Nyack, NY: For Sale by Owner vs Broker Revisited
THE FACTS ABOUT FOR SALE BY OWNER ARE NOT EASILY UNDERSTOOD BY MOST OWNERS WHO NEED TO SELL.
There's a reason contingent contracts require that the property to be sold be listed with a Realtor and included in the MLS. . . . exposure to thousands of agents and potential buyers.
No doubt the next article from the NYT will be "How to save money by selling your home yourself".
The facts have disputed that claim for decades.
I remember some years ago when the only FSBO in the area would be folks who simply hated Realtors. They may have had a bad experience with an agent and believed that any relationship with an agent would produce the same result. Their previous agent was probably recommended by a friend or relative or could have been a friend or relative. The neighborhood broker is often a thing of the past. Today, with the Internet, consumers have an opportunity to "interview" many agents online before meeting them.
Today, because of the Internet, the motivation is generally to save the commission because the owner believes that they can use the Internet to sell their home.
NEW FLASH! Showing a home is the easy part. Getting to contract is not so easy. Getting to the settlement is even harder.
Even experienced real estate brokers hire agents to list and sell their homes. I did.
Sadly, our real estate market today is such that many owners who need to sell may not have sufficient net proceeds to pay for experienced real estate services. Even more sadly, the likelihood of them managing a successful sale is remote.
Courtesy, Lenn Harley, Broker, Homefinders.com, 800-711-7988.
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This past December I blogged about 2 homes for sale in Nyack, NY that were featured in a New York Times article discussing the merits of using a broker to sell a home and the reasons people sell by owner. The homes were side by side; I was familiar with both, and even showed the one listed to buyers last autumn.
I was in the neighborhood again yesterday, and what I found was worth capturing with a photo.
Yes: The home listed with the broker, my capable friends at Wright Brothers in Nyack, is under contract at an asking price of $839,000. The FSBO remains unsold, according to the owner's website, at $795,000. Unless the REALTOR-listed home sold for considerably under contract, where is the savings?
Will the NY Times do a follow up article on how this shook out? I doubt it.
Meanwhile, the FSBO is still in limbo, unsold (if the website is accurate; If sold also, it can't be for more than 795k), unlisted, and, save for the owner websites, invisible to the buying public, with an amateur at the rudder of the ship.
Savings, I suppose, is in the eye of the beholder.
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- J. Philip Faranda, Broker-owner, J. Philip Real Estate, LLC. 2010 Vice President, Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service.
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