Follow up on confessions of a FSBO 2

Some comments on Erik Hares two part post on being a FSBO.

In general Erik and Christy have not experienced all the services a good REALTOR should provide and do not know what they are missing so it all seems fine to them.  We do more than provide a for sale sign, an MLS listing and advertising on Craig’s list.  Those three are a great start but I can think of at least eight additional ways that I advertise my listings.

The buyer leads  from Craig’s list and from the for sale sign seldom buy the home they saw advertised.  They are often in the early stages of home buying and are not pre-approved and have not looked at enough homes to be ready to buy one.  They do buy homes but usually a few months after their initial contact with a REALTOR,  and almost never buy the home that they called about in the first place.  Not all leads are equal.  These leads are valuable to me  because I am a full time agent and can find them a home, but are not so valuable to my sellers.

As for open houses, the main purpose of an open house is to give a REALTOR a chance to meet people.  I occasionally sell a home at an open house but on average about 3% of all homes sell because of an open house.

I believe that Christy and Erik will sell the townhouse if given enough time and think that it is a smart strategy to rent it out while they are working on it.  It will take them longer to sell it  than it would take me,  because selling houses is my full time job, I have access to more marketing resources, I spend more money marketing homes and I have more experience.

If they do decide to list with me next spring I will bring them a detailed marketing plan, that will contain many items that they may never have thought of.   Maybe I will even been able to convince them to write a post about it. 🙂