Has anyone tried for sale by owner? Were you successful selling your home? A friend suggested I try it, but I am not sure if I want to do it, although it will save a lot of money.
We did it many years ago in a very hot seller’s market. We were living across town in our new home and the one we were selling was our previous residence that we’d kept as a rental property. When we put it on the market it was empty and we were able to get the property cleaned up really well. It sold quickly for our asking price and there were no complications.
Do you have the time to do all of the work and the expertise to manage the required paperwork correctly? There will be potential buyers who will ignore your house- how quickly do you want to sell?
We worked with a realtor in house hunting a few years ago and did see house being sold by the owner, it wasn’t for us. If we had liked the house more I wonder how much of a headache it would have been for us and extra work to be sure things were done correctly.
We did it with our first starter home and were very successful. We thought about it for our most recent sale (11 months ago), but really, with the number of showings and multiple offers we had, our realtor completely earned her commission and got us more than H every dreamed we could get. She was a voice of reason when we had some very different offers/contingencies, etc. coming in. I’d use her again in a heartbeat. But I understand the wish to even give FSBO a try if you don’t have a crunch time frame.
I have done it, but I was selling my home to someone I knew. It worked out fine, we are still friendly 20 years later. :). But I just sold my larger, custom built home. I would not have tried that on my own. The market wasn’t so hot now, and there is a lot to marketing a nicer home.
We had a good experience doing FSBO, but it was in a seller’s market as well. We put a lot of “sweat equity” into fixing it up ourselves, and it showed very well and sold in about 60 days, which is fast for where we live.
We have a local MLS website that will allow owners of FSBO properties to pay a fee to have their house included. We did not have to do that, but it may be something that is available to you that would get your house seen by a wider buyer’s pool.
I remember that the first week or two our house was on the market, I got a ton of calls from realtors wanting to know if we would “work with them”, meaning they would still get a commission as the buyer’s agent. We thought this was only fair, and they actually made the process very easy. We ended up selling our house to a couple represented by a realtor who handled all the paperwork, although we were prepared to handle it ourselves if need be.
I think the hardest part was pricing the house because our neighborhood was so eclectic and all over the place with selling prices. My mom’s friend, a realtor, told us that we had, in her opinion, grossly overpriced our house. It sold for asking price (houses typically sell below asking price in our market) with no concessions or repairs, again within a relatively short time.
Having said that, I don’t think I would want to sell a house in a buyer’s market, which is what we have going on here right now.
With the role the internet plays in listing and selling houses these days, I get the sense that FSBO is quite common and not too difficult. Many FSBO listings do indicate that they’ll pay the buyer’s agent a commission.
Is Redfin available in your area? Look into that.
It’s more than just handling the paperwork and showings. You have the time to bone up on the local regulations and expectations, any laws related to condition?
I think this is a pretty good summation of the pros and cons of fsbo from an economic standpoint:
If I were going to sell this house FSBO, i’d do it with 3% to buyer’s agent. That’s a good compromise for me since I’m capable of doing a lot of what the seller’s agent traditionally does.
The 3% is worth it to me to get the brokered foot traffic through the house.
We did, but our home was only 3 years old. Perfect buy for someone as it was still new and we’d put in landscaping. It was easy to show, but still a lot of work. I would leave and DH would show. It was more comfortable for people rather than coming in with a family. Plus, DH knew about paperwork, etc. I’ll never do it again. We did have fun turning away nosy neighbors that just wanted to see our house.
We sold our first house in a seller’s market. Not headache free but looking back probably would have done it again. Here’s an odd story however. During an open house, a family came to see. Later, the husband called to ask to chat over coffee. We met and he made me a lowball offer. When I mean low – unconscionably low (-30% of asking) – below what we paid for it and the market was VERY hot at the time. He was an immigrant and I realized that he must not have known how the ask/bid prices were for housing in our area. I respectfully declined and frankly didn’t budge a cent from my asking price. He seemed perturbed. I tried to gently tell him that listed prices in our area were the historical norms for closing and that I priced mine fairly. We parted ways.
Shortly thereafter we secured an acceptable bid and were moving out. During our move out day, the man and his entire family came up to our house and demanded we consider their offer. He said they’d pay “cash”. I had a newborn, it was a bitterly cold January day and I had to help poorly chosen movers load up trucks. I was in no mood. I told the man that the cashier’s check for my closing price was just as good as his cash and re-iterated to him how close closing prices were to asking prices. Then I kicked his behind off of my front yard.
