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!

“In order to cure your cold, you need to get some rest, drink plenty of
fluids, and eat well,” said the doctor. “You should be fine in 1-3
weeks.”

“No, I want you to cure it, and I want it gone in the next 24 hours,” I
replied.

“If you do what I tell you to, then you will get better, but it will
take time,” replied the doctor.

“Well, thanks for the visit, but I think I’ll find another doctor who
will cure me in 24 hours. I don’t think you are doing a very good job as a
doctor. You don’t need to send me a bill because I am not paying
you.”

Most people would think this scenario is ridiculous. If a doctor said it would take 1-3 weeks to get cured, we wouldn’t insist on finding a doctor who would tell us what we want to hear. We also would still get to pay the bill regardless of whether or not we liked the doctor’s opinion.
Real estate agents face the dichotomy of trying to establish themselves as professionals, but still rely on the salesperson method of being paid.

The American consumer is shifting towards wanting more of this type of a service. I do about two hourly rate contracts a month, and have never had an issue of being paid, or people not valuing the service. I can also say that this service scares the jeepers out of some customers and they just can’t wrap their head around it. I’ve actually had potential clients ask me if it was legal for me to charge an hourly rate.

Despite the fact that we talk about fees being negotiable, the consumer is slow to recognize the alternatives. I personally think if we are going to close the gap, and increase the professionalism of the industry, we will need to stop thinking of ourselves as salespeople, focusing on “top producing”, “million dollar clubs, etc. Those terms are not geared towards professionalism and service. I am not putting down agents that have worked hard for those type of accolades by any means, but encourage agents in their branding to distinguish themselves on service. In the end, that is what is most important.