For Sale by Owner (real estate market, foreclosures, rental)

[Pookahan]

Hi anyone sell their house themselves and have a good experience? With this real estate market, I am probably going to have to let my realtor go or short sale the house

[MrRational]

Even if you're willing (and able!) to do all the scut work associated with selling including but hardly limited to the promotional and due diligence aspects a informed buyer will need, financing, inspections etc... and of course manage and host the showings you hope will happen... you still will need to get on the MLS *somehow*

so that people, ALL the people looking, will even know you exist.
And be prepared to pay the buyers agent a commission too.

There are "limited" listing contracts (I forget the term) to do just the MLS.

All in all though...

[badchad]

I'm interested in this response.

Other than doing the actual showings and listing in the MLS, why couldn't the buyers agent do most of the work? Using a realtor is a cost:benefit thing. I can see how using a realtor makes the process much easier, it just depends on how much your time is worth.

[ajsmith365]

Home prices: 'Double-dip' confirmed - May. 31, 2011

Sell it yourself, if you think you can perform adequately (won't go into detail).

- open houses rarely sell houses
- >90% of house transactions are initiated by the buyer/buyer's agent via the Internet
- there are several FSBO brokers that will list your property within the MLS for $300-500
- seller's agent merely puts your house into the MLS and waits for the buyer to "find" it
- open houses...
1) gives the appearance they are working hard for you
2) mainly intended to drum up new business for the agent/broker
- from a former realtor's perspective, agents within the dc metropolitan area rarely accept any other listing that is NOT an exclusive right to sell agreement (meaning, they get paid regardless)
- buyer's agents, typically, expect 3% sales commissions. i'd offer them between 2 and 2.5%. the repercussion is that the buyer's agent may deter his client from seeing your property or highly advise against your property; this is ILLEGAL and you can go to the real estate commission and report them and take legal action

I say go for it...test it out. The biggest motivator is going to be the price, which is hard in this market with natural sales mixed in with short-sales and foreclosures. Even an agent will ********** up because they are not appraisers and cannot accurately give you an appraisal price - just a price range. You can get this yourself from an appraiser for around $250-400 or you can use the MD tax assessment database and search for properties sold within the last couple of months whose specs match up with yours (this will take a little more work as their querying set up is not designed for this purpose).

Good luck.

[lovessun]

Funny we had the house appraised it appraised at $590,000 and my best offer has been 515,000 which after paying realtor fees, I am bringing cash to closing, which I cannot afford to do. I am even thinking about a short sale at this point because my spouse relocated to Fla with his job. I could potentially sell my house if I didn't have to pay the realtor fees. No offense to realtors I totally respect their occupation. It is crazy though when you are selling your house and everyone is making money but the seller and the seller needs to bring money to closing. Short sale, FSBO, can I rent it or do I want to? Any opinions are appreciated.

[ajsmith365]

Originally Posted by lovessun

Funny we had the house appraised it appraised at $590,000 and my best offer has been 515,000 which after paying realtor fees, I am bringing cash to closing, which I cannot afford to do. I am even thinking about a short sale at this point because my spouse relocated to Fla with his job. I could potentially sell my house if I didn't have to pay the realtor fees. No offense to realtors I totally respect their occupation. It is crazy though when you are selling your house and everyone is making money but the seller and the seller needs to bring money to closing. Short sale, FSBO, can I rent it or do I want to? Any opinions are appreciated.

I understand your point and totally agree with you. The Real Estate business is a sham, IMHO. At the least, it is very antiquated and needs to be modernized.

Once, when I was buying this property here in PG County, the seller's agent wanted me to let her know when I was having the appraiser come through. Out of curiosity, I asked "why" and her response was that she wanted to give him some comps to think about, etc., etc. Basically, she wanted to influence the appraisal value so that it would appraise for said price.

Another time I had an appraisal done and I told the appraiser I needed a good appraisal and they asked me point blank "what value do you need" in an I'll make it happen type of voice and look. And, once I had 3 different appraisers come back - within a 1-week time frame - with estimates that were $60K apart! To top it off, one had a split foyer in their comp and my house is a colonial and then tried to tell me that she was appraising the split foyer higher because split foyers are more popular.

Even for industry "professionals" price determination is very difficult.

[PBSG]

If you have the time try selling it FSBO for a few weeks/months. I tried with my old house in Ohio but it didnt sell, mainly because I wasnt living there at the time to try to sell it. My father bought a rental house through a FSBO and everything went smooth as silk.

Placing an ad on craigslist got me a lot of hits and emails, with about half following through and viewing the house (when a friend went over to unlock the door). I personally like dealing with a person one on one instead of going through the seller-agent-agent-buyer telephone game. If I did get an offer a law firm would draw up all the necessary paperwork for around $700-1,000.

Try it for a bit and see what happens.