Lakes Region Homes for Sale
(603) 229-8322
brent@rocherealty.com
  • Home
  • Home Buyer
    • Step 1 for Home Buyers
    • Step 2 for Home Buyers
    • Step 3 for Home Buyers
    • Step 4 for Home Buyers
    • Why Buy in New Hampshire?
  • Home Seller
    • Laconia (Single Family Homes)
    • Laconia (Condominiums)
    • Gilford
    • Meredith
    • Moultonborough
    • Marketing Your Property
    • Out of State Sellers
  • Real Estate Blog
  • About
  • Contact

For Sale By Owner? The facts about risk and reward

4/12/2019

Comments

 
Picture
If you’re trying the “For Sale By Owner” (also known as FSBO/fizbo) approach to selling and your home has been on the market for more than two weeks, it might be time to consider a new tactic. Let me tell you why.

The odds are against FSBO: According to the National Association of Realtors®, in 2018 fizbo sales accounted for just seven percent of all home sales, the lowest percent on record. In other words, 93 percent of successful home sales last year were not conducted by homeowners themselves.

After 14 days FSBO odds worsen: Seventy-three percent of FSBO homes sold in less than two weeks. Sounds great, but in many cases this is simply because fizbo homes were sold to someone the seller already knew. So if your home hasn’t sold to a friend, neighbor, co-worker or family member within the first 14 days, statistics suggest a successful FSBO sale becomes even more unlikely.

FSBO properties typically sell for less: In 2018 FSBO homes sold at a median closed price of $200,000. That’s significantly lower than the median $264,900 earned by agent-assisted sales.
Home sellers typically try FSBO because they want to maximize profits by avoiding the commission a brokerage would earn for successfully selling the home. But data suggest it doesn’t generally work out that way.

FSBO sellers commonly end up paying a commission anyway, to a buyer’s agent who brings a client. Eighty-seven percent of buyers in 2018 purchased their home through a real estate agent or broker. Makes sense… why would buyers choose to make one of life’s biggest purchases without an experienced professional serving to protect their best interests and negotiate the best price, when that service doesn’t cost buyers a dime?

Also, the stats suggest that FSBO sellers still make less money, even if they manage to avoid paying any commission.
Take the median closed price for agent assisted sales, $264,900, subtract an estimated six percent commission ($15,894, which is typically split between two brokerages), and you end up with a net of $249,006. That’s still $49,006 (20 percent) more than the typical FSBO closed price, even after factoring for commissions.

That’s a general analysis, results may vary, but keep in mind that FSBO sellers always assume full responsibility for:
  • properly pricing and effectively photographing and marketing the property
  • staging the home’s interior and exterior for maximum appeal
  • making time for every call and showing (no matter how inconvenient), for both legitimate prospects and “Lookie Lous”
  • negotiation, which often includes arranging and paying for agreed repairs, or lowering the sale price
  • coordinating home appraisal, praying the “price is right,” and dealing with it if it’s not
  • facilitating home inspection (precarious for FSBO sellers because they’re not insulated by representation)
  • the proper completion of numerous legally binding contracts and documents

The FSBO seller will also be responsible for complying with all closing regulations and requirements once an offer is accepted, as well as legal liability for any errors, misrepresentations or omissions.

In other words, evidence suggests that FSBO sellers assume a lot of extra work and legal liability, and typically make $49,000 less in median sales prices when they don’t use listing agents.

None of these observation are a knock against FSBO sellers. There are many valid reasons real estate professionals sell more homes and earn higher prices. For example:

Accurate home valuation: Home valuation is exceptionally challenging in New England, where homes built and added onto since the 1700s can neighbor ones constructed in the 21st Century. In the Lakes Region, land quality, view and value can vary dramatically between the subject property and a comparable down the street.
Valuation is even harder for homeowners, who may instinctively add sentimental value, and who have limited experience compounded by lack of access to the full range of comparable property sales data (and therefore overreliance on town tax assessments or free online value estimates from Redfin, Zillow or Homes.com, which have been proven to be wrong 36 to 84 percent of the time)
Picture
Access to technology: FSBO listings often feature amateur photos that look like they were taken with a smart phone or basic camera. At Roche Realty Group we take thousands of property photos each year and use a variety of DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) cameras to take high dynamic range photos, which offer vastly improved image quality. Homes with professional-quality DSLR photography are more likely to sell within six months than homes with “point-and-shoot” photos.

Additionally, we have the capacity to offer Matterport® Photography with “3D Showcase,” an immersive online 3D experience that gives buyers a true feeling for your property before they ever see it in person. It’s like “Google Street View” for your home.

Finally, our agency possesses “drone” aerial video and photo technology. We leverage this imagery when properties have acreage that would be difficult to portray from the ground level, and/or to show select properties in context of their Lakes Region locations.

Improved internet presence: For the third year in a row, a whopping 95 percent of buyers used the internet during the home search process, and 50 percent found the home they purchased, via online search.
​

Most FSBO homes suffer extremely limited internet visibility. On the other hand, as a Realtor®, as soon as I enter a listing into the MLS (which is THE critical online tool), I can immediately share that listing with countless buyers on Zillow, Trulia, RealEstate.com, Realtor.com, Homes.com, Homesnap.com, Realtors Property Resource, and ListHub.
Roche Realty Group also advertises listings on about 80 real estate websites, including LuxuryHomes.com, Homes & Land, Lakehouse.com, World Property Journal, GolfHomes.com, Luxury Real Estate, and Boston.com (the Boston Globe site).

