Question re: For Sale by Owner (home)

[Dionysus]

We are selling our house and thinking hard about doing For Sale by Owner. Wondering if anyone here has had experience/success with this.

I know a good realtor has some value and they provide maximum exposure with an MLS listing, but damn, the % fees are ridiculous. As seller I'm prepared to pay 3% on the buyer's side but I can save thousands by skipping the listing agent. There are a lot of FSBO listings on various websites nowadays so it seems that more folks are doing this.

We live in an area where demand is fairly high and houses are not on the market for long, and it's early summer which is favorable timing for a sale. So I think we have a few things in our favor here, but I want to be realistic about what we're getting into.

Would appreciate any advice or suggestions — pro or con — that anyone has.

Thanks.

 

[Wideawake]

I don't have any first hand knowledge, but I like this Clark Howard guy.

Pros and Cons of FSBOs

 

[Dionysus]

@Wideawake Thanks so much! That looks like a great resource.

 

[zork]

you can market your own home via a cool site that will allow you to reach about 20 different online real estate websites: postlets.com

I used it to rent one of my houses and it worked great. My plan has been to try this for the first 20-30 days then go to a realtor if it isn't rented. So far it has not made it past 20 days.

However, I also recommend getting a google voice number that forwards to your cell phone. This way you can separate out calls and the google voice mail feature is nice.

Good luck.

 

[Dionysus]

@zork thanks, I'll give that a look.

 

[zork]

Are you out of the old, into the new?

 

[Dionysus]

Signed the contracts yesterday, should be closing around Aug 20.

I found out that you can do a flat fee MLS listing for $99. I always assumed that you had to pay a Realtor commission to get the MLS exposure but this was inexpensive, quick and easy.

FSBO is great actually, IMO, if you don’t mind doing some work. I’m saving $7,650 on the listing agent fee and I didn’t have to do very much. I used a real estate attorney that I have worked with before, he reviewed documents and made a few suggestions. He has been very helpful to us and will probably end up billing me less than $500 total.

In many cases I think the listing agent fees are just highway robbery. 3% for doing what?

 

[zork]

congrats. good info on the flat fee mls thing. how did you do that? did you go direct to the austin area mls(or are you DFW or Houston?)

 

[Dionysus]

Houston area (Katy) so the property was listed on HAR.com. I used brokerlessmls.com and they just handed it off to a San Antonio area agent, and he forwarded inquiries to me. I think by law there has to be a “listing agent” of record so he takes that role officially but I don’t pay anything else. I kept him in the email chain when there was an accepted offer so he could note a contract pending on the listing. Easy.

 

[zork]

Good stuff. Thanks.