For Sale by Owner thoughts..

[dmccarty]

My future reputation means more to me in the long run than a few quick bucks now.

And like so many business relationships its about reputation. In a city its easy for ANY business to be shady. There is always a new person walking in the door. In the country its harder to escape a bad reputation. The agents that are most successful in my wife's company are people that have been agents for years/decades and have lived in the community for years/decades/forever. They have a reputation and it s a good one so they make money. If my wife cheats someone or provide bad service her goose will be cooked.

Later,
Dan

 

[Sigarms]

I guess like anything else in work, you have good people and people who "just get by at best".

For my wife and I, the real estate agent worked wonders. Had a house, didn't know if we should look first then sell, or sell and then try to buy.

Found a great place, house, land and "extra" land if we wanted to buy it with the house. Not sure how we would swing it.

Agent was friends of person selling the house we looked at, got us in contact with the farm credit union (who he knew very well), bought the new house with option on land, we gave our "old" house to same agent, and he sold it within 4 months (would of been within 2 months but the first buyer backed out the week before closing on our old house).

That agent made some good money in the year we bought our new house and sold our old one, but I can honestly say he was worth his money.

Gave us names, contacts, ideas on how to do things, know the laywers, saw everything through to the end.

Funny thing is his (agent) bread and butter money is in commercial real estate, but he told us he loves doing transactions in the residential side like ours because it actually makes him happy to know that he has helped people in their lives.

He owned the company, he was good, and would do it all over again.

That being said, have seen many FSBO adds up on houses, and alot of them around in my area don't go that quick.

 

[rox]

I sold one FSBO. Worked out well. Key for us was the house was immaculate. We spent time doing cosmetic stuff like paint, carpet, etc. Seems like most folks don't seem to look or care about the stuff that matters to me (foundation, gutters, roof, etc.) But have some nice paint and carpeting, wow, folks love it. If it looks worn, fix it. If a woman would object, fix it.

Also, empty the rooms of all the extra stuff. Get a storage locker. Clean out the stuff. The less stuff in a room, the better it looks.
Bob

DocBob,

Excellent advice on making the house spotless. We sold 2 times FSBO. The last one we rented a one car garage at a self storage place and emptied out tons of stuff from the house. I found that I really didn't ahve to re-paint I jsut needed to wash the walls. Yuck you say! Yes but once you get going it is not that bad. The paint is better nowdays and it really is scrubbable. I scrubbed marks on the walls with those green 3M scrubber sponges. And then it was just big rags, wash with soapy water then another bucket of clear water to rinse, then another big rag to towel it dry. Although it is a lot fo work it was better than painting and the house was spotless. I got off every mark this way. Just takes some elbow grease.

I also remember being on my hands and knees using Scotts LiquidGold polishing all the trim where the carpet meets the walls, and all the doors I polished up with Scotts Liquid Gold, and all the door trim and window trim. I Liquid Golded that dang whole house and it really shone.

Wasn't any problem at all selling it. But hold back from showing it until you have it really really emptied out and polished up. Then go for it!! I think the realtors fee would have been around $9,000 so we lowered the price of the house by $4,000 in comparison to the market and got our price. In other words we did not try to get the full price a buyer would pay if we were selling through a realtor. We basically spit the realtors comission. We were ahead $5,000 by not paying a realtor and the buyer bought $4,000 below market. Win-Win. We knew we were priced right and did nto negotiate the price down much at all. Might ahve been $1,000 but that was about it.

Very good experience selling ourselves, just get the Offer To Purchase Contracts and ahve them out ont he table and if they want to buy they take it with them. it is up to them to fill out the contract. We bought and sold enough property that we knew hwo to read an offer To Purchase Contract.

Go for it, it is your money!! Think fo what you can do with the money saved on realtors Commission. We did use our attorney for closing and I think it was $700, not much, way much less than a Realtors Commission.

 

[2nstonge]

Another vote from the "do it yourself" crowd.

In addition to the lots of good advice here I also used Isoldmyhouse.com and craigslist.com and had good traffic from both. I sold to the 3rd person who looked at the property, but, as others have suggested, fix all the noticeable stuff and keep the place 'visitor clean & friendly' all the time.

I really liked one of the realtors who came by to try and get my listing. I cut him a deal; bring me a buyer (at my price) and you'll get 3%, or if I get a buyer on my own first take over all the paperwork for $1000 cash. I got the buyer, he got a grand to do the paperwork but it saved me alot of hand holding for the first time buyer who bought my place.

By the way, even after my expenses I saved over $16k in realtors commission.

Good luck, -Norm

 

[Pilot]

I sold my last house & did it without a realtor.

In my not so humble opinion, a 6% commission rate when home prices are so high just keeps lots of folks in the business who really should be doing something else. With computers, there is no way to justify so many agents.

Before you try selling your house, call a few realtors & ask for a comparative market analysis. They will compare your property with others in the area which have sold recently & give you an educated guess of what yours is worth. They will do this for free in hopes of getting your listing.

You can bargain with them for a lower commission rate & some will deal. Most will not.

We have discount brokers in this area, maybe you have them in your area also. They charge 2 or 3%.

The problem with a cheaper commission is that agents will be reluctant to show your place--they wil show the full commission places first.

In Oregon you can go to any good stationary store and get Stevens & Ness real estate sale agreement forms. These were written following Oregon laws, so they meet all the legal requirements for most cases.

We wrote up our agreement on a Stevens & Ness form, ran it by a lawyer to check for any problems (he found none), then took it to an escrow agency. The lawyer charged us less than $100. I forget what escrow cost.

 

[Hakim]

Yep, and like Yogi, Hakim's smarter than the average bear.

Maybe so ... now if I could get a little bit smarter than the average PERSON ...

 

[heehaw]

now i will tell you a real success story for using an agent...my daughter had a house, with a large detached garage, barn, another out building of some sort and 3 acres: she tried to sell it herself for $75,000...no luck: she was talking to a local agent, they listed the house, told her she wasn't asking enough, and sold it to the first person they showed it to for over $90,000..so even though i have had some bad experiences with agents, there are a lot of hard working and honest ones out there..
heehaw

 

[thatguy]

Wow.. Thanks for all the great ideas and feedback.. We are going to spend the July4th holiday de-cluttering the house and finishing up sprucing up the outside (already cleaned the siding and painted the trim).. Im hoping it will go smoothly.

As mentioned in one post - some friends tried FSBO but told the first realtor that called they were not paying any commission. OOPS, wrong thing to say - they hardly showed the house for the next month and a half.. Gave it to a realtor and it sold within 4 days.. I was already planning on saying "we are willing to work with your agent" if asked..

thanks again.. Ill keep you posted

Brian

 

[dmccarty]

Brian,

Tis good that you will work the with agent. We FSBO our house. And we priced it accordingly. We had agents call and we said come on in. But if they want to make an offer the price goes up to cover the agents fees. When we sold the house it was to a buyer working with an agent. We just bumped up the price to cover her fee.

Later,
Dan

 

[ejtaylor822]

Gave it to a realtor and it sold within 4 days.. I was already planning on saying "we are willing to work with your agent" if asked..

Yes, you will kill off a large part of potential customers if you are not willing to work with buyers' agent. Given the number of buyers agents in this area, we already had a little built into the price to cover some of the commision (also gave us some wiggle room if not working with a buyer's agent). On the flyer for our house I even placed the statement "Will work with brokers and buyers’ agents with qualified buyers".In the end we sold our house to someone with a buyer agent.

Eddie