My FSBO Story

By Anonymous

Back in the spring of 2005 my wife talked us into buying a brand new house in one of those new cookie cutter communities in New Jersey. The houses were big and the lots small. All the elevations or facades of the homes are the same except some floor plans are flipped right and some flipped left. Some have a stone front, others a brick front. Once inside you will find large rooms with lots of sheetrock.

At the time the prices of new homes were outrageous but we felt we could help pay for the new digs if we sold our present home ourselves without paying a real estate commission. We heard that selling yourself may be a little complicated but not impossible. We consider ourselves "do it yourselfers".

If we had to give 3 reasons for selling our house on our own they would be:

1. We did not want to pay a Realtor a $35,000 commission for doing nothing.
2. We really HATE Realtors. Enough said about that.
3. We wanted to maintain control.

Here's our list of items we used to sell our home:

1. An Internet listing of our home
2. A color brochure
3. A For Sale sign
4. Newspaper Ad
5. Open House Ad
6. Directional signs
7. Open House signs
8. Balloons
9. Title company or lawyer

Here's a time line of what happened and probably what you can expect.

April 14, 2005

We Googled the word FSBO and found 9,920,000 pages. Here are some sites and their corresponding fees we considered:

www.forsalebyowner.com $89.00/month or $199-$699 flat fee
www.byowner.com $399. or $499.
www.owners.com $14.95 to $99.95
www.fsbo.com $69.95 to $499.95
www.fsbomadison.com $150.00
www.housexpress.com $99
www.fsbo(any state).com $25. and up
www.sellyourhomeyourself.com $20-$40.
www.arsdata.com/fsbo.htm $19.95

After we decided on a FSBO site that looked good, we posted our home's information and a couple of good photos. We retrieved the details about our home from the old realtor listing sheet we kept when we bought our home. We updated any changes we made to the house since we bought it and uploaded it together with a couple of new photos to the FSBO site we chose. Our brochure was printed directly from what we uploaded to the FSBO site. We then brought that to Kinkos and made 50 color copies for about $50.00.

April 16, 2005

Our FSBO site provided a For Sale sign but it disappeared after the first week. We bought one at Home Depot for $19.99. Better yet, you can do it right and have the sign custom made by a local sign store for about $115.00.

April 18, 2005

Using our brochure we wrote and placed an ad for the local newspaper. Be certain to include the asking price because we found buyers will not call on ads without an asking price. Be ready to give the paper your credit card, as papers no longer extend credit. Our ad cost us about $56.00. We used a notebook to keep track of all the buyer calls. Now we waited for the phone to ring.

April 20, 2005

The newspaper generated a couple of calls: one of these prospective buyers talked to my wife for about a minute and then said something like, "Thanks for the info. I'll talk it over with my wife and get back to you". The second caller was really very polite and actually knew a friend of ours. We learned you have to be careful of what you say to callers because it's a small world. This caller promised to call back but he never did. We learned there is not much you can do about buyers who never call back. The 3rd caller asked for our address because she wanted to drive by and have a look. At first we were a little nervous about this since we didn't know anything about the caller. We eventually gave anyone who called just about any information they wanted to know about the house even though we knew many buyers really have no interest in buying any home. We found a lot of people who just didn't know what they were looking for. Then a moving company called to ask whether or not we had a mover yet. We came to the conclusions that movers read the classifieds too!

April 30 - May 15, 2005

We were disappointed about the response from the ad so we considered running a larger ad to bring in more buyers. We paid $336.00 for a display ad that included a photo of our home. We did a little research on the Internet and found that large brokerage firms have big ads but they only sell about 12% of their homes through advertising. In short, the display ad did nothing but make us feel good when we first saw it.

In addition to a couple of buyers that called, we began to get scam calls from Realtors. The scam works like this: They call and claim to have a customer interested in our home. But before they bring their customer over, they say they first need to "preview" the home. Then before they arrive they check to be sure both owners will be there. They want to be sure both property owners are present to sign the listing agreement they are hoping to push on you when they get there.

We found it is not easy getting rid of realtors. I learned the hard way that you should not be polite and call them back. If you show an ounce of weakness realtors will never stop calling - never. We also received letters from realtors claiming to have "a qualified buyer anxious to buy" in our neighborhood. We correctly presumed that this to be a lie and that these agents were only interested in having us list with them.

