Re: Any suggestions to help me gain exposure for my house for sale?

Depending on how badly you want to sell your home I would just
recommend listing with a broker... You'll end up spending a ton of
money and you're going to loose 40% marketability on your home anyway.
If you don't mind sitting on the market for a long period of time and
spending lots of time screening everyone that calls or knocks on your
door then go for it. Use the local newspapers, want ads in other areas
and internet but fair warning, it'll take a while. If you're needing
to get out quickly and sell for the top dollar worth of your property
then bite the bullet and go with a broker. To sell your home by
yourself takes a ton of work and costs a ton of money. You can always
negotiate with a Realtor for a lower commission. I guarantee you'll
find one! There you go... spoken like a true Realtor! That's because
I am and I would never sell my house on my own. If you should decide
to go with a broker eventually let me know and I'd be glad to help you
out. I'm sure everyone in this string is saying, "I'll bet he will!"
:o) I will...

Paul Griffin
Realtor/Investor

Re: Any suggestions to help me gain exposure for my house for sale?

On 2006-03-06 19:10:53 -0500, "Griff" <> said:

> Depending on how badly you want to sell your home I would just
> recommend listing with a broker... You'll end up spending a ton of
> money and you're going to loose 40% marketability on your home anyway.
> If you don't mind sitting on the market for a long period of time and
> spending lots of time screening everyone that calls or knocks on your
> door then go for it. Use the local newspapers, want ads in other areas
> and internet but fair warning, it'll take a while. If you're needing
> to get out quickly and sell for the top dollar worth of your property
> then bite the bullet and go with a broker. To sell your home by
> yourself takes a ton of work and costs a ton of money.

It does not have to cost you a *ton* of anything as long as your smart
about it and you have the right situation. I recently sold my own home
FSBO. I was capable of doing an open house for several hours on
Sundays and sometimes Saturdays. I was able to show people through the
house on a fairly short notice if they called me about it.

The area my house was in had several similar houses in it on the MLS so
I was able to let people find my house because of the MLS without being
on the MLS. My house had "upgrades" to it such as walk in closets,
hard wood floors, more open floor plan, partially finished basement and
jacuzzi tub that my "competition" did not have and yet I was able to
price competitively against them because I was not *loosing* 6% of my
houses value which turned out to be 10 thousand dollars.

We got a infotube to put flyers in and a FSBO sign to put out in the
yard. Wen you get the info tub you can list on their site for free:


The FSBO sign we got gave us the ability to list our house for free on
owners.com:


We also listed on cragslist which is in our area and free (owners.com
also suggests you use cragslist after you post with them):


I also happened to own the domain name for the street I lived on so I
put out flyer I made for the house on it and linked all the above sites
to it.


We also tried listing our open houses in the local newspapers and got
very little interest from it but I would say it is still worth a shot
at least a couple of time especially if you can advertise in different
ones. Your area might give you better results.

It took about 4 months to find our buyer but that was quicker than the
houses that had an agent and were on the MLS. Listing my house on the
above sites did increase its exposure but the big exposure winner would
have to be the fact that house buyers were driven to my area because of
other houses for sale near me. This is a case were having competition
is *good* since they were paying the commissions that ended up
advertising and selling my house indirectly.

Now if you are moving *far* from your home or need to sell *now* you
might wan to go with an agent and get on the MLS. The MLS will help
move your house and that is what an agent gets you. I should know
because I used to write the software that ran Agent/Broker/MLS
websites. If you can find a good deal that will get you on the MLS for
a small percentage or flat fee you might wan to take it but those types
of deals only really get you a deal on half of the commission so you
are typically still going to end up paying out around 4%. I was able
to use the MLS in an indirect way to get my house sold and it worked.
I did not pay a cent to agent but when a agent would come to me with a
buyer I would offer them a flat fee of two thousand dollars. It was a
fraction what they "should" have gotten but if they wanted some money
and the chance to move on to the next deal then they had it and it
never stopped them from bring the people though.

If you are afraid of all the paper work, don't be. All the seller has
to do is fill out a property disclosure form, write up a contract and
get your deed transfered. The property disclosure form is available
from your states web site, you can cheaply buy a FSBO contact online
and it cost me 60 bucks to have the deed transfered by a lawyers
office. The buyers mortgage company / title company will get
everything else in order. Getting though the FSBO contract can be a
little tough but we sat down with our buyer and went though it with
them and made everything on it to the point that we could agree on
everything and if we had a question about what something meant we knew
people that had done realestate contracts before and they were able to
help.

A last note on this subject but should be a given, make sure the house
is in selling condition. Make it look good, get every small problem
you have been living with fixed up and looking good. Make sure the
yard is mowed and things are dusted. Searching the web for selling
your house and watching HGTV a bit will fill you in if need be.

So I have written a lot and that might put you off but the above saved
me a big chunk of change and I learned a few things in the process so I
think I came out on top. Considering how I did the above and just told
you all about it your risk factor for doing something similar should be
even less as long as you have the type of situation that will allow you
to do it.

Good luck and if you are anyone else has question feel free to ask them.

--
David Steinbrunner

Re: Any suggestions to help me gain exposure for my house for sale?

That was a great reply David! You definitely have more time than I do.
:o) I'm not sure where you sold your home FSBO but here in Idaho
things work a little differently than most of the country as far as
commissions. Selling a house FSBO here in the S.E. Idaho area is a
nightmare to say the least!

