Northern Virginia is a sellers market. Should I get an agent or go FSBO? (flat fee, for sale by owner)

[midlifeman]

Since the inventory in northern Virginia is very tight I was considering selling my home. Has anyone done it in this area as a For Sale by Owner. What are the pros and cons. Where do i start?

[johnsonkk]

There is a separate forum right on city-data that has a real estate forum and favorite comes up often.

http://www.city-data.com/forum/real-estate/

I've sold a few properties and used an agent so I'll defer to those that have for stories.

[bluegrey]

I've sold 8 homes, three were fsbo. The last one, a fsbo, was a p.i.a. because the buyers were basically rude. But...I saved 3000, but thought to myself, it would have been worth a 1000 to keep these people in their cages. It closed on time....

[kanling]

Real estate agents (and the broker) get paid way too much for what they do. That said, they have a monopoly on the listing service... only a small percentage of potential buyers will know about your home if you don't use it.

[bluegrey]

then do a 199 or 399 mls listing. But, as the OP knows, there are buyers driving around his/her neighborhood looking for homes to buy, just like they are here in AZ. You can really take advantage of this in any kind of standard subdivision (most of NoVa).

[Carlingtonian]

Originally Posted by kanling

Real estate agents (and the broker) get paid way too much for what they do. That said, they have a monopoly on the listing service... only a small percentage of potential buyers will know about your home if you don't use it.

I agree with the first sentence.

There are listing services that will list your home for a flat fee (about $300).

Serious buyers are going to be constantly looking at the various listing sites, so they will definitely see your house for sale. However, many buyers are also selling (or just sold) a home and have negotiated a discounted commission with their listing agent based on using him/her on the buying end--e.g., I pay Joe Realtor 5% instead of 6% to sell our house, and in return, we use him when we buy the new place, so that he gets half of that house's listing agent's commission. But if there isn't a listing agent on the new house, we would have to figure something out--most likely pay our agent some agreed-upon amount to or reimburse him for the discount on the sale commission.

We actually sold our old condo as a FSBO in the Wild West of 2004 and bought a house the same year, from another FSBO. It worked out OK only because we weren't using a realtor on either end.

[kww]

Originally Posted by kanling

Real estate agents (and the broker) get paid way too much for what they do. That said, they have a monopoly on the listing service... only a small percentage of potential buyers will know about your home if you don't use it.

there are plenty of offices who will place a listing in the MLS (and then syndicate via the MLS to various websites typically) for a small flat fee..

beyond that, the seller would be responsible for phone calls, showings, scheduling appointments, inspection related concerns, HOA concerns, title work, settlement arrangement, etc etc etc..

i've met numerous people who can handle it on their own and as such, they save money. for others, arranging for an office to assist makes sense.

[ArtyGuy]

I think a lot of it comes down to how much time do you have on your hands and how much experience do you have with buying and selling homes and do you have an appealing home? If you have a flexible move date and you won't be doing a lot of discovery learning about the sale of a home, it's worth a try.

I'm not going to bash realtors and claim they are paid too much. I've bought and sold many homes over my military career and for me, I've always been happy with their services. Would I have liked to have paid less? Sure. But it takes time to market it and handle everything yourself and in the end, you're still paying somebody to assist in the sale of your home (lawyers fees, etc). Besides, I'm willing to bet that one one or two of my home sales, I probably sold my house for more money than if I had sold it myself. That commission fee doesn't always look that bad after all.

[ACWhite]

You may want to specify that you will pay 3% to the buyer's agent who closes the sale. Many buyers' agents will not show homes where they don't get a fee.

[looktowindward]

As others have said, if you go FSBO, definitely use the MLS.

It is possible to get folks who don't have a buyers agent - offer to split the 3% with them.