Jamie Hunsberger Real estate & Design
For Sale By Owner - Why You Should Do It
8 Reasons You Should Sell Your Home For Sale By Owner...Written by a Professional Realtor
Most articles on For Sale By Owner transactions are a litany of reasons why it’s a bad idea written by Realtors with an obvious conflict of interest.
With no less conflict of interest (since I am a Realtor as well), the following is a checklist for why you might be qualified to sell your home yourself, without a full time realtor’s help. I felt it would be more productive to help homeowners make an informed decision than present a one-sided, untrustworthy “fake news” article.
1 – You Ain’t Scared & Like to Learn
Don’t get stressed easily, like to learn and figure things out on your own? Can handle complexity and figuring out how to do things on the fly? If so, keep reading. This is probably your biggest requirement to list “For Sale By Owner” (FSBO). If you get stressed, have a hard time learning and figuring out complex concepts and processes on your own, especially when the stakes are high, hire a professional.
2 – Good With Home Projects
Part of the home marketing, selling and negotiation process is dealing with some of the flaws and issues that come up as potential buyers inspect the home. You’ll need to present a disclosure that states all the history of past and present issues with the home. DO NOT withhold any information here.
As issues arise, you’ll need the capacity to understand the issues and remedy them.
3 – Good with Interior Design, Marketing, Photography, Web Design
Marketing your home is a really big deal. The more potential buyers you can attract, the higher the price you can net. For a $300,000 home, every 1% is $3,000…the stakes are very high.
According to the National Association of Realtors, FSBO home sell for 26% less than realtor marketed homes. To counter that, you need to be able to stage the home really well and then market it through the MLS and web with excellent photography.
Don’t skimp here. Getting maximum exposure and buyers who see the property is absolutely crucial to maximizing your price. Remember that buyers will already be hesitant to look at your property because of the pitfalls and risks associated with buying a FSBO property. You need to overcome that.
4 – Legal Background or High Capacity to Learn
Take a look at this vocab list for an idea of common real estate terms and evaluate your comfort level.
You’ll need to find and deal with listing paperwork, disclosures, offers, counter offers, earnest deposits, escrow, inspections, title companies etc. As long as those things don’t intimidate you and you feel confident to go through the process, you’ll be fine.
It’s important to be able to navigate the things that can go wrong and feel prepared to handle them. What if an offer comes in that you accept and the buyer doesn’t pay the earnest deposit? What if they back out? What if the inspection finds issues that they ask you to remedy? What if the house doesn’t appraise high enough for the buyer’s conventional loan?
Also make sure you can handle the wonderful situation of getting multiple offers and how to evaluate the two offers in their different nuances; for instance, which is better: $3,000 in closing costs paid or $3,500 more in offer price?
If you feel confident to deal with those issues, read on.
5 – Good Negotiator
In some cases, realtors see For Sale by Owner homes are excellent opportunities to buy homes at a discount. This is because FSBO homes sit longer on the market, generate less interest and, most importantly, the sellers are naive.
Almost universally, FSBO home negotiations include the knowledge that the seller isn’t paying a selling agent’s fee, so it becomes a negotiation topic to allow for this in providing a discount to the buyer. Poof, at least half your “savings” get eaten in the sale price during negotiations, most of which are already getting eroded in less buyers and the FSBO stigma.
Make sure you are a saavy negotiator when engaging this. Remember your counterparts in buyer’s agents negotiate property offers professionally.
6 – Resilient People Skills
A wise realtor once told me that the reason realtors will always provide value to the real estate marketplace is because the two parties of a transaction require a mediator.
Left to their own negotiations, almost every deal would fall through because buyers and sellers are inherently unreasonable. Buyers will demand completely ludicrous and unreasonable things. Sellers think their home was caste in gold and soaked in holy water. Agents bring everyone back to earth and ensure the deal goes through without any violence or bloodshed.
If you are a reasonable person and can deal with difficult people to boot, you’ve got a shot to get the transaction to go through.
7 – Financially Responsible & Not in Financial Trouble
This is really important. Probably the most important point of all. If you aren’t very financially knowledgeable and/or aren’t stable financially, you should not do this yourself.
You should not be attempting to FSBO your property while in extreme debt, if you owe more on the house than you can sell it for, or if you have a lot of confusion or ambiguity surrounding your finances. You could just be digging yourself a bigger hole, and handled improperly, could get yourself into legal trouble.
8 – You Are Convinced a Realtor Can’t Net You a Higher Price
Ok, here’s the last point, which is certainly biased coming from a Realtor: Let’s say your listing agent’s fees will be 3.4% of your home’s sale price. For a $300,000 home, this amounts to $10,200. For all the trouble you are going to endure listing and managing the entire transaction, one would hope you would be able to sell the property for exactly the same price a listing agent would net. This would equate to you saving $10,200 expenses on the property sale.
Make sure you feel very confident in your market that you can overcome the FSBO stigma, the lack of universal web listings, lack of exposure to realtors throughout your market, professional staging and photographs & web listings. Along with the professional negotiation skills and market knowledge a realtor brings, these factors attract more buyers, giving you a better chance of acquiring a max price offer.
There’s a difference between successfully selling the home at a mediocre price (say $290,000 in our example) and getting a max price (say $305,000). If you can net a $15,000 higher price with a professional agent, you gain net proceeds after the commission, and are able to sell the property without the stress and risk of managing it yourself.
Just make absolutely sure that trying to save the commission of a professional sales agent doesn’t cost you in the end.
About Jamie
Omaha's Friendliest Realtor
Jamie’s mix of people skills, coupled with negotiation and design talents make her a perfect fit for optimizing your buying and selling experience. She has an uncanny knack for making things happen.
Yet even more important are the soft skills. Anyone who meets Jamie genuinely likes her because they instantly sense her kindness and care for others.
Jamie Hunsberger: Your Secret Advantage
15 Years of New Construction, Interior Design & Staging Experience
Jamie has been a professional designer for home builders. She’s sought after for home sale staging with other realtors throughout Omaha. She’s in constant demand for interior design client work. All this experience is priceless in choosing the best realtor to buy and sell a home.
Professional Interior Designer
15 Yrs Home Staging Experience
New Construction
Gifted Negotiator
Uniquely Kind & Friendly
Tenacious Attention to Detail
