My own personal experience with For-Sale-By-Owner sellers is pretty limited. I’ve never farmed them for listings, so I know nothing of that part of their lives. I’ve called a bunch of them to try to show their homes, but only once have I successfully gotten into one with my buyers. Mostly my experience consists of unreturned phone calls. Not a huge tragedy: The houses I’ve called on were almost always insanely over-priced. Actually, I have<\/i> seen quite a few FSBOs — after they were listed by professionals and professionally-priced.<\/p>\n
This has led me to believe that newspaper reporters live in a different universe. I’m pretty sure that most FSBO stories have unhappy endings, but you’d never guess that by reading the papers.<\/p>\n
The New York Times<\/i><\/a> coughs up another example today, this one based on a study done in Madison, Wisconsin. The story doesn’t concern FSBOs, but, rather, an alternative discount listing service, essentially an MLS-less real estate brokerage. The claim of the study is that sellers willing to sell into an artificially limited pool of buyers do as well or better than the sellers of Realtor-represented homes.<\/p>\n Is it true? Who knows? There’s not enough data to judge. Apparently the study measures sold homes. What about the homes that didn’t sell, or didn’t sell until they were listed by a Realtor? The authors of the study claim they were able to account for differences among properties, but this is simply an invitation to endless quibbling. In the end it doesn’t matter. Value is at once a matter of subjective perception and a practical, real-world trade-off. If you believe your time is best spent changing your own oil, you’re probably not my ideal client.<\/p>\n As you might expect, the study was done during the boom, when you couldn’t get a yard sign posted before the home sold. It is also reasonable to expect that newspapers all over the country will pick up the story, since it offers such amazingly bad advice in the current market.<\/p>\n More:<\/i><\/b> Galen Ward speculates on agent skill sets<\/a>, Glenn Kelman finds still another foot to shoot: Redfin is useless for <\/a>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My own personal experience with For-Sale-By-Owner sellers is pretty limited. I’ve never farmed them for listings, so I know nothing of that part of their lives. I’ve called a bunch of them to try to show their homes, but only once have I successfully gotten into one with my buyers. Mostly my experience consists of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-disintermediation","7":"category-marketing","8":"category-real-estate","10":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6887,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/6887\/has-real-estate-reality-taken-all-the-fizz-out-of-fsbos\/","url_meta":{"origin":1519,"position":0},"title":"Has real estate reality taken all the fizz out of FSBOs?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"It's been fun dealing with years-old academic studies of the real estate market insisting that For-Sale-By-Owner marketing is just as good as listing with a Realtor. It might have been, during the boom, when any idiot could sell a house. But it's been kind of sad to watch people in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":664,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/664\/dual-agency-smack-down-interlineal-chatter\/","url_meta":{"origin":1519,"position":1},"title":"Dual Agency Smack-Down: Interlineal chatter . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"This is from the AAR Consent to Limited Dual Representation form:The Broker now represents both Buyer and Seller and both parties understand that neither Broker nor Broker\u2019s Licensee(s) can represent the interests of one party to the exclusion or detriment of the other party.The important word is \"detriment\". I think\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dual Agency"","block_context":{"text":"Dual Agency","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/dual-agency\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":751,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/751\/visual-onomatopoeia\/","url_meta":{"origin":1519,"position":2},"title":"Visual onomatopoeia . . . ?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 8, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Paging Doctor Tufte. Richard Riccelli snagged this from Three Oceans Real Estate, but he's too busy posting his FSBOs on Zillow to write it up... Technorati Tags: real estate marketing","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13515,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/13515\/swallow-hard-make-it-happen-or-get-out\/","url_meta":{"origin":1519,"position":3},"title":"Swallow Hard — Make It Happen — Or Get Out","author":"Jeff Brown","date":"November 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"For the most part, it's human nature to have a love\/hate relationship with the results that have our name attached to them. I've failed far more often than I've succeeded. It's not even close. Name a category in which I've endured the ignominy of defeat, and my hand is more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dirty Laundry"","block_context":{"text":"Dirty Laundry","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/dirty-laundry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12829,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/12829\/the-holy-grail-of-real-estate-marketing-what-actually-works\/","url_meta":{"origin":1519,"position":4},"title":"The Holy Grail of Real Estate Marketing: What Actually Works?","author":"Jeff Brown","date":"August 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The only thing this marketing ignoramus can say with unshakeable confidence, is that marketing ain't sales. The rest I'm not all that sure about. Though to be fair, the more I read, the more I'm confused. So many of those who put bread on the table giving marketing advice, disagree\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":143,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/143\/a-map-mash-up-on-steroids-building-the-perfect-beast\/","url_meta":{"origin":1519,"position":5},"title":"A map mash-up on steroids: Building the perfect beast . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"July 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The software specification shown hear harkens back to this weblog post in reaction to The Future of Real Estate Marketing's remarks on ShackYack.com, a particulary robust real estate seach tool using a Google Maps mash-up for its interface. Cathy and I designed this as a futher elaboration on the ShackYack.com\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}