If the owners don’t sell their homes themselves, why should you?
RECENTLY, Al Bennati, owner and chief executive of BuyOwner.com hired a REALTOR® in St. Petersburg, Florida, to sell his $3.78 million home instead of using his own company (or any other FSBO company). “To sell a home of this magnitude, it needs to be done by a person and a company that reaches buyers of this caliber,” Bennati said in a statement. “Selling upper-end homes like mine was never the market for BuyOwner.”
Yeah, right …..
Bennati isn’t the first owner of a For Sale by Owner company to hire a real estate agent instead of selling it themselves.
A few years ago, the creator of ForSaleByOwner.com, Colby Sambrotto, found out personally it wasn’t as easy as it looks. Sambrotto in fact hired a traditional real estate broker to sell his home. That’s right, the company telling you that you can sell your home yourself, hired a professional and paid the standard commission for their $2.15 million home.
Sambrotto tried for six months trying to sell his New York apartment in trendy Chelsea with online listings and classified advertising …. It didn’t sell.
Once Sambrotto hired the real estate professional, the agent not only increased the listing price by $150,000, but attracted the buyer using methods not previously used or available to the owner. The self-help methods did not work at all over the 6 months Sambrotto tried to market his home himself.
The Professional Real Estate agent said the listing wasn’t priced right thus not attracting the right qualified buyers.
Sambrotto reports he still believes in the DIY method of selling home and plans to eventually start up a new for sale by owner company …. Of course he does – that’s his “business”.
But does it make sense to sell your home yourself in this (or any) market?
Perhaps not according to the REALTOR® Association:
“According to the 2013 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, the share of “For-Sale-By-Owner” is 9% of the real estate market.
- The share of home sellers who sold their home without the assistance of a real estate agent was nine percent. 40% of home sellers who sold their home themselves, knew the buyer prior to home purchase.
- The primary reason that sellers choose to sell their home without the assistance of a real estate agent to a buyer they did not know was that they did not want to pay a fee or commission (46 %).
- Approximately one-third of FSBO sellers took no action to market their home, and 64 percent did not offer any incentives to attract buyers.
- The typical FSBO home sold for $184,000 compared to $230,000 among agent-assisted home sales.”
