What does “as-is” mean?

Your Town Buyers buys homes as-is, which means homeowners do not need to make repairs, fix the property up, or prepare it for showings before selling.

What does an “all-cash offer” mean?

An all-cash offer means Your Town Buyers purchases the home directly without relying on traditional mortgage financing, reducing the risk of delays or financing falling through.

How fast is a fast closing?

Your Town Buyers states that it can make a no-obligation cash offer in as little as 24 hours and close in as little as 7 days.

What if I don’t need a fast closing?

Your Town Buyers says it can work on the homeowner’s time frame and schedule the closing on the day that works best for them.

Will you be listing my house on the MLS or actually buying it?

Great question. We're not agents, and we don't list houses. Here at Your Town Buyers, we are professional home buyers: We buy houses Memphis that meet our purchasing criteria, and we don't use bank financing so you don't have to worry about our ability to close on a deal. After purchasing, we may repair the house and resell it to another homeowner or keep it as a rental ourselves.

How are you different from a real estate agent?

Real estate agents list properties and hope that someone will buy them. The agent shows the properties to prospective buyers if there are any (the average time to sell a property in many markets right now is 4-6 months) and then takes a percentage of the sale price if they find a buyer. Oftentimes, the agent's commission is 3 to 6% of the sale price of your house. If it's a $100,000 house, you'll pay between $3,000 to $6,000 in commissions to an agent. Agents provide a great service for those that can wait 4+ months to sell and who don't mind giving up some of that sale price to pay for the commissions. But that's where we're different. We're not agents, we're home buyers. Our company buys the house directly from you. Since we pay with all cash and purchase the house from you, we can make a decision to buy your house within a couple of days (sometimes even the same day). Again, we make our living by taking the risk to buy the house with our own cash, repair the house, and market it ourselves to find a buyer.

Do you pay fair prices for properties?

Many of the houses we purchase are below market value. We do this so we can resell it at a profit to another homeowner. We are looking to get a fair discount on a property. In our experience, many sellers aren't necessarily expecting a large "windfall" on the property. Instead, they appreciate that we can offer cash, we close very quickly (no waiting for financing), and no time, effort, or expense is required on your part to fix up the property or pay agent fees. If that's what you're looking for and you see the value in getting your house sold fast, let's see if we can come to a win-win price for both parties. Our no-obligation pricing commitment means that you don't have to move forward with the offer we give… but it's good to know what we're offering!

How do you determine the price to offer on my house?

Great question, and we're an open book. Our process is very straightforward. We look at the location of the property, what repairs are needed, the current condition of the property, and the value of comparable houses sold in the area recently. Taking the many pieces of information into consideration, we come up with a fair price that works for us and works for you, too.

Are there any fees or commissions to work with you?

This is what makes us stand out from the traditional method of selling your house: there are NO fees or commissions when you sell your house directly to us compared to listing fees, where up to 6% comes out of your pocket. We'll make you an offer and, if it's a fit, then we'll buy your house with no hassles and no fees. We'll often pay for the closing costs, too! We make our money after we pay for repairs on the house and sell it for a profit. We're taking the risks here on whether we can sell it for a profit or not. Once we buy the house from you, the responsibility is ours and you walk away without the burden of the property and its payments, as well as cash in your hand.

Is there any obligation when I submit my information?

There is absolutely zero obligation for you. Once you tell us a bit about your property, we'll take a look at things, maybe set up a call with you to find out a bit more, and make you an all-cash offer that's fair for you and fair for us. From there, it's 100% your decision on whether or not you'd like to sell your house to us. We'll let you decide what's right for you.

Do you buy houses in any condition?

Yes. We buy houses in all conditions, including properties that need repairs, fire or water damaged homes, vacant houses, inherited properties, and homes with code violations.

Do I need to clean out my house before selling?

No. You do not need to clean, remove furniture, or clear out personal items. We buy houses as-is and handle everything after closing.

What if I'm not ready to sell yet?

That's completely fine. There is no obligation to accept our offer, and you are free to take your time deciding what works best for you.

How Much Do Realtors Charge to Sell a House in Tennessee

On most Tennessee closing statements, the commission line is the biggest charge on the page that isn’t the loan payoff. Sellers usually see it once, at the very end, when there’s nothing left to negotiate. I’ve bought houses across the Memphis area for years, and the call I get most often starts the same way. Somebody ran the math after signing a listing agreement instead of before. That order of operations costs real money.

