Sacramento For Sale By Owner (FSBO)

Home > Sacramento Homes For Sale By Owner

Sacramento Homes For Sale By Owner

Hi, Uncle Sam here. I use the Real Estate PLUS Team whenever I list a home in the Sacramento area. Shouldn't you?

Some Myths Explored

The For Sale By Owner option -- or FSBO -- is attractive to many sellers. Especially now with Sacramento area home sales being as strong as they are, sellers often feel that there's really no need to pay a full service commission. After all, sales seem to be pretty brisk in the neighborhood. So the feeling is, "I can sell my home myself if I want to, and it should sell easily in this market. Right?"

Well, yes and no. As regards the first part of the questions, "Can I sell my house as a FSBO if I want to?", the answer is an unqualified yes. There's no law at the federal or state level preventing you from selling your home any time you want to. You may need help or information to understand what disclosures are required from you by law as a seller, and you may want to read up on ways to protect yourself from liability issues, but absolutely you can sell your home yourself.

For those contemplating a For Sale By Owner, we think that the more important questions they should ask themselves are questions like the following:

What services do agent commissions buy for me?
If I save on the commission, how will I get these same things accomplished?
What might I have to give up to get my home sold if I can't get all these things accomplished?
How much money will I really save, and is that enough to cover the extra hassle?

Your commission dollars at work

OK, let's cut to the heart of the matter. Take a $400,000 house and a 6% commission. The heart of the FSBO argument is that the $24,000 you pay in this example isn't worth the value you receive for it, so you should save it by trying to do "it" yourself.

OK, ready? Let's do it ourselves. First, go hire a team of approximately 17,611 sales people, any one of whom can make $12,000 by selling your home (minus his broker split E & O insurance, advertising, etc.). 17,611 is the number of brokers and agents participating in the Sacramento Metropolitan MLS, according to their own statistics, as of today (August 17, 2004). Now create a database of thousands of local homes that they can sell to others, so they can make a living doing this full time. Now make your home conveniently available in that database.

Are you finished with that part yet? Good. Don't forget to train them all in relevant state law regarding home sales, write up a code of ethics and make them adhere to it, and train them in sales, negotiation, and marketing. Also, make sure they all have a pretty good idea of what your home is worth. Now get one of them to price it for you for free.

Ready? Good. Now have each of these agents paying hundreds of dollars per year each on advertising, promotion, radio spots, web sites, handouts, postcards, key rings... well, you get the picture. What we're looking for is a local buyer pool big enough to support 256 sold listings on any given weekday. That's twenty-eight billion dollars in sales volume per year, more or less.

How's your buyer pool doing? Coming along nicely?

NEXT . . . Maybe "Co-Operation" Is the Answer?

var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-142624-3"); pageTracker._initData(); pageTracker._trackPageview();