight Trade-in.
Option 3: Hire a top Arizona real estate agent.