Treat the Realtor commission conversation the way you’d treat a contractor bidding your new roof. You’d get the number in writing. You’d ask what’s included, and compare it against one other estimate before handing anybody a deposit. Almost nobody does that with a listing agreement. They meet a Realtor who’s friendly and confident, a document slides across the kitchen island, and the percentage on page one gets treated like a posted price.

It isn’t a posted price. It’s an opening position. The best hour you can spend before selling a house in Tennessee is the one you spend learning what that number covers, who it goes to, and what it buys you in your situation. On some houses that fee is the cheapest money you’ll ever spend. On others it’s a charge against a sale price you were never going to get.

The Short Answer

Most Tennessee sellers pay between 5% and 6% of the sale price in total commission. No state law sets what Realtors charge. It’s custom, and custom holds because most people never ask.

On a $400,000 house in Memphis or Germantown, 5.5% works out to $22,000. At 6% it’s $24,000. That money comes out of your proceeds at closing, ahead of your loan payoff, ahead of repair credits, ahead of everything else you agreed to cover.

I’ve seen listing agreements in Shelby County written right in that range. What surprises people most is what the percentage gets calculated on. It’s the gross sale price, not your equity and not your profit. If you owe most of what the house is worth, the commission doesn’t shrink to match. A seller in Cordova with a thin slice of equity left can watch that fee eat most of what they walk away with. Somebody down the street who owns free and clear barely feels it. Same rate, completely different afternoon at the closing table.

You’ll also run into structures that aren’t a straight percentage. Some brokerages sell a flat listing fee, where you pay a set dollar amount to get on the MLS and handle the rest yourself. Some offer a tiered rate, where the listing side drops if the brokerage also brings the buyer. Some advertise a lower percentage, then add an administrative or transaction fee at closing. That last one is easy to miss if you only read the percentage. Ask for the all-in number in dollars, on a house priced where you expect yours to sell. Any Realtor who can’t produce that in five minutes isn’t the one you want negotiating your inspection repairs. If a flat fee has you thinking about running the sale yourself, our walkthrough on how to sell a house without a Realtor in Tennessee spells out what you pick up when the listing side goes away.

Vague asks get vague answers. “Can you do better on your commission?” invites a no. Try this instead: “I’m interviewing two other agents this week, my house is updated, and I expect it to move fast. What’s your best listing-side number with a full buyer-side offer still on the table?” That invites an actual answer. Agents discount for reasons, usually a fast clean sale or a second transaction when you buy your next house. Give them a reason and you’ll get a number. Ask them to cut their pay for nothing and you’ll get a lecture on value.

Settle two more terms before you sign. One is the length of the listing. The other is the protection period, which keeps you on the hook for commission after the listing expires if the buyer turns out to be somebody your Realtor introduced. Both are negotiable. A shorter initial term with an option to renew is a fair ask if you’re unsure. Walking away after a short listing beats spending half a year with somebody who put your house on the MLS with phone photos, then went quiet.

How the Commission Actually Gets Split

Whatever percentage you agree to in the listing agreement goes to the listing brokerage first. From there it usually splits four ways:

The listing brokerage takes its cut
The listing agent takes a share of what’s left
A portion goes to whoever brings the buyer
The buyer’s agent splits that piece with their own brokerage

A 6% commission on a $350,000 sale works out to roughly $10,500 a side. Each agent then hands 20% to 50% of that to their broker, depending on the split they’re on. So the Realtor walking your house at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday might net around $6,000 on a sale that took four months.

More comes out of that check than you’d guess. Newer agents sit on the worst splits and climb as their production grows. If somebody referred you, a referral fee comes off before anyone else gets paid. Then there’s their own overhead: MLS dues, license renewal, insurance, signs, photography, and whatever they spend on advertising your house. None of that is your problem. It does explain why a number that looks enormous on your settlement statement looks smaller in their account.

Put that to work when you negotiate. Asking a Realtor to come down really means asking which bucket the money leaves from, and you want it leaving theirs instead of your listing’s exposure. So ask it straight. If we lower the total, what changes about how you market the house? A good answer is “nothing changes, I expect this to sell in two weekends.” A bad answer is silence, followed by a listing with four photos and no floor plan.

What Changed in 2024, and What Didn't

On August 17, 2024, the NAR settlement rules took effect. Offers of compensation to buyer agents can’t appear anywhere in the MLS now. Sellers aren’t required to pay the buyer’s agent at all, and honestly, they never were.

The Memphis market adjusted quickly. Most sellers here still offer something, usually 2% to 3%, because buyers in this market run thin on cash and ask for it as a concession in the contract. The money moves through a different door now. It hasn’t disappeared.

