Not sure why For Sale By Owner or FSBOs are so annoying. Is it because the neighbor is using an agent to sell their home and the agent commission is figured into the comps that people use to determine market value? Perhaps. Is it because the For Sale By Owner guy thinks he is going to save a couple bucks by selling himself even though all statistics prove him wrong and will most likely sell his home for a lot less than if he were to use a real estate broker? That might be it as well. Maybe the fact that he is not realizing we live in a dangerous time and he is not vetting strangers walking through his home casing the joint to see what they should come back to steal later. Is that the FSBO guy thinks he can do a job that takes years and years to get good at? Does he think he can market his home better than a marketing and distribution network that some realtors spend thousands of dollars on?
I think all of that is really annoying but the thing that dives real estate agents absolutely insane is when a buyer finds a FSBO online and they ask their broker about it. Now keep in mind most buyers have a buyer’s agency with their Realtor. Meaning they exclusively work with that agent to purchase their home. Now FSBO guy, when talking to the Realtor, says “no I will not offer a buyer co-op to an agent that brings me a buyer”. Now this is the absolutely dumbest thing anyone can do when selling their home. This for sale by owner guy has just cut out about 90% of his market. So in addition to taking longer to sell his home, getting less money for his FSBO, opening himself up to multiple exposure legally, he has just taken away about 90% of his possible buyers. Since most buyers will not be responsible for paying their agent on the buy side and that money comes from the seller, why in the heck would a buyer want to buy your home? They would then (most of the time depending on the specifics of the buyer agency agreement) be responsible for paying a commission when buying your home. Even in a seller’s market buyers are not that stupid.
If you plan to a FSBO, you have got to pay the going rate of commission to a buyer agent. Unless you really don’t want to sell and just have strangers going through your home all the time. Then by all means do everything wrong.