I swear there were times when realtors really got us discouraged. I can remember peering out our window, and realizing hundreds of realtors are out there, reading our ads, looking at our house on the FSBO site, and quietly stalking our listing like a wild pack of hyenas on the Serengeti. We now know this to be true because after we sold our house an agent told us that the large firms have Tuesday morning sales meetings and the sales managers tell all the gathered agents: "All FSBOs will eventually list with some realtor, be certain they list with you!"

May 16 - May 30, 2005

Realtors continued to call and bother us every night. To avoid this we added the line Principals Only! No Realtors Please! to our ads and on the FSBO site. Unfortunately this did not stop the moving companies from calling.

June 5, 2005

We held our first Open House. We called the paper and placed our ad to run on Sunday. We included our home address with directions. We also found it to be a good idea to include our zip code as some buyers like to use mapquest.com or maps.google.com for directions. The extra verbiage increased the cost of our ad to $129.00.

That Sunday morning arrived and we realized we forgot to get OPEN HOUSE signs. We found them in the doorknob aisle at HomeDepot, but we did not find any directional signs. We bought 4 signs for $80.00. We tied balloons on the signs and placed them at the intersections of major roads. We had a sign in sheet to give an air of security at our home. We hoped this would discourage weirdos and thieves from doing anything sinister once they were in our home.

During the open house about 6 cars drove by and 4 of them slowed down and then drove away. The first couple that came in my wife gave a tour. It surprised me how much she tried to sell the your house. She showed how smoothly the Kraftmaid cabinet drawers in the kitchen opened and closed. She counted the number of recessed lights out loud while she walked with the buyers through every room. She reminded the buyers about the hardwood floors that were under the wall-to-wall carpeting. My wife showed all the problems with the home that we corrected while living there. But while in the basement, the buyer asked if there has been any flooding. My wife explained that it only flooded once during Hurricane Floyd and that's because the power went out so the sump pump didn't work. The buyer didn't like the explanation so he left.

The 2nd buyer came in alone while her husband stayed in the car. We handed this buyer a brochure and left her alone. About a minute later this buyer said, "We are just trying to get a feel for the area while were in town visiting our daughter". I think this kind of buyer is called a "Looky Lou". We watched her get back in her car and disappear down the road.

June 10, 2005

We sent our flyers to the relocation departments of major employers in our area. We sent a letter to the Relocation Director of each firm and asked them to post them where the transferees might congregate. We also visited the local supermarket and posted one on the "community board".

June 15, 2005 A CONTRACT!

By this time the FSBO Internet site our home is listed on charged our credit card another $89.00. We were feeling a little depressed until later that afternoon a buyer driving a Mercedes Benz saw our for sale sign and knocked on our door. The first question this buyer asked us was whether or not we would hold a "purchase money mortgage". At first we didn't know what that meant but later learned the buyer just wanted us to loan him money he can use as the down payment. The buyer later called to schedule a visit to bring his entire family to see the house. During this showing we entered into a discussion about the sales price. We basically had agreed on a number but then out of nowhere this buyer wanted to deduct an additional 6%. He claimed since we were not using a Realtor he was saving us 6%. We agreed to split the difference and reduced our price 3%. We also agreed to let the buyer's title company and my lawyer finalize a written contract. Our lawyer said he would charge us about $800.00 to handle everything. Contract at last!

June 21, 2005

At our lawyer's urging we withdrew our offer to give a purchase money mortgage to the buyer. So now the buyer was trying to obtain 2 loans: one for the down payment and the other for the house. In short he was trying to buy the house with no money down. About 2 weeks later the buyer had his brother, a carpenter, inspect the home. He claimed the roof needed to be replaced. The roof didn't leak and was only about 20 years old. This inspector claimed the "useful life" was only 20 years so a new one was needed. On top of that he said 3 floor joists in the basement were rotted and needed to be replaced. And in order to accomplish this, the house would have to be jacked up and raised to insert the new beams. There were a lot of other items the buyer claimed was bad, and in all, the buyer wanted a credit of $24,000 at closing. We concluded this was a ruse and he was really aiming to use the credit as his down payment at closing.

The X Factor

At the same time we were trying to negotiate this home inspection credit another problem arose. We later learned from a real estate broker Murphy's Law in real estate is known as the "X-Factor". No one ever explained exactly what the problem was and no one knew what was happening - especially the buyer. It had something to do with the buyer purchasing our buyer's home. The buyer told us this was "no big deal" and that it would "solve itself in a couple of days". When we called our attorney for an explanation all he could say was, "Let me make a couple of phone calls and I'll get back to you". He never did. At this point we learned calling our lawyer was a waste of our money. For the next couple of weeks the transaction just sort of hung there in the twilight zone. (About 6 months later we found out our buyer's problem).