The mechanics are what trip people up. Buyers sign a written agreement with their agent before they tour a house, and it spells out what the agent gets paid. When a buyer writes an offer on your house, their agent’s compensation shows up as a term in the offer, the same way earnest money and the closing date do. You can accept it, counter it, or cut it. What you can’t do is set it quietly on the MLS ahead of time.

Treat that as a lever instead of a bill. Compensation now sits on the table next to price, closing date, and repairs. A buyer who needs help covering their agent may move on price or close on your timeline instead of theirs. Some Tennessee sellers have pushed further and listed at 3% total, listing side only. A few of those sales closed fine. Others sat while buyers with agents quietly went looking elsewhere.

One piece of this catches sellers late. Money routed through the contract as a concession runs into what the buyer’s lender allows. A conventional buyer putting less than 10% down caps out at 3% of the price. FHA allows 6%. VA allows 4% on defined concession items, plus standard closing costs on top of that. Your Realtor and the buyer’s loan officer should be talking about the cap before you sign, not three days before closing when the underwriter kicks it back.

Where you sit on the price ladder decides how much room you’ve got. Buyers in Bartlett and Cordova are frequently short on cash. Ask them to cover their agent on top of a down payment, inspection, and appraisal, and they’ll usually just buy a different house. Higher up, sellers hold the line more easily. Figure out which market you’re in first.

What the Commission Buys You

I’m a cash buyer, so it’d be easy for me to tell you Realtors aren’t worth it. That’s not true, and pretending otherwise would cost you money.

A good listing agent in a solid Tennessee neighborhood gets you:

MLS exposure, which still drives most retail buyer traffic
Pricing built on closed comps instead of an online estimate
Photography and staging guidance that measurably moves days on market
Showing coordination and feedback
Repair negotiation after the inspection, where a lot of Tennessee sales get wobbly
A licensee who owes you statutory duties, and who’ll walk you through the property condition disclosure Tennessee requires you to hand the buyer

Pricing deserves more credit than it usually gets, because it quietly decides everything downstream. Price it right and you compress your days on market and often draw more than one offer. Price it high because a neighbor told you what their cousin got in Collierville, and you’ll collect nothing for two weekends. Then you drop. Then you drop again, and sell for less than an honest start would’ve brought. Buyers read price history now. A string of reductions reads as a problem even when it isn’t one.

The inspection response is the other place a good Realtor earns the check. In Tennessee, a sale rarely dies at the offer. It dies after the inspector hands over a report that makes a normal water heater sound like a hazard, and I’ve watched buyers spook over exactly that wording. A seasoned listing agent knows which items a buyer can legitimately push on, which ones are maintenance they’re inheriting either way, and which are worth conceding fast to keep a good buyer calm. That judgment is hard to buy anywhere else.

None of it is glamorous. Chasing the appraiser with comps when the number lands soft. Catching a title problem early, an old lien nobody knew about, or an heir who never signed off, so it clears before the closing date instead of on it. Keeping the lender honest about the timeline. Telling you, kindly, that the wallpaper in the back bedroom is costing you money.

On a clean, updated house in a subdivision with three recent comps, that package regularly nets sellers more than it costs them. The math works.

Where Sellers Get Squeezed

The math stops working in specific situations, and Tennessee has plenty of them.

Foundation movement in the clay soil around Memphis. An old septic system that won’t pass inspection out in Shelby County. A roof past its life, knob and tube wiring, and a 1970s addition built without permits. Inherited houses holding forty years of belongings. Rentals where the tenant stopped paying in March.

In those cases, the commission gets charged against a price the house was never going to bring. The seller absorbs three hits at once: months of carrying costs, repair demands after inspection, and the retail buyer who walks at day 40 and restarts the clock. I’ve watched houses in Cordova go under contract three times and close zero.

I can usually call that pattern from the listing photos. Visible deferred maintenance attracts a particular buyer, someone stretching their budget, financing through a program with property condition standards, hoping the inspection reads better than the house looks. It doesn’t. FHA and VA appraisers flag active roof leaks, missing handrails, and peeling paint on pre-1978 homes, and the lender wants those fixed before funding. Now the seller is asked to pay for repairs on a house they’re selling because they can’t pay for repairs. That’s the trap. The financing itself won’t let the sale close in the condition the house is in.

