For Sale By Owner.

Aka, FSBO. This post is primarily an information post on what we are currently doing to market our home, how we went about it and why we arrived at the decisions we did. In the 3 weeks we have had our house on the market I have had several friends already ask me many questions regarding us choosing to do FSBO and how it has gone so far. Now I'm trying to answer it all for 1) anyone who stumbles upon my blog looking for answers (which will be hard because I'm currently an unlisted blog LOL), 2) any of my friends who think they may do this in the future and 3) myself to remember later on down the road.

When to List?

Before we started building we decided on a date of when we would list our house. Our initial date? May 1. However, we learned that the market was ripe and had was advised that March and April are highly active times for people looking for a new place to live (so they can close and move during the summer, I suppose).

Why FSBO?

Wade and I talked about using a Realtor. We would have probably used the one who sold us this house we have lived in for 9.5 years. Being an occasional penny-pincher, I told Wade I wanted to try FSBO first. With what we would list our house for if we paid a Realtor the customary 6% we would lose around $15K. Ouch. That's the new living room furniture (including tables and lamps) and kitchen table I plan on getting for the new house!

Granted, I felt bad that we weren't using our former Realtor. But not to the tune of $15,000. Plus, I have several Realtor (successful) friends and I felt it would be hard to choose one too. And who am I kidding, money talks.

It's really not that easy though. I was prepared to show my own home. Not everyone is up for that as some may not be comfortable with it. But no matter if you hire a Realtor or not you still have to clean your house and be ready for people calling up to see your house that evening or the next day. To me the good thing about showing it yourself is you can work better with your own schedule.

Setting Up a Separate Blog/Site

I researched listings by Realtors to see how they worded things. The introduction to the property. The description of the rooms. How they played up the good qualities of the home. Then I took those ideas and created a blog to list our house.

My blog is set up as a virtual tour of the home beginning with outside photos of the home and proceeding with entering the home and describing it all. I have over FORTY photos on my blog. I took photos over the course of a couple of weeks when I would get rooms PERFECTLY clean and "styled" for my photos. I also waited until we got a storage unit to free up some clutter (mainly the kids' playroom/den downstairs and the guest room which was housing extra furniture that we are hoping to take to family the next time we go visit them).

I also listed other information that someone new to the area or just anyone interested in more information on our house would want to know. I have my tabs at the top listed like this:

• For Sale By Owner - This is just an introduction to our home with a large photo of the outside of the house including the asking price, address and a phone number to contact us.
• 123 Main Street Details - I actually have our address not 123 Main Street. ;) This is where I begin the virtual tour with photos and blurbs of information playing up on the great things about our home.
• Property By Numbers - I decided there is a lot of information people would like to know that is just that - numbers. The year the house was built, the square footage of each room, average annual and monthly expenses (electricity, water, property tax, propane gas for fireplaces, and security system).
• Schools & Neighborhood - Just like how the big name realty sites list houses, I included the area schools (including the county, city and private schools which have hyperlinks to get to those schools' websites), distance to shopping malls and other area attractions including a couple of corporate companies, distance to healthcare facilities (all our hospitals in the area), and distance to colleges and universities in our area. These places all included hyperlinks (when applicable) and the amount of time (not miles) it took to get there. I used Google maps to get this information.
• Contact Us - Basically, I just gave our address and phone number for anyone interested in setting up an appointment to see our house.

Marketing with ForSaleByOwner.com

After researching we decided to go with For Sale By Owner. They seem to have a bigger presence to represent home owners who are selling their own property than some of the other sites. For instance there is a house that is FSBO just outside of our neighborhood. It has a large banner-style sign in its yard that has long weblink to the property. I could never memorize the address by the time I drove the 1/5 of the mile back to my house to look it up. I had a hard time finding it online by searching with words like "for sale by owner" plus the road it is on. I consider myself a Google expert (knowing the best words and phrasing to use while searching for something online and yes, there is an art to it!!). Finally, after seriously maybe 5 minutes I found it. They were using a lesser known FSBO site that was also not very user friendly.

Would you want someone having that hard of a time finding your listing? Uh, no. So we went with what seemed to have a prominent home on search engines for FSBO sites.

When we signed up for our listing on For Sale By Owner we went with their "Multi-Media Listing" which costed $294. It's a one time fee until sold and includes upgrades to their other two lower packages by giving you a deluxe yard sign (which is very good quality - better than what we could buy at any of our local hardware stores), unlimited photos, and ability to upload a video.

This site is very user friendly - both for the seller and buyer. As the seller you can log on to see how many views you have had plus see how many flyers have been printed. It is possible for people to directly print from their printer without using the "Print Flyer" option on the website so you may have a larger number of people who have printed info on your home.

Another great thing about this site is that once you input all the information about your house, it creates a flyer for you. Easy peasy. We bought an information box at Lowe's and have attached it to our yard sign with these flyers.

One neat thing is the ability to "Share with Facebook". I have done this twice so far. Once when we first got our listing up and going and just recently when we were going to have an open house. I looked at my views before I shared this last time and then looked again 20 minutes later and saw that the number had gone up around 20. Facebook works to help sell. Even if it's friends being nosey to look at your house, you can ask friends to share the link plus it lets everyone know it is for sale in case they know someone looking.

