For Sale By Owner

In all markets you hear people say ”I am going to sell my home myself and not waste the money I would spend on realtor commissions.” Is there really a savings? We have clients who learned, first hand, the hard way that “For Sale by Owner” may actually cost the home sellers much more than the commissions saved.
The fact is that Real Estate professionals do more for their sellers than just make the transactions go easier; They make them money. On average a seller that uses a real estate professional makes 16 percent more on their sale than those that go at it alone. This statistic is from the 2005 NAR profile of Buyers and Sellers.


Recent clients of ours learned that “For Sale by Owner” can actually cost sellers money as opposed to saving commissions. Our clients decided to uproot from Idaho and move to Oakland to be closer to other family members after the birth of their second child. Having been shrewd investors they decided to spend $600 on a “Sale Your Own Home” class and set out to do just that. The next 10 months were a hideous saga of spending hundreds of dollars to advertise the home, being available to show the home to mostly, unqualified “deal seekers” and not securing any offers. After feeling discouraged, they eventually, met with a real estate agent and allowed the agent to take control of all the details of the home prep and sale. Within 3 weeks that had an offer from a qualified buyer and were finally able to make the move to the Bay Area.

A seasoned agent knows best on how to properly prepare a home for show, maximize value and to market it accordingly to make sure that it has as much exposure to potential buyers. A real estate professional is going to have a more objective approach to showing a home than the seller who may be offended by critical comments. A real estate agent will also prescreen potential buyer’s financial capabilities via pre-approval from a lender to ensure that all offers that come in are viable. The majority of buyers do choose to work with a real estate agent, however, most agents prefer not to work with a “For Sale by Owner” due to potential legal ramifications due to lack of disclosure from the seller and having to virtually regulate both sides of the transaction for minimal pay.