Real Estate & the Internet

We’ve long said that the marketing power of the Internet has literally changed the face of real estate, helping to provide open access to real estate data & information that previously was only readily available to real estate agents. The Internet has allowed for the three key steps to selling a home (effectively pricing a home, marketing a home and transferring the title) to be done in a very efficient and affordable manner – all a person needs is an Internet connection.

The Internet will continue to have a large and growing role within the real estate industry, and the topic continues to be an important subject followed by the media. As the country’s leading “for sale by owner” company & website, we’re consistently covered in the press. Read this U.S. News & World Report article that came out this week, as well as this Money Magazine story from the publication’s June issue.

Tips for Selling in a Tough Market

Today the latest S&P Case/Shiller Home Price Index was released, showing that most of the nation's largest markets suffered double-digit drops over last year. As the home prices have dropped, more people are realizing just how costly it is to pay that 6% real estate commission.

By providing online marketing, property pricing reports, real estate resources and access to legal forms, ForSaleByOwner.com offers all the tools that homeowners need to market and sell their home in today’s tough real estate market. We'd like to offer these “Top 5 Tips” to help people get started on how to sell their home “for sale by owner.”

1. Be Your Own Agent: An agent’s commission cost home sellers 6% of their home’s value. ForSaleByOwner.com customers are able to competitively price their home compared to similar homes represented by agents and still come out ahead financially because they are not paying commission. In addition, separate recent studies by professors at two of the nation’s most prestigious universities, Northwestern and Stanford, determined that unrepresented homeowners are as effective at maximizing the sales price of their home as agents.
2. Use the Internet to Market the Home: More than 84% of buyers use the Internet to search for a home. Putting a home on ForSaleByOwner.com helps home sellers market their home to nearly 2 million people monthly. Online property listings should boast multiple high quality, digital photographs of their home’s interior and exterior. Homes with multiple photographs receive more attention from buyers. The online listing should be combined with a yard sign to attract people driving by the home.
3. Price the Home Accurately: The market in 2008 is very different from a few years ago when bidding wars drove up home prices. In today’s market, home sellers need to become more educated about their local real estate market so that they can effectively price their house. To make it easy, ForSaleByOwner.com provides its customers with a customized property pricing report that contains recent home sales data and home valuation data. Sellers should also research their neighborhood to compare the listing prices of similar houses and use that information to competitively price their home.
4. Consider Placing the Home on the MLS: The Multiple Listing Service, or MLS, is a complete inventory of homes on the market. Sellers should remember they no longer need a real estate agent or broker to get their home on the MLS, and their home can be placed on the MLS through ForSaleByOwner.com.
5. Don’t Be Afraid of the Paperwork: While one of the biggest myths in real estate is that agents handle the legal paperwork, the fact is that other professionals provide these services. Whether a seller uses an agent or goes “for sale by owner,” outside help is needed to navigate through the legal process of transferring the title. A real estate attorney or title company will prepare and handle all of the legal paperwork for sellers.
   

What Are People Doing With Their Savings?

Since we started doing business in the late 1990s, a common feedback from our customers has been that using ForSaleByOwner.com was the single-largest savings device they have ever used. Saving $20,000 in commissions on a $340,000 home, for example, allowed a recent husband and wife customer in Stamford, CT, to put some extra money away for retirement. Other customers have earmarked the savings to pay for a child or grandchild's college tuition, or to furnish their new home.

We want to hear from you. What have you done with the commission you saved by using ForSaleByOwner.com?

Reach More Buyers Online

Reflecting the growth of the Internet for selling and buying a home, new independent data shows that ForSaleByOwner.com gets more online traffic than the websites of most real estate brokerage companies. The data, from comScore, Inc., should quiet the claims of real estate agents about their ability to market their clients’ properties. Even the trade group for real estate agents – the National Association of Realtors – points out that more than 84% of buyers use the Internet to search for a home. So not only will using an agent cost sellers 6% of their home’s value (or $18K for a house sold at $300,000), it won’t give them as much marketing power & exposure as ForSaleByOwner.com.

How did our customers sell their homes?

Have a house that you sold on ForSaleByOwner.com? We'd like to hear from you and ask that you post a comment here to share your success story and "top tips" so that others may learn from your experience. What were the reasons why your home sold? Did not having to pay a commission allow to you price your home more competitively that similar homes on the market?

Have a question about the real estate process?

One our top priorities is educating people on the real estate process, so that home sellers and buyers can have a growing confidence in handling a real estate transaction without using an agent.

We invite you to post a comment here to ask a question about the real estate process, or how to best use ForSaleByOwner.com products and services. We'll respond with our thoughts -- and others are free to post as well -- to help you learn more about going "for sale by owner."

More Reasons to Go ForSaleByOwner.com

Two recent housing reports on declining home prices across the United States and in 20 key markets can’t be good news for real estate agents. In February 2008, the median home price dropped 8.2 percent from a year earlier, which is the largest decrease on record. When you factor in that it costs 6% of your home’s value to sell via a Realtor – and another 1.5% in closing costs – the typical U.S. home seller will be losing more than 15% of their home’s value if they sell through an agent.

The primary reason why people come to ForSaleByOwner.com (http://www.forsalebyowner.com) is to save money during the home selling process. While we can’t stop home prices from falling – or going up ☺ -we can help sellers avoid losing another 6% of their home’s value. Our listings went up by nearly 10% last year, largely because more people are learning that they can sell and buy homes without using an agent.