For sale by owner...

[Spaten_Drinker]

If you want to actually sell you house you better get an agent. There were six townhouses for sale on my street in Annandale over the summer. ALL now have new owners ( I am one of them ). The only one left is the FSBO. Get it?

[indiko]

Wish us luck! We decided to take the plunge and give this by-owner thing a try in a few months. What gave us the courage was that we bought a nice townhouse which was by-owner. We've been on the lookout for a smaller dwelling for over a year now and we were either outbid or were too late to the table to buy one. I feel really sorry for those looking to buy because the choices are so limited and the competition is fierce!

[Fredesch]

The Washington Post had a article on best/worst in real estate in this area. Nothing was truly bad, but my zip code 22151 in Springfield had the shortest avg time on the market - 6 days, runners up were at 7 days avg time on the market. well priced things go quick. Good luck with FSBO.

[kww]

Originally Posted by indiko

Wish us luck! We decided to take the plunge and give this by-owner thing a try in a few months. What gave us the courage was that we bought a nice townhouse which was by-owner. We've been on the lookout for a smaller dwelling for over a year now and we were either outbid or were too late to the table to buy one. I feel really sorry for those looking to buy because the choices are so limited and the competition is fierce!

good luck! getting under contract in this area is the easyish part. from there to closing is the fun part.

[indiko]

Update:

So, it took us much longer to actually list our house for sale than originally thought. The cleaning, de-cluttering, fixing and finishing up of all the unfinished “projects” took a while.
We listed by-owner (using owners.com) with the local MLS option for three hundred some odd dollars extra. Three and a half weeks later, we started to lose heart as we got some showings, mostly with buyers agents, but no bites. ONE HOUR before we were supposed to sign with one of those mega-huge, high performance real estate agency teams, we received an offer – from buyers without an agent. The next morning we received a second offer from buyers with an agent. Needless to say, we were thrilled. We picked the buyers who came without an agent. Both offers were decent and for exactly the same amount (almost 99% of asking price). The agreed price is at the top end in our area based on very recent sales and pending sales of comparables, so I think we did very well.


So, now we are under contract with the home inspection hurdle already done….and have some observations to share:


Most of the agents who called to set up showings mentioned that their clients found our home online and insisted on seeing it. This leads me to believe most agents with clients bypass by-owner listings on the MLS in favor of ones listed with agents. This observation was confirmed by the mega-huge real estate team when they were giving me their sales pitch. Most (not all) agents will not include by-owner homes in the to-show-list unless their clients specifically instruct them to do so. This one factor makes selling by-owner more difficult than need be.



Out of the showings with agents, a surprising number of them were with REDFIN, which leads me to believe that the 1.5% cash back for buyers offered by RedFin is becoming an IMPORTANT factor, which is good for by-owner sellers. RedFin agents don’t seem to discriminate against by-owner listings provided they are offered the customary 3% fee. Our second offer came from buyers with a RedFin agent.


The $30 option for Virginia real estate contract with owners.com was worth the money and then some. The contract was easy to use, easy to understand (written in plain language) for both buyers and sellers.


I had a lot of people advising me against selling by-owner for fear of the work and the “unknowns”. I am finding that once there is a contract, it’s not that complicated. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it’s not rocket science. The title company seems to be doing most of the heavy lifting.



There were a lot of calls from agents who did their best to talk me into listing for sale with them. A few got pretty obnoxious and confrontational. It is my understanding that once listed on the MLS, agents are not allowed to do that. Obviously, some don’t follow their rules.


So, for our troubles, we save 6% in this case. That is 6% of slightly more than $600,000 which translates to about $36,000. In my world, that is a LOT of money. That is enough to finance almost half of my son’s in-state tuition and fees for his undergraduate program! That is enough to finance some really amazing travels. That is enough to bring some life to one's ailing retirement account!


Hopefully, the rest of this process will go without any major problems.

All-in-all, I’m very happy we took the risk to give this by-owner sales a go. I realize there is definitely some value to hiring a good real-estate agent to help in selling a house because it IS work. But you have to ask yourself, how much work do you put into your job to SAVE that much money (save as in money-in-hand after all taxes paid). How long does it take? For me, it takes WAY more than 6months - about the time it took to research, learn and prepare. It is a scary process to be sure, mostly because of the doubts. You doubt your ability to sell your house – and it is probably something experienced by even the best of us. And the “scare factor” is increased by these awful agents (not that all agents are awful) who call to pile on the doubts. That was why I ALMOST signed on with an agency less than four weeks into it.


Would I tackle something like this again? If I had the ability to carry a couple of months worth of mortgage/utility payments - most definitely!

[bluetruckguy]

Congratulations.

We bought our house thru redfin and we did see several FSBO. Mostly because in the redfin model, you search and decide on the homes you want to go see.. so redfin has no say.. but redfin also was good not just for the 1.2% cashback but also because there was no pressure, we saw 100+ houses and we only received honest feedback about every house from the showing agents because they are not on incentive/commission model to push to buy.

[indiko]

Thanks Bluetruckguy!

The next time we buy (I expect it won't be too many years from now), we will first look at all the by-owner listings and if nothing pans out there, will DEFINITELY turn to a RedFin agent.