I did it with my first home MANY years ago, but I was also selling to a friend. In our case, the friend and I used the same lawyer…and the whole process was easy peasy.
But I had NO showings…not one. The buyers were renting the place!
We sold our first home ourselves. It was a buyer’s market and we didn’t want to pay a realtor. It took a year, which was fine in our case.
One person who looked at the house had the SAME first and last name as my husband (not John Smith, but a very common name like that). We decided it might not be a good idea to sell to him!
I don’t think we would do it again, but it was not bad.
The three houses I have owned have all been bought and sold with FSBO. The last was not listed as I did not want to stage it or get into official showings. It was worth $20,000 to me to keep things simple, as I am single and cannot take much time off work, which is about what a real estate agent would have gotten me as a higher price. So I put the word out (I know a lot of people and it is a tight community) I had one probable buyer who finally bailed after stringing me along for for too many months. The stock market drop in January finally made them say no. Finally I found the perfect buyers who have remained in touch. I have gotten many pieces of that house back, rocks and perennials from the yard, cabinets from the kitchen, even my old sink so as to upgrade my current kitchen. Worth a lot in both money and sentiment. I used an attorney that we all knew, though he has always been my attorney. One of the side benefits in this very high property tax market is keeping assessed values a bit lower for my buyers as well as former neighbors.
Realtors need a bit of another economic model. I saw homes with a realtor, and sent him a gift card for his time, having finally bought FSBO. I appreciated his insight and time.
We have sold FBSO twice, but they were not “usual” circumstances. In the first, we knew our house was going to be a tear down (we bought it intending to tear down/rebuild but found a superior vacant lot in the interim). We lived in this house while our new house was being built, then just called builders in the area and sold directly to one of them.
The second was our home we bought in DH’s college town that our D lived in for a few years while attending undergrad. It had been remodeled and D2 had decorated it so beautifully, it looked like something out of a decorating magazine. A friend of ours( who had been in it) happened to have a conversation with a man while at a bar in a ski resort in Colorado. The man mentioned he had a D at our D’s college and would be looking for a house to buy her to live in (and two younger brothers who would follow her). Our friend said “You only need to look at one house, and that’s my buddy’s daughter’s house. It’s perfect for your D.” The man contacted us, looked at it once and fell in love with it, and we closed the deal shortly thereafter. Both the buyer and my DH have broker’s licenses, so everything was up to snuff legal/contract-wise, and it was the easiest thing ever.
The buyer just sent us an email saying that they had thrown a lovely dinner party during a football weekend recently for their alum friends and their D’s friends, and they were all so grateful to have found this house before we put it on the market.
We have done it twice successfully. The first time we sold to the son of a neighbor and his realtor did all the paperwork for a small fee. The second time we went with a FSBO company that charged a small fee for managing all the paperwork, inspections, closing and putting together professional video and photo tours for MLS and online sites. We did showings and negotiations on our own, but they were very helpful when we had questions during the negotiation phase. We had one buyer who signed a purchase agreement and then backed out, but that all went smoothly with the FSBO reps’ help and we were able to sell to the next highest bidder almost immediately. I’d definitely go that route again – we saved a lot of money and sold as quickly as we would have with a realtor.
Thanks for all the responses. I think I am going to go with a agent because I dont think I will be here by the time I list the house. I dont want to list the house now because I think it will sell better if I wait until March. Now having said that, I do have a question about actually selling the house, although this may be better suited for a separate thread. I am in a great neighborhood with excellent schools, the houses have been selling within 30 days, most times around two weeks in my subdivision. I would love to rent the house, but hubby wants to sell. We put in two new bathrooms 2014, new driveway, roof/gutters 2015, new furnace/ac 2016. Would you sell or rent?
If you never plan to live there again…sell…in my opinion.
I rented my house for,four years before I sold…because I thought I might move back there…I would NEVER do that again! Being a landlord is a headache. Being a landlord when you don’t live nearby is a bigger headache.
@thumper1 I guess its just wishful thinking that we will move back. If we were to move back we probably couldnt afford or wouldnt want to pay to move back into this neighborhood.,