Should I negotiate the commission when I’m selling real estate?

We did an analysis of over 35,000 closed sales in King, Snohomish and Pierce Counties to see if the S.O.C. had any impact on a home’s selling price and on the time on market. For this project we looked at closed sales for all of 2015, but we only looked at residential resale under $1,000,000. We did not include new construction, short sales, bank owned properties, land or mobile homes. Here is what we found.

83% of the sellers chose to offer a 3% selling office commission. On average those homes sold at 99.7% of asking price. Those homes also sold on average in 35 days.

15% of the sellers chose to offer a lower selling office commission of 2.5%. On average those homes sold at 97.7% of asking price. Those homes also sold on average in 54 days.

So those sellers who chose to offer a lower selling office commission sold for 2% less and took over 50% longer to sell!

Their supposed savings of .5% ended up costing them 4 times more that what they thought they would save.