FSBO Advise to sell our home

[Vanessa Goetz]

Hello,

We are going to list our house FSBO in Gilbert/Ames, IA.

We have bought two properties FSBO, and sold several with agents. We feel comfortable enough to tackle it but we know some buyers are not comfortable with just going with a lawyer and title company.

We will do our best to stage it and plan to list on Zillow. We are also open to paying buyer agent fees. How does this typically work?

I had the thought of hosting a realtor open house and invite local realtor to walk through the house before we "list" it. Would that be a good idea? How do I reach out to agents?

We know we are in a desirable school district and we believe we can price our house compared to other properties on Zillow and pulling the sale records from the county in our area. Would you pull comps from 1 year ago? 6 months?

We have toyed with the idea of imitating realtor listings that do delayed showing to list our house now so potential buyers are aware of it, but we're still a week or 2 away from being show-ready. Thoughts?

What other advise would you have for a successful and quick FSBO sale? For handling showings? Should we ask potential buyes if they are pre qualified with a bank and show us that they are?

Thanks

Vanessa

[Chris Mason]

I would at the very least find a dirt cheap flat free agent so it's on the MLS. The actual MLS where Realtors will see it, not zillow/etc where it's invisible to the people that are actually selling the thing you want sold.

If you think it will "sell itself," then I would suggest asking why car dealerships have a bunch of salespersons on their lots. A good car priced well should "sell itself" right? Nope!

Sale #1 is to the buyer's agents, sale #2 is when they turn around and sell it to their buyers. Less exposure (which can lead to a lower sales price or longer days on market) when you try to skip sale #1.