Selling A Home By Owner – Is It Worth The Effort?

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Selling A Home By Owner – Is It Worth The Effort?

Selling A Home By Owner Is Unlike Using An Agent

If you’ve ever thought that buying or selling a home by owner, otherwise known as “FSBO” real estate is little or no different than buying from a real estate agent, you may want to reconsider.  There are a number of very important differences that you’ll find if you ever decide to purchase FSBO real estate.

Whole New Set Of Problems When Selling A Home By Owner

Selling a home by owner has a whole new set of problems as well as opportunities, for both the seller and the buyer, whether an investor buyer or an occupant buyer.  A typical homeowner is not very well informed about all the nuances that he will encounter during the selling process.  Even though they convinced themselves early on that they knew about and could manage the entire process all alone, without a real estate agents involvement, those nuances of selling a home by owner can leave the seller at times frustrated and agitated (wait until the buyers start picking apart his beloved house, his home of possibly years, as they negotiate for a better price). On the other hand, buying FSBO real estate could be profitable for the buyer.

As you could imagine, selling a home by owner has one main advantage for the homeowner:  save that sales commission that a real estate agent would otherwise earn.  They don’t realize the time and effort, the complexity of the process or even what it costs to sell it by themselves, without a professional agent in front of them.  Oftentimes, the seller will become very frustrated, grow weary of the process and the constant anxiety as he goes from one potential buyer to another, with no offers, or probably too unrealistic offers (in their mind), if any.  They will want to let the price drop just to get the house sold so they can move on with the next phase of their lives.

Based on this frustration level, it may be a good time for the buyer to come in and help the seller solve his problem.  That being done, the buyer can usually get a better price for the investment when selling a home by owner.

Points To Remember When Selling A Home By Owner

With the above in mind, there are a few points you will want to consider and remember when selling a home by owner:

1. As mentioned above, the seller is not a real estate agent, and likely will not have comparable knowledge on the selling of a property.  Therefore, you will need to carefully select what you want to say as well as the questions you’ll want to ask.  You always want to be positive in your comments, rather than negative, about the property.  Human nature as it is, it will be more difficult to work a good deal if the seller does not like you.

2. Whether they are or not, the sellers will think they’re being smart. So what you want to do is encourage that belief, so they will be more open to your offer.  You’ll want to let the seller know they have a good idea if indeed they do, so let them know it.  It’s completely alright to make people feel good about themselves as you go through the negotiation process.

3. Quite often the FSBO real estate has been on the market a long time. After this long period of time the sellers are pretty much tiring of the process and just want to get the property sold so they can move on. For the buyer, this frustration point means he can probably get a better price, especially if he can close quickly to get the problem off the seller.

4. When selling a home by owner, the seller’s generally have not set up a plan for the selling process. Few FSBO sellers ever know how to go about the closing, including such items as where to close, buying the title policy, what to do with the good faith deposit, and more.  If you know the answer to these points, having your solutions to their problems ready, and in other words guide the seller through these hurdles, while all the time allowing the seller to feel as though he is in control, then mutual trust will be developed.

5. One point regarding the negotiation process in selling a home by owner is that if you encounter stumbling blocks along the way, you should just move on by them to return at a later time in the negotiations.  With the seller investing so much time with you in the process, he will be more inclined to work with you at the end to get over the hurdles, thus a better deal for the seller.

6. One final point when selling a home by owner is that by the end of the process, the sellers have already spent more money than they had anticipated on the classified ads and other previously unknown reasons, and this may be cutting deeply into their anticipated profit from selling the property on their own. As time goes on the sellers will be more willing to deal.

When Selling A Home By Owner Is The Net Profit Worth The Trouble?

What most real estate agents will let you know is that with most FSBO real estate properties, the net profit to the seller will be less than if it would have been sold through an agent. But by the time a seller realizes it, there is usually no time to recover the lost time and money. By now the seller generally will want to just get the property sold and out of his hands as quickly and easily as possible. If the buyer is able to help the seller with his problem in this way, a good deal can be earned for having pursued the FSBO real estate.

I invite you to review what other sellers and real estate agents have to say about selling a home by owner.  and check out other opinions in the blog.

Feel free to share this post with your friends, family and business associates or others who would be interested in selling a home by owner information.

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