June 30, 2005 - NO CONTRACT

Finally after a month of getting nowhere our attorney finally said, "The deal is dead, he doesn't want the house". We asked if we could keep the buyer's deposit monies. After a couple more weeks we found no money was ever deposited by the buyer. We thought of suing our lawyer and the buyer. One last thing, we later found out that the buyer was really just an investor. He was not having a problem selling the house where he lived, but rather a house he was renting out and held as an investment.

August 3, 2005

The money we spent of the FSBO site and newspaper advertising is now approaching $600.00 and the home is still not sold. This is the time we started to think about ways we could work with Realtors. We decided to offer 2.5% to any Realtor who would bring us a buyer and a contract to buy the house. This type of arrangement is known as an open listing. We now added the line "Realtors Welcomed-2.5% Commission" to our ads. Amazingly, as the result of the ad change the Realtors almost stopped calling. We assumed the ad made it clear we were not going to list.

We also learned a trick about keeping visits by realtors to a minimum. Should any realtor come inside your home, remain standing the entire time they are there - do not sit and chat as they will never leave. Most of the agents stay about an hour. They never shut up about how great their company is and how they are rated #1 and how you should list with them now, "before the market goes bad". Note: no realtor ever brought a buyer.

August 15, 2005 - THE REALTOR LADY

Our home was still not sold and the contract for our new home had a $25 per day penalty for every day we late on closing. Our contract closing date was October 1, 2005. We now realize we had no choice but to list our home with a realtor.

The full commission realtor my wife wanted to use was one who called us claiming to have a buyer. She was pushy, drove a white Lexus and wore frameless blue-tinted glasses that matched her pants suit. My wife thought that since the agent is so pushy she would probably be just as aggressive selling our house. I began to think how that white Lexus and those frameless blue tinted glasses make her look like she makes a lot of money. I then looked out on my driveway and noticed my Ford Taurus needed to be washed. Then I thought about how much I dislike realtors.

So my wife called the realtor lady with the white Lexus and blue tinted frameless glasses.

The next night the realtor lady came to the house and just wouldn't shut up. She said she's giving us a deal by cutting her commission from 6% to 5%. BUT she says we will have to drop our price from $539,900 to $449,000 because it's priced too high. Next she wanted a six month listing contract. We only wanted to give her a month - max. She said how much money her firm was going to invest in the marketing of our property. We gave her 2 months.

August 18, 2005 - THE CONTRACT

Exactly 72 hours later a realtor we never heard of from a town 35 miles away delivered a full price contract that we accepted. The next night our realtor in the white Lexus and blue tinted frameless glasses called to confirm we signed the contract and if we had her copy. We told her the buyer's agent gave us one copy. She said "OK, we'll keep in touch" and hung up.

About 3 days later I called the realtor lady to ask what was happening. She wasn't there so I left a message on her voice mail. I then called the buyer's agent and he was polite and asked, "Did you speak to your agent yesterday?" When I replied "no" he said that he couldn't talk with me and that I should call my agent. I didn't push him for more information.

A couple hours later the realtor lady returned our call and said the buyers apparently went and bought another house. Dumbfounded, I asked for an explanation. I don't remember what she said. I got off the phone and started reading our listing contract. My goal was to find a way to break the listing contract with the realtor lady with the big fat rear end. My wife called her and they talked for about 15 minutes. The realtor lady kept apologizing and saying how sorry she was but that "these things happen" and (get ready for this) "WE should not have signed a contract with the buyers if they really didn't want the house". Hey reader, did you get that? We hadn't seen nor heard from the realtor lady with the big fat rear end since we signed her contract. Call us crazy but we think it would have been realistic for her to handle the contract personally. Don't you? After all, her commission on the deal amounted to $16,420. Shouldn't she be responsible for something?

Divorcing The Realtor Lady With the Big Fat...

Now my fears about the realtor lady were only confirmed. I did not trust her. I did not want her invloved with my house. I called her and said I wanted out of the contract. She said that would be impossible because our listing agreement with her was a "legal contract". This went back and forth for a while and I hung up on her. The next day my wife and I drove to her office with a type written letter in which the realtor lady agreed to release us from the listing contract. The realtor lady was not expecting us. There were other people in the office and I think she wanted to avoid a scene so she signed the release. I told her her lawn sign was in my trunk and that I would leave it on the side of her office.

THE END