Further, RocheRealty.com is one of the Lakes Regions’ most visited websites, and nearly six hundred of our optimized key search phrases appear on page one in Google search results (for topics including Lakes Region communities and New Hampshire lakes, towns and islands).

The bottom line is that if you’re trying the For Sale By Owner sales route and your home’s been on the market for more than two weeks, it might be time to increase your odds of selling and maximizing your sales price by hiring an experienced Realtor® who can offer professional-grade valuation, imagery, print and digital marketing, and salesmanship. Give me a call. I’m here to help, and it won’t cost you anything unless the home sells.
Brent Metzger is a Realtor® with Roche Realty Group. He may be reached at (603) 229-8322 or www.LakesRegionHomeSeller.com
Comments

What to do if your listing expires

4/9/2019

Comments

 
Picture
Expired listings are a frustrating reality in real estate. If you want to change the outcome, you may have to make some changes. Following are some options and tips on what to do if your listing has expired and you want to sell your home:

Consider re-listing with your current agent, but insist on a new approach. Your current agent is already familiar with your property and can update and reactivate the listing very quickly, which spares you the time and effort of interviewing other agents, who must start from scratch with questions, paperwork, photographs and marketing.

If you’re open to giving your current agent another try, ask for an updated CMA (comparative market analysis). The housing market is dynamic, ever-changing, and a value estimate from six or more months ago is dated, like a newspaper from six months ago. Also, be sure to ask what he or she is going to do differently to market and sell (not just list—there’s a difference) your home this time around. We’ve all heard that the definition of insanity is “trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different response,” so if your home hasn’t sold it’s perfectly reasonable to expect a new approach in order to achieve a new result. If the agent doesn’t have satisfactory answers to those questions, you might…

Give another agent a chance. There are advantages to bringing in fresh eyes, especially if your previous agent wasn’t proactive and responsive in their communications, or was limited with regards to marketing you home.
When interviewing a replacement Realtor®, be sure to ask: “Will you put a lock box on my property?” Lock boxes don’t sell homes, they just let people in. Further, lock boxes open real estate professionals and home owners to a lot of potential liability. For example, what if something is stolen during a “showing” where no one was there to represent you?

Also ask what type of technology their firm uses. For example, can they offer aerial drone photography and videos? Do they offer Matterport 3D virtual tours, which give prospective buyers an online showing of your home’s interior? (Visit lakesregionhomeseller.com/marketing-your-property for examples.)

Finally, ask if they practice real estate full time or part time. A part-timer may get the job done but if the agent is busy with his or her primary job and can’t show your home and respond to questions in a timely fashion, vital sales momentum can be lost.

Further, real estate requires a steep and constant learning curve. Someone who is not 100 percent committed to the business may not be current with the latest training and techniques to make sure your property sells, for an appropriate price, with minimum legal liability.

When a listing has expired, one way to sell the house is to lower the price. If fact, if your home hasn’t sold in this market, there’s a good chance there’s an issue with the price. The collective wisdom of the market trumps what the owner thinks, hopes or feels the home is worth, so be open to adjustment. Another approach is to improve how the property presents.

You might need to take some steps to improve the perceived value of the home. Here are some tips to help your home sell in the shortest period of time, for the greatest value:

Make it sparkle. If you were selling a used car you’d take it to the car wash, right? Why not do the same thing for your house? You can, with pressure washing. Pressure washing does a number on the staining, moss and mildew that can do a number on the curb appeal of a property’s decks, patios, siding, roof and gutters.

Clean and cut clutter. A clean, clutter free interior makes an amazing difference when showing a property to buyers. Prospective buyers can be easily distracted by clutter, so clean and declutter as though you are expecting very important visitors… in this case visitors who may want to give you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) for your property!

Pay special attention to cleaning windows so your property looks great from the outside looking in and inside looking out. Open or remove drapes, curtains and valances so every possible ray of natural light penetrates the interior of your home. Just like lighting is important when filming actors, models or products, proper lighting will help your Realtor® take the best pictures and give the best showings possible.

Paint for profit. Zillow's new 2018 Paint Color Analysis examined over 135,000 photos from homes sold across the U.S. to see how sales prices compared for homes with colored walls versus homes with white walls. Here are some findings:
  • Homes with charcoal gray or black doors sold for $6,271 more than expected. A black front door could increase the price of a typical U.S. home by 2.9 percent.
  • Houses with “tuxedo kitchens” (dark cabinets and islands with light wall colors) sold at a $1,547 premium. The most popular color combination was dark, navy blue or black contrasting white.
  • Homes with warm tan or light taupe living rooms, particularly with peach or pink undertones sold for $2,793 more than expected.
  • Bathrooms with light blue or periwinkle blue paint, specifically with a gray-blue tint, increased average selling price by $2,786.
  • Homes with raspberry, brick or barn red in the kitchen sold for $2,310 less than expected.
If your listing has expired and you want to change the outcome, it might be time to make some changes in personnel, promotion, price, or property presentation. It might be the difference between a successful sale and another expired listing.
​
Brent Metzger is a Realtor® with Roche Realty Group. He may be reached at (603) 229-8322 or www.LakesRegionHomeSeller.com

Comments

    Archives

    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017

















    ​Copyright 2018

    Brent Metzger is actively licensed as a sales agent (# 072494) with the New Hampshire Office of Professional Licensure, Certification/NH Real Estate Commission, and is affiliated with brokerage Roche Realty Group / 97 Daniel Webster Highway Meredith, NH 03253 / office: (603) 279-7046
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.