Quick, everyone on the bandwagon...no, HOLD UP A SECOND!  This is my second and final post about the interesting statistics and insight that the recent NAR survey of buyers and sellers REALLY gives. 

"NAR began tracking the FSBO market in 1981; the record high was 20 percent in 1987...A downtrend in the number of for-sale-by-owner transactions is clear, currently at a record-low market share of 12 percent...In addition, a higher share of FSBO properties are not placed on the open market - 40 percent of those transactions were "closely held" between parties who knew each other in advance (family or acquaintances)...When you factor out the properties that were not placed on the open market, the actual number of FSBOs is only 7 percent - the rest are simply unrepresented sellers in private transactions."  [I took cut and paste liberties with two paragraphs there to put the same information in a more relevant order than the report did]

What does that say?  I'll tell you what it says - despite the internet and all the FSBO enabling it does, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah, there are less and less FSBOs than ever, and nearly half of those don't really count, because they weren't going to hire an agent to do a deal with their brother (for example - though I think many of us could say we'd do that for family harmony!).  I will only counter my own point with the thought that discount brokerage services are (I believe) on the rise, taking away market share not from agents, but from the traditional FSBO market, which to me makes perfect sense, as again, those people were pre-disposed towards something other than a full-service agent and now they have a choice of a limited service discount broker model vs. only FSBO.  These are the guys, though, that have terrible customer dissatisfaction problems ratings.

Now here's a really notable set of stats about the internet, which so many REALTORS and other full service agents seemed a but on edge about:

"When asked where they first learned about the home purchased, 36 percent of buyers identified a real estate agent; 24 percent the Internet; 15 percent from yard signs; 8 percent from a friend... Eighty-one percent of home buyers who used the Internet to search for a home purchased through a real estate agent, in contrast with 63 percent of non-Internet users who were more likely to purchase directly from a builder or from an owner they knew in advance of the transaction."  [emphasis mine]

Read that one more time and pick this up - those that use the internet are far more likely TO USE AN AGENT than those that DO NOT use the internet.  This, despite the fact that only 24%, less than one in four(!) first found out about the home they bought from an agent.  Translation:  most people find out about the home they buy from some place other than their agent, yet they still use the agent, and additionally, those that search around on the internet are far MORE likely to use an agent than those that don't, despite all the hype and fear (within the industry) of the internet companies replacing agents.  If anything the internet is feeding MORE (!) business to agents than before.

My last comment is this - don't twist and misquote this statistic, please, PLEASE (I have before done that having been given it wrongly by someone else and not having read it for myself).  Per the survey, the average home sold without an agent was 31.9% lower priced than those with an agent, and in the prior year's survey that number was 16%.  The article doesn't quite make it clear enough, but THIS IS NOT SAYING THAT AGENTS GOT/GET 16%/31.9% MORE THAN FSBOs.  That is a separate study that I do not believe the NAR has done to compare "apples to apples" for prices achieved, time on the market, etc.  I wish they would do such a study, and since they started tracking discount brokerage models now for the first time, perhaps they should compare their results as well.