FSBO.com founder hires a real estate agent to sell his home

 

FSBO=properties that are For Sale By Owner. Every year, hundreds of thousands of properties are offered for sale, not by real estate agents, but by the owners themselves. Most often, these are property owners who don’t want to pay the real estate agent’s fee. These FSBOs believe that they can do the work of an agent in researching a property’s correct price, staging it, marketing it in the right channels, showing it, negotiating the contract, qualifying the buyer, handling escrow, etc.

But sometimes, FSBOs are just owners who have unrealistic expectations of how easy it is to sell a property — why, just post it on the internet and the buyers will come, that’s all an agent does anyway, they assume. That’s why it was a sweet to hear that Colby Sambrotto, one of the founders of Internet listing site FSBO.com, ended up hiring a real estate agent to sell his $2 million condo.

The sale closed earlier this summer. The agent, Jesse Buckler of Bond New York, reportedly charged a 6% commission.

If you are in real estate or if you follow real estate, you know that this story isn’t that unusual. I’ve even read that Craigslist founder Craig Newmark said at three different conferences that he loves his real estate agent.

Interestingly, it’s been reported that FSBO founder Sambrotto had the listing on the market for months as his own FSBO; however, when Buckler got the listing — this spring, as Wall Streeters got their bonuses and the market for 2-bedrooms heated up — he jumped the sales price by $150,000. At that 7.5% higher price than it was marketed for on the FSBO site, the condo received multiple offers. So it looks like the agent paid for himself and then some!

Are agents really so magical that hiring one is going to generate an extra 7.5% in sales price? Not always, but a full-time, experienced, working agent does have a tremendous advantage over any FSBO seller…from the beginning of a transaction (pricing and staging) to the end (escrow and closing), and in every component in the middle.

Now if you’ve read this far and still want to go FSBO, don’t let me stop you…In fact, we have a program just for sellers who want to do some of the agents work and save thousands in commissions.

Give us a call at 561-432-5202 and ask about our MLS Advantage program.