Then there’s the clock. Every failed contract resets your days on market and adds a cancellation to the history. Agents pull that history before they show. Buyers ask about it. By the third round, everybody in the room assumes something’s wrong, and the offers reflect that assumption. Meanwhile the mortgage is due, your carrier may rewrite the policy now that the house sits vacant, and the grass still needs cutting in Bartlett in July.

Inherited property adds a layer. The estate usually has to be sorted out first, which means the person signing genuinely has the authority to sign. Siblings in three states have to agree on a number. Somebody has to clear the house out, and hauling forty years of furniture and a garage full of tools costs real money and real weekends. Charging full retail commission on a property that needs all of that first, by people who live four hours away, is where the arithmetic starts to look silly.

A tenant in place brings the same headaches. You can list an occupied rental, but showings depend on cooperation you may not have. The place shows the way the tenant keeps it, and a retail buyer who wants to move in has to wait out a lease. Investors will buy it as-is. Investors also price for the hassle, so you’re paying commission on top of an already discounted number. If you are counting on an empty house before you list, look at how long the eviction process takes for Tennessee rental properties first, because that timeline usually runs longer than sellers plan for.

None of this makes a Realtor the wrong answer for a rough house. Some agents specialize in exactly these properties and know the investor buyers by name. It means you price the fee against the outcome, not against the fantasy list price somebody put in a listing presentation.

Running Your Real Number

Commission is one line. Run the rest before you decide anything.

Tennessee’s realty transfer tax runs $0.37 per $100 of the sale price, and who pays it is negotiable, though the buyer usually covers it here. Add title work, closing fees, your prorated property taxes, and any HOA transfer documents. Then add seller-paid buyer closing costs, which have come back hard the last two years. Then add repairs, because whatever the inspection kicks back is coming out of your proceeds one way or another.

Say a $350,000 listing at 5% commission, 3% in concessions, $2,500 in closing fees, and $7,000 in repairs. That nets you about $312,500 before your mortgage payoff. Compare it against what a direct offer puts in your hand, and compare timelines while you’re at it.

Any Realtor worth hiring will build you a seller’s net sheet before you list. Ask for two versions: one at the price they want to list at, and one at a realistic price after a reduction and an inspection negotiation. The gap between those two sheets is your honest range of outcomes. If they’ll only show you the optimistic one, that tells you something.

Write your carrying costs down as a monthly figure and keep it in front of you. Mortgage payment, property taxes, homeowners’ insurance, utilities you keep on for showings, lawn care, HOA dues, and a line for the plumber on a Saturday. Multiply that by how long you’ll realistically hold. Four months of it on a vacant house in Bartlett is real money, and sellers underestimate how fast it stacks up. If you’re buying in Collierville or Germantown and your next house depends on these proceeds, a sale that drags also lands you in temporary housing at a rate you don’t want.

When you compare a listing against a direct cash offer, compare the same things on both sides, or it’s worthless. For the listing, use the realistic sale price, then subtract commission, concessions, closing fees, repairs, and carrying costs through the expected closing date. For the cash offer, ask who pays the closing costs and whether the price is contingent on an inspection. Ask whether a financing contingency is hiding in the contract, whether the buyer is the one closing or plans to assign the contract to somebody else, and whether they’ll show proof of funds. I’ve seen sales fall apart over that last question alone.

Sometimes the listing wins by a wide margin, and I’ll say so on the phone. A tidy three-bedroom in a Collierville subdivision with recent comps and nothing scary in the crawl space belongs on the MLS. Sometimes the numbers land close enough that speed and certainty decide it. And sometimes it’s the house I described above. Retail there means months of showings, a failed contract or two, and a repair bill, so the direct number in hand beats the paper number on the listing sheet.

The only wrong move is signing first and doing the math after. Get the net sheet. Get a direct offer from Your Town Buyers to set beside it. Call one more Realtor for a second opinion on price, then decide. That sequence costs you about a week, and it’s the cheapest week in the whole transaction. If you’d like a no-obligation cash number to compare against, reach out whenever you’re ready.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is 6% the legal commission rate in Tennessee?

No. Tennessee sets no commission rate at all. Any agent or broker who tells you the rate is fixed by law or by the board is wrong, and price-fixing between brokerages is illegal.

Can I negotiate the commission after I sign the listing agreement?

Rarely with any leverage. Your window is before signing. Once the agreement is executed, you’re bound to its terms for the listing period, including the protection period after it expires.

Do I have to pay the buyer’s agent in Tennessee?

No. You can decline, offer a flat amount, or handle it as a closing cost concession in the contract. Talk the tradeoffs through with your Realtor before you list, because it does affect showing volume.

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