Who do I pick to sell my house in Naperville?

You are selling a house in Naperville. You know two agents socially, a third sent you a postcard, and somewhere in a drawer is a listing presentation from the person who sold you the place in 2019. Everybody quotes a percentage. One of them quotes a lower percentage than the others and says so twice.

The problem with that percentage is that it is not the price. It is the price of one part of the job, and it tells you nothing about the parts that are going to cost you money anyway.

What the commission rate leaves out

Selling a house has a long tail of costs that never appear in a listing presentation. Staging so the photographs work. A pre-listing inspection so nothing detonates in attorney review. The move itself — a truck, and people to load it. A deep clean after you are out. Lawn care while the house sits empty, and a plough on the driveway if it drags into winter.

Every one of those is a real invoice. Some agents cover them, some cover a couple, and some cover none — and none of that is visible in a number with a percent sign after it.

A worked example

Here are three offers on one Naperville listing, on an expected sale price of $625,000. The house is a four-bedroom colonial and the sellers are relocating, so the move matters to them as much as the rate does.

Crosstown Realty Advisors quotes the lowest rate and is the most expensive of the three. Prairie & Oak Realty Group charges a higher percentage and costs $1,787.50 less once you count what comes with it. That gap is not a rounding error — it is a truck, a crew, a stager and a cleaner.

Naperville Signature Group includes the most — 11 separate things — and still lands between the other two. Whether that is the right pick depends on how many of those things you were going to pay for anyway. If you were not going to stage, the staging is worth nothing to you.

How to compare properly

1. Write down what you are going to spend regardless. Moving, cleaning, staging, storage. Guess if you have to — a rough figure beats leaving it out.
2. Ask every agent what they include, in writing. Not “we help with the move”. How many movers, how many hours, whose truck, who pays.
3. Ask who actually does it. Most agents assemble this from partners — a stager they use, a moving company they know. That is fine and normal, but you should know whose name is on the job.
4. Subtract. Commission minus the value of what is included, counting only the things you were going to buy anyway.
5. Then look at the agent. Days on market, list-to-sale ratio, how many houses like yours they have sold in the last year, and how many reviews are behind their rating. A 5.0 from three sales is not a 4.8 from three hundred.

Why nobody does this

Because it is work, and because it requires the agents to be answering the same question at the same time. Interviewing them one at a time, a week apart, produces three conversations rather than one comparison — and the natural thing to do at the end of three separate conversations is to pick the person you liked.

Which is often fine. But it is worth knowing what you turned down. In this example, picking on rapport rather than on the numbers costs $1,787.50.

What we are building

WhoIPick works the other way round from a directory: you post that you are selling, and agents come to you with a rate and a bundle, at the same time, in a format you can compare side by side. Posting is free and always will be, and you are never obliged to pick anyone.

Naperville is one of the first areas we are opening. Join the waitlist and we will tell you when it does.