Tips on FSBO?
I’m looking for some advise from anyone who has done a successful FSBO. I have a wonderful condo in a great building and my husband and I were planning on staying here for a while, but we just seem to have too many children to fit in here and need another bedroom (and/or an office…
I’m looking for some advise from anyone who has done a successful FSBO. I have a wonderful condo in a great building and my husband and I were planning on staying here for a while, but we just seem to have too many children to fit in here and need another bedroom (and/or an office since I work from home as well). Since the real estate market is down at the moment we’ve decided to try and sell ourselves rather than having to pay a broker fee.
So far I’ve created a blog for the condo and listed it on nytimes real estate for the open houses. We have a lawyer that can do the contracts and closings for us. Any advise is welcome as we really hope to be able to sell and get a fair price.
Thanks.
Open House today from 1-4 in case anyone is interested!
http://23115thstreet.blogspot.com
I think there are two primary groups that people who sell FSBOs fall into: those who price too high, and those who price too low. The group that prices too high is probably larger than the other group, and it may in part be due to their emotional investment in the property. A number of posters have likened the process to project management, and I agree, but you also have to consider the opportunity costs.
If you have priced it too high (and I’m not saying you are), and aren’t seriously considering reasonable offers when there are ones, if prices continue to flatten, you’ll be worse off the longer you wait, and still have to pay the monthly costs to keep it.
I’m jealous: you say you work from home, but I see no trace of that! My work from home means my home is my office…with all the requisite paperwork and other detritus.
I’m sorry but you are only going to get the most entry level or desperate realtor offering 1% or 2%. I’m not trying to be snarky but it’s laughable to even suggest that.
You get what you pay for and now is definetly not the time to skimp.
My 2 cents
I really like your blogspot. Looks better than the times ad. Also, a broker that accepts this listing for less than a 4% commission is not going to do a good job. As you know, advertising can be costly especially if you advertise in the actual NYTimes newspaper on Sunday and not just online. A broker that says they will do it for less than 4% is just trying to get the listing and not really thinking about what it will take to sell your apartment, which is what you need. It has been my experience, that when the market slows, it takes a lot longer to sell properties and the good brokers cannot afford to take less than 4% to really give it their all, since they will be advertising and working that much longer and harder on your property. Just something to keep in mind.
Thank you so much for all of the useful feedback. A few of you mentioned my asking price and said it was a bit high. I did have a few realtors come by to see the place (I was inquiring about listings they had for us to move TO). They all offered to come and give their opinions with no commitments. We got a wide range of suggestions from the high 800’s, to the low 800’s, so we chose what we felt comfortable with based on why they thought we could get a certain number, plus there’s our bottom line of what we put in and what we need to get out.
I’m aware that there are a lot of 2BR/2BA apartments on the market in my area, but the one comment that all the brokers gave was that we have a very unique space (high ceilings, balcony not on the street, a lot of SF etc) and they thought it was worth more than the regular new construction places. I tend to agree with them as I’m a bit of an open house junkie and I rarely see anything I like better than this place.
I’ll be sad to move, but I’m crossing my fingers (and doing a lot of hard work) that it will sell!
Thanks again everyone.
It all looks good! You can still work with a buyer’s broker. Just let them know that you’re firm on your decision not to list it with them. Offer them 1-2% and you act as the listing agent. Can’t hurt.
We sold our condo in park slope last year. Agreed with thoughts of prior posters, if you price correctly this should be straightforward. We were fortunate with excellent comps as two units had sold recently in the same block.
Agree with your posting on NY Times – felt like the vast majority of buyers look in there. We did post on Craigslist also but only a handful of folks spotted our posting.
As for pictures, these look good to me. You only need to get folks interested from NYT and certainly these should do the trick.
Some other things I’d mention.
When conducting the open house don’t forget to sell the place. Even if your hand out mentions all the good aspects of the place go through with as many people as much detail. Remember, you’re trying to sell so to a degree act as a sales person. A little bit sales 101 but you get my drift, don’t be passive and engage buyers.
Definitely take email contacts and reach out post open house. You may get some helpful feedback….
Don’t be intimidated by this process. It’s very doable. At this price range you’ll need to be off by many 000’s of dollars to be worse off financially than going with a broker. Good luck.
The traditional commission is 6%. In today’s climate most brokerage firms will accept a 5% commission if there is a co-broke (the buyer has a broker representing him) and 4% if it’s a direct.
If you go with a too low commission on a co-broke deal you run the risk of buyer agents not bringing their customers, hence I don’t recommend going below 5% on the co-brokes.
My suggestion is to try to nagotiate a 3% or even 2.5% on a direct.
If you go with a broker please view the process as a job interview. There are so many professional, ethical agents out there, and they are all dying to work for you.
PS: I sold my condo as a FSBO this summer.
My experience with brokers in Brooklyn has been uniformly negative [Corchoran]. I ended up doing all the work in terms of staging, photography, and coming-up with the terms of the listing.
What’s worse, all of the brokers I’ve used responded by bumps-in-the-road by insisting I shave off a few thousand here, a few thousand there… in other words, they had no interest in delivering the highest price – only the sale [their % of those few thousand is so low as to be irrelevant to them – even though it was very costly to me]. And to make matters worse, one of the reasons I had to drop my price by $5K was because the broker had made an inaccurate statement in the listing without consulting me [the said we had dedicated storage space in the basement rather than shared space].
If you can create a good ad, do good staging, set a realistic price, and do some very basic due-diligence on prospective buyers, your real estate lawyer will do all the rest. In fact, that’s the real nut of my argument: a good real estate lawyer is far more valuable and important than any broker.
So I say go for it! And yes, if it doesn’t work out, you can always go pick up a broker – and make sure to interview plenty & negotiate their fee!