Any experience with For Sale By Owner?

[Mrs.Milo]

We are going to list our home for sale this summer. We have sold homes in the past but always with a realtor.

We are in a hot market, good location and excellent schools, and expect that we would be in a multiple bid situation and sell within a few days or a week. Would love to save on the usual commission but don't have experience with FSBO. Any experience? Any pitfalls? Thanks for any advice.

 

[loves to dive]

I just closed on a home I sold FSBO on Tuesday. I had 3 phone calls the day after I put the sign up but the house I was selling was a fixer upper and all the calls were from fixer upper people. I sold it a week after I put the sign up, again it was to someone paying cash. I did used to work in real estate so be prepared to have agents calling you. They ride the roads and look for FSBOs to list. If you do keep it FSBO know you will need an attorney to draw up documents and to look over documents for you.

 

[Mrs.Milo]

We are okay with 3% to a realtor who brings a buyer. How did you advertise, yard sign or local newspaper? Can a FSBO go on the MLS?

 

[CarolAnn856]

We did it once and will probably never go through that misery again.

 

[Maria S.]

Obviously a licensed agent is the regular way to sell a home. Not quite sure what the protocol is in other states for a for sale by owner transaction, but in Southern California the escrow company organizes the closing. To get started we had the buyer submit the good faith deposit to the escrow company and we emailed the escrow officer a copy of the written Agreement spelling out the terms. They took it from there.


I used Lotus Escrow for a few of my sales; they walk you through the process and make the transaction as smooth as possible. Here’s their yelp:

https://www.yelp.com/biz/lotus-escrow-arcadia-2


But I assume any escrow company would be able to handle the transaction just as well.

 

[osopecoso]

Just have a good attorney to draft up paperwork and look out for those flippers who will throw you low ball offers in cash. Also like mentioned above, be prepared to pay 3% if a realtor brings in a client.

 

[OhMari]

Someone mentioned an Escrow, we had a realtor, but a Title Company did all the legal and paper work. I would never ever use a realtor again. The only thing they did was put a 4-sale sign on my lawn. We ended up,selling our home, ourselves, but we still had to pay the commission, since we were under contract with them. Legal and Title fees do not come out of their commission either. We are selling our new home soon and I will screen my calls, absolutely will not deal with a realtor.

 

[Jeannie]

My daughter and a friend both just sold houses on their own. They listed on Zillow and both sold within a week! We're in NJ and DD had a real estate attorney handle all legal issues.

 

[LISAMWDW]

My advise would be take very good pictures, clean/declutter, use good lighting and post pictures in order. It seem whenever I look at FSBO's online their pics are so bad, I usually just close the listing.

Good luck!

 

[I loveStitchnippyjon]

We did it once. Desirable neighborhood, nice house. We got estimates from several realtors, decided on the asking price, then reduced the price by the 7% we would have had to pay a realtor and it sold quickly. It was customary in that area to use a lawyer for closing so he did all the paperwork.

 

[Dancind]

I think you will have to go out of your way to make your listing look legit. We tried a few FSBO from Zillow when we were shopping about six months ago, and every last one was a scam! Pretty much gave up on it. Good luck!

 

[teller80]

We did it once. Desirable neighborhood, nice house. We got estimates from several realtors, decided on the asking price, then reduced the price by the 7% we would have had to pay a realtor and it sold quickly. It was customary in that area to use a lawyer for closing so he did all the paperwork.

Why did you lower the price by 7%? You would of made the same amount by using a realtor. Was it to make it sell faster?

 

[teller80]

We did it once and will probably never go through that misery again.

Do you mind sharing what went wrong?

 

[I loveStitchnippyjon]

Why did you lower the price by 7%? You would of made the same amount by using a realtor. Was it to make it sell faster?

As the seller, we would owe the realtor 7%. Since a realtor was not involved, we could lower the price for a faster sale and pocket the same amount of money.