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1. Most homeowners grossly overestimate the value of their home, and it sits on the market for a long time (especially in this market). This in turn usually means a lower selling price, if it sells at all.
2. Limited marketing ability. More marketing = more demand = higher selling price.
3. A good agent will pre-screen potential buyers, so you will waste less time dealing with people who cannot afford the house in the first place.
4. A good agent will also document the personal information of potential buyers who are brought into your home, and this will decrease the chance of theft. When you sell your own home, you really have no idea who is walking through your home. They could easily be posing as buyers in order to case your home and belongings.
There is another option that is somewhere between listing with an agent and doing a FSBO. I used it successfully to sell my home a year ago. You can look into a flat-fee MLS listing.
A flat fee MLS gets you on the MLS for a small fee and allows buyers who are represented by a realtor to view and purchase your home in the same manner as they normally would (if you select the option that you are willing to work with realtors.) You get to specify what percentage you will pay the broker, and if you sell to an unrepresented buyer, you pay no commission. We ended up selling to an unrepresented buyer at one of our open houses, but 95% of our showings were brought in by agents, so you definitely don't want to eliminate that pool of potential buyers.
Everyone always says that the three most important things are "Location, Location, Location." Unfortunately, the location is something that you cannot change. To me, the three most important things are "Price, Price, Price" You can change the price, and if the price is right, the house will sell quickly. Reducing the cost of commissions gives you the ability to price your home competitively and attract buyers.
The reason I went the flat fee route was that I realized that there was a gap between what I wanted to net on the sale and what most buyers wanted to pay, and that gap was generally an amount equal to the commissions involved. A flat-fee/ partial-FSBO listing allowed me to narrow that gap and get together with a buyer at a price we could both live with.
If you decide to go the same route I did, here are some suggestions:
1) You need to overcome what I call the "angry FSBO syndrome" This is the greedy/angry guy who wants top dollar for his home and wants to keep every penny for himself. He can easily be spotted by the sign in the front yard. If he spent less than $9.99 on the sign, or the sign makes you afraid to even call and ask the price, he is likely an "angry FSBO"
I had a multi-colored custom professional sign and stand with info box made for me (cost me $200) and I put my asking price inside a star-burst on the sign along with my phone number and a web address (I made my own website for the home) I can't for the life of me figure out why nobody else lists an asking price on their signs.
2)Take a ton of good quality pictures and be sure to show off the home's best features. It is important not to lie with the camera (no fish-eye lenses please). If you make rooms look bigger in the photos than they are in real life, the first reaction a would-be buyer will have is a feeling of being let down. It is better to under-promise and out-perform in my opinion.
3)Get a mini storage and get rid of all your clutter. Take down personal photos and mementos, etc.
Buyers want to picture themselves living in the home, and your "stuff" will cloud that vision.
4)Get a large safety deposit box and stow all your valuables and important papers there. That way you can be comfortable allowing strangers into your home.
5)Be ready to show the home at a moments notice (keep it clean), and get the heck out when someone is viewing the home (it makes the buyers feel uncomfortable and unable to picture it as "their" new home when you are hanging over their shoulder.
PS: Where is the house you are trying to sell located? My wife and I are currently looking to buy in the Babylon area, but we may branch out.
Heh, "angry FSBO syndrome," that's brilliant. When I was looking at houses on the island last year (I decided not to buy), it was pretty clear that 90% of the FSBO listings I saw represented owners who were deeply in denial about the values of their homes.
Going FSBO, especially with one of the flat-rate MLS services, seems like a valid option to me if you want to save some money on commission -- or maybe want to use that saved money to price the house below market for a quicker sale -- and are willing to put in the work of advertising, scheduling showings, etc. Just don't be that guy who brings in an agent, gets outraged that his house isn't worth what it was in 2006, and says "screw it, I'll sell it myself at the price *I* know it's worth." That guy will never, EVER sell.
Last two posts are good advice. We bought in late 2009 and I can't tell you how many cluttered, dirty, filthy, smelly houses we saw. Cleaning and decluttering your house makes a big difference in how it shows. When we sold our apartment our agent gave us tips on how to do this, so make sure you still do it if you go the FSBO route.
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