Realtor vs. FSBO

[Brat]

Originally Posted by califdreamer

Still a good time to sell and move equity gains elsewhere.

Couldn't agree more.* Now you need to think about marketing, maxing your gains and feeling comfortable about that part of your gain that you spend on selling expense.* Only you know what support you need, I want you to get the best for your money.* Think like a recruiter and hiring manager.* Define your needs, determine what skills can meet your needs, recruit interested vendors, verify that they can do the job YOU want and vet their references.* As any HR professional will tell you, it isn't easy.

[LRS]

Last time I was looking for a house, my dealings with FSBOs went like this one:

(Modest home in middle class neighborhood. Surprisingly priced way above other homes in the same area. I call to check it out

Me: How many square feet is the house?

FSBO (addled sounding redneck woman): Uh ... about 17,000 square feet

Me: seventeen THOUSAND square feet? Are you SURE?

Her: Uh ... yes

Me: Former aircraft hanger? Remodeled Home Depot?

Her: Uh ... no

Me: Bye now!

The house I bought was another FSBO that stayed on the market for months priced way too high. Then they got an agent and I was able to bargain the price down to $20,000 less than their original price.

I would think about selling my current home myself now because I've been through the process a couple times, and because my husband has worked for the county in deeds and records before and knows how to research property values, liens, etc.

[nwsteve]

I am going to reactivate this thread for an update.
The many helpful comments and observations from the Board resulted in us deciding to use a broker and do a "traditional" sale.
Things that led me to capitulate included:
Greater risks from not being current on all the new sales regulations and compliance requirements and testimonials.

While the potential savings of 20K was attractive, dealing with potential risk that lawyers could quickly consume any savings was not.

Our housing market is still firm but shows some sign of softening and uncertainties. Neighborhood has never been a multi offer neighborhood due to the it diversity of housing.

Since I am still providing consulting services, the time commitment for dealing with showings and qualifying buyers did not offer an attractive return.

Ultimately, our house received a full price offer with only an inspection contingency in less than a week.* Inspector's report (roof issues--sorta of same inspector "wild card" that WAB reported in his sale in another thread. Roof is fine but golly geewiz, it may need a new surface in less than 5 yrs) ultimately cost me 5K but eliminated some other last minute buyer "issues"

Some key learnings:

1. Do your own homework regarding the value of your home.* If necessary do not be afraid to invest in an appraisal before listing. I had to apply some effort to get realtor to fully capture the value in the house.* Realtors want values that sell fast. (The last 10-20K only means $3-500 to their pocketbook). Even then, I think we ended up with a fair value but if I was more a risk taker I might have added another 10-15K (house sold for 690K so less than 2% off).* In our neighborhood, almost every house is different so doing comps is a real art form.

2. Clean, clean, clean.* Realtor was a buzz saw about removing any signs of habitation.* Her focus was to make it easy for the buyer to see their "stuff" in your house--not yours.* Think of a new property--rarely see anything on counters or walls.* I know I did a LOT more of this work than I ever would have had I just did a FSBO.* When property was photographed, it did not look like the place we had lived for the last 26 years.

3. Make sure you call the references of your realtor.* My calls were instructive and made it easier when I challenged her knowing she would do the right thing.* Several of her references volunteered positive comments regarding her solid ethics.

4. Make sure your Realtor is using a professional photographer for MLS photos--huge difference. The photographer took probably 100 pics often using supplemental lighting.* He then photoshopped the images creating almost ADigest images.

5. Inspectors are a seller's nightware.* You have no impact on what they do, they leave a mess, and unless they are totally incompetent, their write-ups are impossible to discount and they become hammers for the buyer.

6. Do not tell your realtor any element of your strategy you do not wanted repeated to the buyer's agent.* You can benefit from this behavior by taking very strong positions with your agent so your position will appear to your buyer less flexible and give you more leverage in the final negotiation. This ultimately helped us as our agent became much more aggressive in protecting our price after I told her we would put it back on the market if there was ANY problem with the current offer.

7. Try to keep the transaction economics in focus.* Even if you know there is more value, do you want to wait to get it. Is it really worth the interruptions in your life to reject a small counter offer to close?*

8. It is hard to appreciate just how you will react to having strangers poking around and hanging out in your living room for a couple of hours, especially when the visiting realtor says they will only be there for 30 min.*

We are not completely done as Buyer has yet to have his bank finalize their appraisal but given his down is probably a low risk.
I will add any fresh "awareness" should we have any surprises in the home stretch.

Now the fun starts!!* Packing for the move

Thanks again to all those who shared their experiences.
Nwsteve

[wabmester]

Congrats, Steve! How close was your sale price to Zillow's estimate? We came right in at the high end of Zillow's estimated range.

[nwsteve]

WAB
Thanks. As a recent seller I know you appreciate the angst and inspector "joy"
We beat Zillow by over 10% but that is because doing comps in our zip is almost impossible tied to addreses. One block has view of water and mountain, block away no views and housing stock to entire different standard.
Same issue drove me and my realtor nuts trying to get a firm fix on offer price.

[Nords]

Originally Posted by nwsteve

Some key learnings:

Excellent post, NWSteve. Thanks!