When I became a Realtor I did not have a sphere in the area I wanted to market. But I was determined to make my real estate career work. I decided to concentrate on For Sale By Owners. I did all the research I could. I looked into statistics, I started keeping track of For Sale By Owner websites to see if the houses shown were still on the market (at the time most websites were inaccurate - not sure today). And I started keeping a list of every For Sale By Owner I came across (whether drive by, newspaper ad, or website). I spent a lot of time calling For Sale By Owners, knocking on their doors, mailing them stuff, or just leaving stuff on their door steps. The end result was over 50% of my business was coming from For Sale By Owners.
At that time the majority of the For Sale By Owners that I went onto represent had been on the market a long time. Many had paid for marketing that just didn’t work. And several by the time they listed with me really needed to sale. Because my statics proved that using a Real Estate Agent gave them a better opportunity to get their home sold or because they were desperate to sale I usually got the listing.
Of all the For Sale By Owners I dealt with one really sticks out in my mind.
These homeowners were a young couple with two children. The husband had gone trough a period of unemployment which had caused them to accumulate a large amount of debt. They need to sale the house to use the equity in the home to pay off the debt.
They needed the money so they had tried to go a cheaper route. They had used a For Sale By Owner Company which charged them a large amount of money to put the house on the Internet and send them a sign. They payed for some newspaper ads and held a lot of open houses. All without success. They did this for over four months without results and the bills were piling up. In their attempt to save the commission they wound up paying more in the long run in expenses and in the bills that were left unpaid.
I listed the home and got it under contract in 34 days. I sold it for only $300 less than what we had it listed for.
Just remember if you really want to do it yourself it may not be worth the potential risk and extra money it costs just to give it a try.
Tags: For Sale By Owner
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