As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my co-workers is heavily contemplating listing his home via for sale by owner. As I stated, I tried to give him some points of using a realtor, but he is still doing the research on doing it by himself.
This morning, I saw him after a meeting and asked him what he was going to do. He was still bright-eyed about doing the listing by himself, but said he had done more research at home and had another idea as my statements left him wondering about utilizing for sale by owner websites. In short, he had found an array (and I mean an array) of companies/people who will list your home on MLS for a flat fee. The fee ranges, but he said it averaged anywhere from $250 to $1,000 which was somewhat lower than the other for sale by owner sites charged (these are his findings, not mine). He liked the idea, but each and every company/person he called said that its best to provide the buying agent with a commission so the home is shown no different than other homes listed with agents. Still, he mentioned, that he was saving money.
I asked him what the fee included. Basically, and from what I took away from the conversation, the home gets listed on MLS just as it would with utilizing an agent and it costs minimal expenses. Yes, he has to pay a commission to the buyer's agent, but still he considers he's ahead. I asked him about how he was going to market his home. Pamphlets? Website? Word-of-mouth? etc. Well, he tells me that he bought a domain name with the address of his house. Let's say its 123mainstreet.com. He's a great web developer and will get it up and running by the end of the weekend (so he says). He's already had a discussion with a graphic designer who will develop a brochure for him and he's buying a sign holder tomorrow so that he has somewhere to put the brochures. His comment was, "Besides, how else do you market a house? The house will be on MLS and realtor.com and I'll have a website and brochures with more detailed information....so what, I have a cellphone and will handle the showing phone calls myself and have someone that can let them in the home at any time of the day if I'm not there..most people look for houses on the Internet so I'm all set..."
To me, and at this point, it already sounds like more work than I would personally like to deal with if it were my property. His property has increased in value (based on recent sales) quite significantly over the last 2 years and he has a lot of upgrades. To make things more interesting, our CEO of the company we work for full-time hears about all this and says, "Great idea...I did the same thing 2 years ago and was fortunate enough that the people who bought it called and came to see it without an agent....in total, all I paid was $500..." Hearing this, he became even more excited. I mentioned that the key words here were "two years ago". Didn't phase him one bit.
It sounds as if this is the route he is going to take. Seems a bit optimisitic, but I wonder how it will turn out for him. I'll keep you posted, but what are realtors thoughts on this type of objective? Does this actually work or is it a scam? It must as these companies are in business, but just inquiring on how realtors deal with these types of listings.
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