British Expatriate Network

Hi there oh dear friends...

So, the question is this - Should we sell the house FSBO (For Sale By Owner), or should we use an agent? Most agents now charge a whopping 6%, but there is one called Sell-for-less that charges 3%. It is either gonna be FSBO, or Sell-for-less. FSBO now lets you pay an extra $395 to be on the MLS listing.

Any experiences you could share would be greatly appreciated. wink

Where do you live? In most places it's a buyer's market right now and FSBOs just aren't selling because the buyers are using agents and the agents don't show FSBOs.

Would you get the same for your house with the 3% agent or doing it FSBO as with the regular? Will buyers' agents bother with your house if there's less in it for them?

I'm very much a DIY type person but from what I've heard/seen over here, the more you pay to sell your house, the more you get for it and the faster it sells. It's not necessarily fair, but it's the way it is. In the main. in most areas.

I am a real estate agent and there's a reason why I'm in business at 6%.

We get the job done faster, better, and for a higher price.

Are you going to be home all day to handle viewings? Are you going to be able to prequalify all your prospective buyers, to eliminate the curiosity lookers (or worse)? Are you prepared to negotiate pricing, disclosure, inspections, closing and all the other things demanding buyers gripe about? Are you going to be able to handle the volume of calls and doorstep visits from Realtors, trying to list your home?

The majority of people who try FSBO in my area end up listing with an agent. Realtors have passed exams and been trained in order to do their job - they are professionals. You wouldn't consider doing your own root canal just because the dentist was going to charge a fee, would you? We feel the same way about FSBOs - why wouldn't you hire a professional?

The companies that charge a lower percentage to do a lesser job don't get the results that traditional firms do. They make their money from the fees they charge without getting any results and then the listing expires (or the sellers get fed up) and they move onto a traditional agent.

Of course, it's your decision in the end and there are some people on here in other states who have sold themselves and will sing the praises of the process, but how can they be sure they wouldn't have made more money from the sale, even with a realtor's fees??

Back in NC I had my house on the market for 6mts with a freelance guy charging us 3.75% and never got an offer. Later in the year we went back in the market with Century 21 at 5% and sold for full price in two weeks of listing.

Alot of Agents stay away from sale by owner as they fear not getting a fee as they would from a broker and wont even show the house to clients. You can go that way it's always worth a punt if your not in a hurry or in a hot market, but if you are looking for top dollar on a quick sale we have to suck it up and cough the big bucks unfortunatly.

Was a realtor for years and i echo what Stelesque says .

Point is both the buyer and seller want to save the realtors fee so you get lower bids from propective buyers .

As with a used car in the paper you expect to pay less then you would at a dealership for a similar car dont you ??

The best part of using a realtor thou is the fact that the buyers they send should be pre qualified and your house fits the criteria as to what they are looking for .

Like everything else in life you only get what you pay for , and what FISBO.S do is to look at the actual dollar amount and NOT the service, if the home doesnt sell the realtor gets nothing ,.

if any of you have been to court to sue somebody and employed a attorney at 30% of the amount awarded did you find that a better deal ( if you win ) than going to court on your own and MAYBE winning the case but getting awarded a lower amount? SAME PRINCIPLE HERE .

By alL means try if that puts your mind at ease, but remember the longer a home is on the market the more it loses value and you may end up going to a realter if you dont bit on a buyer in a reasonable time .

We've got our house on the market too at the moment.

I've seen a couple of houses FSBO on our sub division and it did seem like one of them took 6 months to finally sell, and the other is still for sale.

We're using an agent (6% fee etc) and it's listed on their website (Century 21) and Realtor.com. We've got a massive sign in the garden, it's been in the free newspapers etc and postcards with the house on have gone out as well. So I think pretty much everythings covered - except we've been on the market just about 4 weeks and we've only had 7 people round!!! (Though another viewing is cheduled for lunchtime today.)

I just wanted to know (Stel, JohnA or anyone else) is this normal to have so few viewings? We're in Atlantic County in South Jersey which is supposed to be one of the fastest growing areas etc. I haven't sold a house here before and am just going on when we sold our British house and we had 30 viewings in a month (only one offer though ;) )

So basically would you say that's about normal for an American market? Or is it the wrong time of year to sell? Or am I just panicing for no reason? ;)

Sorry for the hijack Mango oops grin

While I don't disagree with the other posters who are realtors, I also don't think that realtors need to earn the equivalent of a new car for every house they sell. We researched selling our last house FSBO, put aside the time and commitment to do all the work ourselves, made sure we knew some good title companies, and had an attorney review the final paperwork. We also paid the $395 for the listing on the MLS. All told, it took us a few months to sell but we felt that the effort we put in was worth the savings of many thousands of dollars in realtor fees.

Massive generalisation.




Nell, the market has slowed a little this past week, but it should pick up again soon. Did your realtor do an open house yet? Did they do a broker open house to invite all the other agents in? Did they do a caravan with the other agents in their office? These things always work wonders on my listings.

The other thing is your price may be too high, or your online photos not appealing enough. The photo thing is becoming a big issue in my area.

HTH.
Stel.

Why? If I'm right I believe the national average house price is around $250,000 at the moment. 6% of that is 15k. I think you could buy a new car for that.

Isn't that a bit simplistic though? It's like getting upset when an attorney charges you $200 an hour but forgetting that he has a staff to pay, filing costs and admin fees as well as covering for the quiet periods/deadbeats who don't pay their bills.

If you can sell your house yourself, that's nice. I'd like to fight my own battles in court as well but I choose to hire a "gladiator" to do it for me - in my situation, I will probably hire someone to sell my house and expect that the higher price they fetch covers some of the outlay.

I think there are some hard working realtors out there who pull out all the stops to do a good job - I like to see people rewarded when they work hard on my behalf and don't begrudge it in such situations.

From the 6%, isn't the buying agent entitled to half of it as well? So $7.5K would go to the buyers agent in this case. On top of that, isn't there a fee they pay to their local and corporate offices. I mean, Estate Agents probably make good money, but probably not as good as you'd think on average. On top of that they probably work most weekends and a lot of evenings

Mind you, I noticed stelesque had a honking BMW in her gallery.... roll wink

My experience with the realtors was not a good one, they did not find buyers and I ended up doing almost every open house and I introduced the eventual buyer of my house to my agent and he charged me 6% for the privilege - hardly good value given the entire lack of work he did to find the buyer. Now I will admit there was other work to do to ensure the sale went through correctly but this was not worth 6% of my money.......maybe 1.5% like in the UK.......

However, I'm sure there are some who work damn hard for their money and deserve every penny they get, just not in my case..........

:lol:
It's 6 years old, but yeah, it's my baby...

Typically most agents are taking a 5% listing nowadays and giving out 2.5% of it to the buyer's agent. Then you will have to split the commission with your company, this ranges from a 50-50 to nothing for companies where you pay monthly fees to "work" for them. You also have to pay Errors & Omissions Insurance, MLS fees, State Board fees, NAR fees, advertising costs and then all the little things like signs, fuel, telephone, photocopying, lockboxes, etc. etc.

So on a $250,000 home a 5% comission would be $12,500. If you give half of that to the buyer's agent then you would have $6,250. Then split that with your company, say they want 30% then you have $4,375. You already spent $2,834 this year on fees, insurance and other stuff so you made a whopping $1,541 profit. Enough to buy a lovely 1991 Taurus. Fab..... :roll:

So what your saying is you could afford a brand new BMW if you only acted as a buyers agent and not a seller ? lol

:?:

I don't understand what you mean. The seller's agent and the buyer's agent in that scenario would probably make the same amount (give or take a bit for their company's cut).