Top 3 Reasons Why Some For Sale Home By Owner Failed?

There are a lot of successful stories about for sale by owner. However, most of the sellers of for sale by owner (FSBO) failed to sell their homes. FSBO is not a simple task of sales and it takes a good professional skill set in sales and marketing. it also takes commitment, time and efforts, and knowledge, much more …

I am not saying you cannot sell your home with for sale by own. What I am saying is that you must not take it lightly and must avoid the mistakes other FSBO sellers made to increase your chance for success.

Here are top 3 reasons why FSBO sellers fail or the top 3 mistakes some FSBO sellers made:

1. Lack of enough marketing coverage.

Some FSBO sellers only list their home on website with very few traffic. The marketing methods they used are listing with a low traffic website and a yard sign in front of the house.
They cannot list their properties with multiple listing service(MLS) because these industry membership organizations are open only to licensed real estate brokers and agents. MLS is the place all the real estate agents to search properties for sale. Majority of homebuyers (close to 90%) now are still using agents to buy homes according to the survey data.
You can list your home with MLS with a flat fee service through a licensed agent. But unfortunately, some of sellers are so cheap. They don’t even want to pay around a $400 flat fee to list on MLS through a licensed agent. I am not trying to offend you. But, some of the sellers are.
No enough market coverage means no showing and no showing means no offer.

By not listing with MLS, you have effectively gotten rid of about 90% of the potential buyers or prospects even though you listed your home with a very popular FSBO site.
The rest of 10% prospects have to manage to find your house either by driving by your house accidentally and coincidently you are at home to let the prospect to see it, and coincidently the prospect likes your home and everything happens as exactly what you wanted or hoped for. 

I don’t know what the probability is for that. But, I think you might already know that if you have placed your FSBO sign in your front yard for 6 months now and only got 2 showings or less.

Solutions:

Find a flat fee listing agent for few hundred bucks or so to list on MLS in your area. It is cheaper to spend this amount rather than paying 6 to 12 mortgage payments.
You can go online and easily find a flat fee listing service in your local area. If you are in Georgia, you can also use the flat fee service I provide. As a free subscriber of my home selling tips, you can list your home for only $399 on FMLS, and Realtor.com plus a free home selling kit. Click this link to make your request now: http://besthomesellingtips.com/services

2. Over-pricing of your home for sale.

Like any other homeowners, we, human beings, always tend to honestly believe that our homes are worth more than comparable homes in our neighborhood. We have spent so much efforts and time upgrading our home, and taking good care of them.  We spent so much good time in the homes and we are emotionally attached to our homes. This causes us unable to objectively determine the real market value of our homes.

In addition, we mistakenly think that pricing higher give us room for negotiation. Unfortunately, there are few steps away from the stage of a prospect showing her/his interest to the stage of making offer and negotiations. Pricing too high can only drive away the buyers from your home and turn to your competitors’.
Solutions:

a) Do an objective comparative market analysis (CMA):
Ask for the opinion of a realtor on your property value. A lot of realtors will do it for you for free eventhough the realtors know that you may not list your home with them this time.
Use other tools and methods to get the value by yourself. You can click this link to read my blog titled  “3 Ways To Determine The Value of Your Property Without An Appraiser"
http://besthomesellingtips.com/category/home-selling-101/getting-property-value/

b) Price your home according to the market environments.

If it is a buyer’s market, price your home at the low end of the price range. If it is a seller’s market, price it above the price range, but lower than your competitors’.

3. Not inviting real estate agent to show your home.

In a typical home sale, the buyer's agent receives a percentage of the commission that the seller pays the listing agent. Real estate agents usually are unwilling to show your home unless there is clearly indication that shows an agent’s commission is protected. If you don’t invite buyer agents to show your home and also have no intention to protect agent’s commission, you just limit your buyer pool primarily to unrepresented and probably unqualified prospects.

If your goal is to sell your home to a homebuyer who doesn't use buyer agent, then that is a different story. 

Solutions:

If you are willing to sell your home to a prospect with buyer agent, write down something in all of you marketing materials clearly indicating that an agent commission is protected.

In addition to this top three reasons why you fail to sell your home with for sale by owner, there are some other reasons why a house doesn't sell. For more information on that, read my blog titled “Top Ten Reasons Why A House Doesn’t Sell And Their Solutions”.

http://besthomesellingtips.com/2007/08/04/top-ten-reasons-why-a-house-doesnt-sell-and-their-solutions/
 house no realtor selling, by home owner sale

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