Get Real Estate Blog: Salem Oregon Home Trends and Relocation Information

It’s been my general experience that most folks that choose to sell for sale by owner (FSBO, pronounced fizz-bo) are nice folks.  BUT if you are a real estate agent and spend any time on online forums, you can’t help but feel the anger by some folks against real estate agents.

Some have had a bad experience with an agent and generalize these characteristics to all agents.  Some just think the profession of a real estate agent is filled with uneducated morons.  Either way…I was inspired by a post on a forum by a FSBO, who clearly detests agents, to write a little song for FSBO’s who try to to sell real estate on their own here in Salem Oregon.

To the tune of Home on the Range…

Oh, give me a home where the agents don’t roam
And sellers can give their own showing.
When agents see the white sign and they can’t read the line
they stay in their car and keep going.

Sell, sell on my own
And the buyers and sellers will play
Where seldom is heard that commission-ing word
And the houses sell after 1 day.

How often I love, to give agents a fright
When they leave me their business card.
How I yell and I glare, until they’re all aware
Selling FSBO (Fizz-bo) ain’t all that hard.

Sell, sell on my own
’cause the sellers can sell on the net
Where seldom is heard that commission-ing word
and buyers and have sellers have met.

Where I set my own price, without any advice
and agents don’t get in the way
I would not bemoan to sell my home on my own
with no agents for sellers to pay.

Sell, sell on my own
And the buyers and sellers will play
Where seldom is heard that commission-ing word
And the houses sell after 10 days.

Oh, I love to start talks,  ‘fore that new buyer walks
I know I can work out a deal.
Those agents butt in and sellers can’t win
Cause they only care ’bout their next meal.

Sell, sell on my own
’cause I want to do it my way.
Where seldom is heard that commission-ing word
And the houses sell in ‘hundred days

If you are looking to sell FSBO and want help with the transaction management or want to consult with someone in the process. Consider my real estate consulting model which offers hourly rates for real estate services here in Salem Oregon area.

If you are one of the 15% of homeowners that want to sell their home themselves, then you have your work cut out for you. Here is what you need to know…

According to the 2007 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers

84% of buyers use a real estate agent, so you need to decide if you want to be “agent friendly” or not. Often times you will see “courtesy to broker” in the ad for the home. If you are willing to pay it, put it in your ad.

50% of buyers don’t use the newspaper at all to look for homes; 52% don’t go to open houses; and 69% don’t look at those real estate magazines; but 84% do look online. Moral…spend your time and your money wisely. Harness the internet.

How do you do that as a FSBO?

1) Use http://www.classifiedflyerads.com/, http://www.vflyer.com/, or http://www.postlets.com/. They have a free submission to many sites, or you can pay $10 a month for an upgraded service.
2) By the domain name for your house at http://www.godaddy.com/ for about $10. You can either create your own custom web site or you can go to http://www.wordpress.com/ or http://www.blogger.com/ and create a blog and use it to share area information in regard to the sale of your home.
3) Take good photos. If you don’t have a good camera, hire a professional photographer to take pictures for you.
4) Create a virtual tour. http://www.ubuildtours.com/ is really inexpensive and easy to use. They allow homeowners to create their own tours online. You can then link your tour to your custom blog/website that you created.
5) Make a video of your home and post it to http://www.youtube.com/. As a homeowner you need to be everywhere.
6) Make nice flyers and have a sign out front. 14% of home buyers still found their home by a for sale sign. Keep your flyer box full and put your website on the flyers and promote the virtual tour.
7) When you create an eflyer on one of the programs suggested in #1, email it to all of your friends and co-workers if allowed. 8% of home buyers found out about a home through a friend.
Hire a stager. You can visit http://www.activerain.com/ to see if any stagers are in your area, or just google “real estate stagers your town”. Many of them offer hourly rate consultation.
9) Consider using a real estate consultant. Okay, okay…I knew you were waiting for the real estate agent plug…but…there are those, like myself, that offer FSBO consultation services. Use us for what you need and ONLY pay for that. You can find some online at http://www.activerain.com/, http://www.myreconsultants.com/, and http://www.narec.com/. If none of those work type in “hourly rate real estate agents your town” and see what it gives you.
10) Get on every website that you can. Here are some suggestions http://www.craigslist.com/, http://www.statesmanjournal.com/, (our local paper), http://www.salem-news.com/, http://www.googlebase.com/, Yahoo homes, http://www.backpage.com/, http://www.kijiji.com/, http://www.zillow.com/, http://www.trulia.com/, http://www.bigbrick.com, http://www.homes.com/, http://www.realtytrac.com/, http://www.livehome.com/, http://www.local.com/, http://www.fsbo.com/, http://www.pbowner.com/, http://www.forsalebyowner.com/, you get the idea…

Those were my top ten internet marketing ideas for you FSBO’s. I also do this for my regular clients, but these are some great ways to harness the power of the internet to help you in the sale of your home.

And one more real estate agent plug…when you get an offer, if you feel overwhelmed give a real estate consultant a holler and we can take it from there.

Good luck!

Before you head down the path of reading this blog, you need to know that I think it’s great that people try and sell their own homes when they feel that can. I am not an anti-FSBO kind of agent. I equate it with people who choose to do their own taxes vs. hiring a CPA. Some people want to do it on their own and some people want to hire it out. Bashing FSBO’s is in poor taste. So if you are looking for a “pro real estate agent, you can’t live without me” type of blog, just stop now.

In this down market here in the Salem Oregon area, many sellers are trying to decide whether or not to take on the sale of their home themselves or hire it out. What choice you make depends on

1) What kind of time you have to devote to the sale of your home

2) What skills you have

3) Whether or not you understand the real estate process in your state.

Some sellers are perfectly capable of selling their home on their own. Yep…I said it…Some people really can do it themselves. People who are successful in selling their own home tend to do the following:

1) Be internet savvy. The understand the power of marketing on the internet and take advantage of that.

2) Read the laws. Yep…just because you are selling it yourself does not mean that you are exempt from local real estate laws.

3) Have sold a home before. It is really hard to sell your home FSBO (not saying you can’t, just harder), when you haven’t been through the process before.

4) Are patient. Most FSBO’s take a little longer to sell. You tend to get less showings because you are harder to find, but you will get them. You just have to be patient.

5) Ignore the propaganda. As a FSBO, you will be inundated with calls, emails, letters, etc about your home. These will mostly be real estate agents. Your ability to sell FSBO depends on your ability to set aside the slick “scripts” that agents are taught in order to “convert” you into a client.

6) Can be objective. You HAVE to be able to look at your home objectively and see what is good about it and what is bad about it. Are you a $35 tube of toothpaste in a $3 world?

7) Are reasonable. If you are a reasonable person you can have a very smooth real estate transaction. FSBO sales tend to go awry, when one party attempts to bully the other party into submission.

Selling your home yourself, especially in this market, will be a long process. You need to ask yourself, whether or not you have the patience for the process.