Anyone sell FSBO?

JenBride2004

How did you advertise? Did you do any open houses? We have been trying to sell FSBO since beginning of November and have had no luck. Right now it is listed on Craigslist. Anything else we should be doing? I am thinking we may do an ad in the asbury park press....not sure what else may help. Any feedback would be great- thanks! 

AnnPH424

We used fsbo.com to list our house. When we did this there were different packages to chose from and it listed our place on the MLS b/c we agreed to pay any realtor who sold our home 2% commission. It did cost us a few hundred dollars to do this but we had a lot of traffic. We also had two open houses. Make sure your listing on craigslist has pictures, I used to link it to the mls listing so people could see more pictures too.

 Good Luck!

Paradox09

My previous home was a FSBO.  I listed in March and it sold at $5k below asking in July (2010), just as I was about to take it off the market.  Like the pp, I did have to pay a 2.5% commision to the realtor representing the buyer.

Make sure that you are listed on MLS.  I did three open houses at the same time that there were other open houses in my neighborhood to piggy back off of the traffic that the realtors may have generated.  I did put up my own signs around the neighborhood with balloons to alert people to my open house (just as the realtors do).  I also listed on Craigslist and in the local supermarkets, coffee shops and NJ train station (I was 3 blocks away).

It was a lot of work but in the end it was definitely worth it.  Not only did I save on realtor commision but I listed for and sold for slightly higher than several RE suggested that I do so (I did allow several to give me their "sales pitch", I will admit the primary reason was to give me an idea of what I shoudl list for).  Also, a relative became a realtor in the same area toward the end of my listing.  He advised me that my sale price in comparision to my list price (I forget what this ratio is called) was higher than ALL of the sales in that town for the previous year.   I was happy to hear that.

The fact that I was ready to withdraw the listing and didn't have to sell also helped me when I go the offer.  The initial offer was about $25k below asking, I was able to directly tell the other realtor why that was not acceptable and let him know that I was ready to walk away unless I got XX number.  Not having to deal with a middle person defintely helped during the negotiations.

FWIW, this was the second home that I sold and, although we used a RE to purchase our current home, I will definitely do a FSBO if we decide to sell again.

Just realized that this is a book, sorry!

atwood345

We kinda did...We paid a broker to list our house in the MLS for us. Took pictures ourselves, priced it, did the legwork with realtors making appts, but we were able to get the exposure by being on the MLS, realtor.com, etc. We were given a lockbox by the broker and listed, sold, and closed in 3 months to the day. It costs around $300 if memory serves and I'd recommend it to anyone. We did have to pay commission to the buyer's realtor, but it was still half what we would have paid if we used a realtor. LMK if you want the info of the guy we used, he was great to work with.

chpmnk1015

yep.. one house we just did a sign and CL..

the other house we had on owners.com    we did not sell that one because we were too high.. but that site gets you on the MLS

debfife

We did but it was when the market was good. We advertised in 2 local papers, held an open house. Had friends post a flier in their offices and email it to everyone we knew and asked them to forward it. Our buyer ended up being someone from a friend's office that saw the sign in their coffee room. 

JenBride2004

Thanks this was helpful! I think we need to advertise in different places and start to do open houses. I need to figure out how to link the Craigslist ad to mls as well.

. I just thought we would have More traffic at this point- its definitely a slow market