Des Moines Nesties
Borst-Plotz
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FSBO's Come in
I know a few of you sold your house FSBO. We have our listed on craigslist and although I doubt anyone will want to look at it (we plan to go through a realtor if we don't sell by summer). Anyway-I was just thinking, what if someone does want to come look at it?
Do I just show them around the house? How does an offer work? Any good websites I can look at that will help us understand this process a bit more? I really should have done more research before, but I just don't think we'll have lots of luck selling w/o a realtor.
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Re: FSBO's Come in
We are meeting with our realtor on Thursday. We are going to discuss with him selling FSBO vs selling through him (or reason not to try to sell through him right away is we will probably lose money on our house, after his fees). I'm hoping he will also help us understand the process more.
I really don't want to sell FSBO but I really don't want to lose money either. I hate this process :-(
I totally sympathize.
We had to bring a lot of money to the table to get out of our TH. It sucked big time. I know we were lucky that we could afford to get out, but it still was so hard writing that check. We would have saved about $30k if we would have just rented during the 3 yrs of adam's residency rather than buy. It was a huge mistake that many people made during the height of the market. I suppose we learned from it, but it still smarts when thinking about it.
Anyway, I am sure you'll be better off than we were b/c you have a detacted home that is ADORABLE. Hope it sells well, I think you should be able to get close to your asking, from the other day it looked like a steal at the price you want for it.
When I sold my townhouse FSBO, I hired a lawyer to help with the steps. It was Mark Critelli, who specializes in real estate law. But he's been in the news lately for questionable rental practices, so I'm not sure I'd recommend him. Anyway, for a few hundred bucks, they gave me a packet of all the forms, step by step instructions, etc. There's no way I could have done this on my own.
Good luck. Your timing is perfect. Don't they usually say real estate picks up in March/April? I would think a lot of people would find your home very appealing!
Ask your realtor if they will help you with the closing paperwork (still doing FSBO) if you agree to buy your new home from them. That way they still get some business out of it.
Where did you decide to move to?
**All-His** - we're in the same boat - we've had our TH for sale for 2 years and we started with a realtor and are now doing FSBO for a bit. We've lived there for 5 years and had no idea of what the market would look like by the time we tried to sell.....so, we've now got it listed below what we paid and below what it's assessed at. We're going to be paying to get out of it and will lose all our equity, but we don't know what else to do other than rent it out, which we REALLY don't want to do!
Typing one handed while nursing so sorry for errors. We sold my condo FSBO when I was pregnant with E. We did list it on Craigslist just to see what hapened and actually did get a lot of traffic from it but it also caused some headaches sine people who contacted us through CL weren't always the most reliable and often were late to showings or didn't come at all which is frustrating when you have spent time cleaning and such. We also listed on www.forsalebyowner.com which is where we ultimately got our buyer. There are different packages you can do and we did one of the least expensive- I think it was a few hundred dollars and that included a listng with pictures on their website, 2 for sale signs and color flyers. We did not get a ton of hits from the website but the ones we did were more serious buyers in my opinion including some from out of state that were relocating, etc. Like I said the girl that ended up buying our condo found us on the website.
As far as what happens when someone wants to come look at the house, we just made sure that we deep cleaned and had it "staged" nicely after doing some research on what is best when selling a home. We would set up a showing and just show people around the house just as a realtor would, pointing out specific features and things. We also had a flyer for them listing amenities, taxes, asking price, etc. so that they could take with them. When it came time for the girl to make an offer on our condo, we actually went to Office Depot and they sell prewritten offer forms or purchase agreements. We used that template and filled it out. We ended up going back and forth several times with counter offers and each time the price or other details were changed in a counteroffer, both parties initialed (we only knew how to do this part because we had put an offer on a house prior to listing the condo and had gone through a realtor so were a little familiar with the offering process.) We have a friend who is an attorney who helped with all the paperwork, abstract, etc once things were finalized.
It was a lot of work in some ways but ended up working out for us in the end. Mind you our condo was on the market FOREVER! One year and one week to be exact! For us it wasn't a huge deal since we weren't dying to move when we first listed it. It was only at the end when I was pregnant that I got antsy to sell it and it all ended up working out fine. We moved when I was 20 weeks pregnant
Good luck whatever you decide!
Will you be open to sellers coming in with Realtors? If you are willing to pay 2-3% to a buyers agent their agent might take care of the closing for you. Although you still might want an attorney to look over the final agreement since thier agent isn't technically on your side.
You can find forms online or at like Office Depot for purchase agreements. Once you get that settled then I'd take it to a real estate attorney and they could handle it from there for you for a minimal fee.
We had ours listed FSBO for a while but then took it off. I think we are going to try to wait it out another year or so here before we try again.
We sold our house in Beaverdale FSBO in a month for only $5,000 less than what we had it listed for! We got lucky but it really was an easy process.. we listed on Craigslist, put signs out on Urbandale Ave, and put color fliers with pictures in our yard. We hired a lawyer (Mike Cunningham-515-278-4200) and he gave us the paperwork to draw have a potential buyer sign once we had verbally agreed upon an offer. Once we accepted an offer and the buyer signed it, we took the signed purchase agreement to our lawyer and he took care of the rest (title work, etc). I think we paid about $400 for lawyer fees for all of it.
If it were me, I wouldn't meet with a realtor yet. He will probably try to push you into using him and it is tempting because its easier but based on your home price, you are talking about over $8,000 in commission. That really eats into how much you can afford to drop your list price!
As far as when someone wants to see it, I never showed our house when Nick wasn't home but basically I would give someone a quick tour and then Nick and I would go away (outside, to the living room, etc) to give them time to look at talk. Good luck and feel free to email me if you have more questions (nici 8379 at aol com)
Completely agree. Realtors have nothing to gain from helping FSBO sellers, and everything to gain by convincing them to list it.
Before you sign with a Realtor, check out www.eflatfeerealty.com
You're able to set the percentage you pay, if a buyer comes with a realtor (we have ours at 2%) and you pay a flat fee to list your house on the MLS rather than the 3.5%. We paid $750.00 for an unlimited MLS listing and lots of other benefits.