I would just add one last thing for the home seller to go along with
your post... Be sure to go around to all your local real estate
brokerages and walk right in with a small stack of flyer's for all the
agents to get their hands on. On the flyer let them know what you are
willing to pay to an agent who brings a buyer for you. This is
something I really appreciate getting from FSBO's! I keep them in a
database, which I created, and search that database on a regular basis.


Also, anytime you meet with "serious" buyers you could always do it
down at the local title company. They are usually more than willing to
send someone in to sit in with you and answer any of your questions
while you go through the necessary paperwork. Another option, as far
as the paperwork is concerned is to ask an agent to help you write up
any offers for a small fee. I always write paperwork up for people for
a nice little flat fee of $300 dollars or so. Not something I like to
get out but perhaps it will help you? Anyway...

Best regards and best of luck!

Paul

Re: Any suggestions to help me gain exposure for my house for sale?

On 2006-03-08 13:36:50 -0500, "Griff" <> said:

> That was a great reply David! You definitely have more time than I do.
> :o)

Well, I did not plan on writing all that but I felt compelled to
respond and not just say "FSBO Rock, Agents Suck" because that is far
from the truth.

> I'm not sure where you sold your home FSBO but here in Idaho
> things work a little differently than most of the country as far as
> commissions. Selling a house FSBO here in the S.E. Idaho area is a
> nightmare to say the least!

The house was in Ohio between Dayton and Cincinnati.

> I would just add one last thing for the home seller to go along with
> your post... Be sure to go around to all your local real estate
> brokerages and walk right in with a small stack of flyer's for all the
> agents to get their hands on. On the flyer let them know what you are
> willing to pay to an agent who brings a buyer for you. This is
> something I really appreciate getting from FSBO's! I keep them in a
> database, which I created, and search that database on a regular basis.

That is a good idea. I would add that you will want to state your
terms when you hand off the flyers or even add a page with your terms
on each flyer. Be up front that you do not want to pay a 3% commission
for a finders fee if that is the case. Again, in my case I was willing
to do 2 thousand dollars rather than 5 thousand dollars which would
have been 3%.

> Also, anytime you meet with "serious" buyers you could always do it
> down at the local title company. They are usually more than willing to
> send someone in to sit in with you and answer any of your questions
> while you go through the necessary paperwork. Another option, as far
> as the paperwork is concerned is to ask an agent to help you write up
> any offers for a small fee. I always write paperwork up for people for
> a nice little flat fee of $300 dollars or so. Not something I like to
> get out but perhaps it will help you? Anyway...

I believe two different agents both quoted me a thousand dollars to do
the paperwork on my house. I just nodded and smiled while telling
myself that they are crazy. Your $300 dollar quote sounds much more
reasonable. Of course, now that I have been though it once I think I
would prefer to do it myself from here on out. These days I'm much
more interested in buying property than selling though ;-P

I guess while I am at it I will note a few other things.

During the process of selling my house I had several offers but up
until the end they were not ones I considered serous mostly because the
sellers wanted a much lower price along with me paying agent fees and
closing costs. We ended up getting 2 good offers on the same day some
where between x-mas and new years. Both offers came from people that
had been though the house before. Since we had two offers we were able
to get the final offers to be a little better since they had to bid
against each other. The reason I say this is because most people will
tell you that this time of year is bad to sell a house. I'm no expert
but I say it is a good one because around new years people are starting
to think about there lives and making plans and or trying to act on
plans. The whole new years resolutions stuff. Around that same time
we noticed several other house that had been on the market sell.
Another lesson from this is that people will wait months after doing
initial shopping around to decide that they are ready to buy so if you
don't hear back from some one for a couple of days don't be completely
put out. The longer you are on the market the more expose your house
gets. Don't just sell to the first offer you get. Hold out for
something closer to your expectations as long as your expectations are
realistic.

Back to the whole agent/broker/MLS stuff. As I have said there are
situations where the 6% on a sale is justified but inn a lot of other
cases I don't think it is. If you are going to use an agent make sure
they are not just putting it on the MLS and expecting it to sell. In
cases that may be all it takes but in the others I firmly believe they
need to work for their money. Make sure they are doing open houses if
nothing else. Back to negotiations, I had one agent tell me he would
sell my house for between 2 and 4 percent depending on if he was also
the selling agent also but he had to be my agent on my next purchase.
This type of deal might be worth it to some some people, especially if
they were looking at 6% before.

Another route is to pay an agent hourly for a rate of around $100. In
this situation you might be able to do your own open houses and the
like to save on the agent fee. I'm not sure how many agents are
willing to do this but I have heard it has been done for both seller
and *buyer* agents. Most buyers feel that they are getting the use of
an agent for free since the seller is footing the bill. Imagine buying
a house and having your agent pay you since their hourly charge was
less than their commission. Again, I have heard this happens. The
more you as a consumer are able to use the internet and do drive bys to
do your searching and pre-qualification the less you can rely on the
agent and hence save. Most of the time these days, buyers agents are
able to get by with doing less since they direct their customers to the
internet to do their own shopping rather than doing the shopping for
the customer. The buyers agent is then just someone that unlocks the
door of the houses and walks them though. Of course, agents are making
more than they have in the past because of the rate of inflation on
houses. Good business to be in, eh? Well, it looks like that is
starting to even out now that more and more people are becoming
conscience of how the realtor/realestate industry works and are finding
that they do not like it.

Having said that, Paul seems to be a stand up guy considering that he
is active in doing real estate type stuff that is above and beyond what
a lot of agents will do like giving advise here. If you decide to use
an agent look for someone that is knows what they are doing and is
willing to negotiate. If they can negotiate with you they proved they
can negotiate on the sale of a house ;-P

OK, back to work!

--
David Steinbrunner