If you have an open house then the site features you with the zipcode area a couple of days prior. If you click on the home to view it then the open house box pops up with the information causing the viewer to HAVE to read the day/time and close the box to keep going. That makes it impossible to miss.

After 3 1/2 weeks of being on the market, we are currently at 449 views and have had 17 flyers printed.

Showing Your Home

In the first two weeks our house was for sale I had three showings. I say that's pretty good!

After the initial decluttering (again, mainly extra furniture that we do plan on getting rid of when we get to travel - we had to wait until Wade's work schedule went back to normal), I made a list of things I may forget to do in my cleaning. These are things that do not say "unclean" to me but I want to do to make the house PERFECT. Some things on this list include "fluff the bathroom rugs", "close the security system pad", "fold bathroom towels", "empty trash", "close toilet lids", etc.

Upon opening the door, greeting and introducing myself I have found it's best to break the ice and say something like, "What I like to do is first show you around the house. Then I'll let you walk around on your own. You can open closets and be nosey to see what kind of storage we have." Then after I take them on the tour ending downstairs, I say, "Feel free to walk around again if you like. I'll be up in the kitchen and can answer any questions you have when you're done."

The first lady I showed the home to was a good experience. LOL I walked her through the whole house and when we finished she said, "You know I really don't want to buy a house with stairs." Seriously? Did she not look at the flyer and/or read the description online? That was okay. It got us motivated the night before to run a load to the storage unit that we had been procrastinating on and it helped me get comfortable with the whole process.

I'm still new at this but I have quickly learned that even though you have all the details spelled out for everyone before coming, they will still ask you. Even though you have an info box chock full of flyers, they may not have picked one up. (Have extra in the house to give.) Even though you love your home and think it's perfect, it will not be perfect to everyone else. "I don't like popcorn ceiling." "We would re-paint." You cannot show your house and be attached at the same time.

Also, you cannot point out things you do not like about your house. When the lady said that about the stairs, I calmly said, "That's okay. I understand it may be hard for some people to have their laundry room downstairs. It's not been a problem for me." I accepted her statement but did not say something to shoot myself in the foot such as, "I know. I hate walking up and down those stairs every day to do laundry. I fell twice the first month we lived here and suffered a slight concussion one time and bruised my ribs the other time." LOL There is some truth and untruth in that statement. See the bottom of the post to find the untruth.

Sometimes people who come to look at your house, love it. And still don't buy it. The last regular showing I had about a week and a half ago was to a nice couple in their early to mid 50s. (They seemed really interested but I haven't heard back from them yet.) As I was taking them into the master bathroom he commented to his wife and me, "She decorates and keeps her house like you do. Everything is very neat, clean and organized." That made me happy, obviously. I also had the husband of the couple who came the day prior say, "Wow. It wouldn't stay this organized for long if we bought it." LOL

Open House

Thanks to a friend who works with a Realtor, I knew that three other houses in our neighborhood were having an open house this past Sunday. Otherwise, we probably would not have had one this soon. The other houses were having theirs from 1-3 so we made ours from 1-4.

What I learned about an open house. Have refreshments. Most people will not eat anything but have them anyways. It gives you an opportunity to be friendly to prospective home buyers. Probably half of the people coming to look are not a "prospective" home buyer. They may be looking for a house but not yours. Maybe 25% of the people will really like your house enough to ask questions and even say something like "We'll be in touch." And then maybe 10% will actually be in touch whether they said that or not.

We had around 12 couples and/or families come. We had three who seemed REALLY interested. So far we have had one contact us. Actually, their Realtor contacted us.

Working with Realtors

Yes, we are "willing to negotiate with buyer's agents" as we have put it. We will allow them 2% (maybe 3%) but we will not go down in price like we would for someone without an agent. Why be willing? Because if word gets out that you are then you may have a quicker sale. (Still not sure I'm ready to sale.)

So the Realtor contacted us Tuesday around noon and wanted to give a second showing that evening. Because we are selling it ourselves, I was able to work around MY schedule and told her we wouldn't be able to do it then. Actually, no one was going to be home so we really couldn't. I scheduled it for the following evening at 6 and told them we had church that night so I couldn't do it any later.

She wanted to fax or email me an agreement to show form. We were afraid she would try to put that she'd get 3% of the sale price and we were prepared for that. My friend who works for a Realtor told me if she did to just mark it out and put 2% (what we were only willing to give since the family found the house, not the Realtor). It turned out that we never had to do this (which I was happy about because I don't like confrontation!); she said this was really their second showing and we would take care of the business if they wanted to make an offer.

They seemed to be very interested in our house. The Realtor was hopeful since this was their second showing and since they have been looking for several months. She called us today and told us that they were leaving on vacation for a week and a half and thought they would make an offer when they returned. We shall see but of course I hope so!


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Untruth: I really enjoy running up and down the stairs sometimes several times a day. I figure it's part of my "regular" workout. I credit it with helping to keep me in shape. With that said, yes, I did fall twice on the stairs within the first month of living in our house. Once I was carrying Andrew and that was when I bruised my ribs. The other time I was further up the steps and hit my head on the top wood stair causing a mild concussion. I was wearing socks one time and barefoot the other so I couldn't blame one or the other - just my clumsiness. :)