Things to Consider When Selling Your Home as a For Sale By Owner
Everybody knows the acronym FSBO, Or maybe you don’t. What FSBO stands for is For Sale By Owner. And if you’re considering selling your home or selling your Santa Cruz home, then you probably have at one point in time thought, “I should save on the commission and sell my home by myself.”
I’m Shemeika Fox, your Santa Cruz real estate expert. And I know that it’s strange to take advice on why not to sell your home as a For Sale By Owner from a real estate agent. Trust me, that seems like that whole like used car men reputation that we get already as it is. But I’m going to share with you a few reasons why I think it’s a good idea why you should hire a realtor to help you with the sale of your Santa Cruz home and not sell your home as a For Sale By Owner.
You might think that the reward of saving money on a Realtor’s commission outweighs the risks of selling your home for yourself, but I’m here to tell you that when selling your home as a For Sale By Owner, the risks definitely outweigh the reward. There is a lot to consider before you decide to skip out on hiring a Realtor to facilitate your home sale.
The first thing that you should consider, if you are considering a For Sale By Owner, is how will you ensure your home is seen by pre-qualified home buyers? When selling your home for yourself, you run the risk of having few potential buyers come to your home to view it. And of those few potential home buyers, few of them will be qualified to purchase your Santa Cruz home. You do not want to be spending your time showing your property over and over to potential buyers who have not even gone through the pre-approval process. If you are selling your Santa Cruz home for yourself, do you know how to qualify a buyer before you let them in your home?
Also, I know that there’s a lot of information on the internet these days, and there’s a lot of sites that you can actually post and publish your Santa Cruz home for sale, but have you considered how to market your home in a way that will grab the attention of home buyers? Posting and publishing your home with photos that you have taken with your flip phone is not going to be the best way to sell your Santa Cruz home. At Fox Realty Group, we spend hundreds of dollars on marketing our listings and we hire a professional photographer to take beautiful photos and an engaging video in order to generate buzz. Remember that when home buyers are looking through the many homes that are for sale, that your home will be in direct competition with Santa Cruz homes that are professionally listed, and photos act as a first impression. So, when you’re considering selling your home as a For Sale By Owner, I would suggest that you think deeply if actually saving on commission is going to put more money in your pocket at the end of the day.
Another thing to consider if you are considering selling your home For Sale By Owner is the legal ramifications. As an experienced Realtor, we have not only knowledge, but access to a database of the required California state disclosures that a seller must fill out when they are selling their home. So as a For Sale By Owner, will you have the knowledge and the access to get the disclosures that are required when you are selling your home for yourself?
Another thing to consider when you are thinking about doing a For Sale By Owner or FSBO, is that a lot of Realtors will not show your Santa Cruz home to their clients. Not only do they feel nervous that they do not have their commission protected, but it is really challenging to represent a buyer in a transaction with a For Sale By Owner when the seller doesn’t have professional representation. And this goes back into the points of how will we as professional Realtors get the appropriate disclosures when we are representing the buyer and not the seller. We cannot provide the disclosures for that FSBO seller as a buyer representative. Which makes the transaction more challenging than it normally would be. And when you limit the number of Realtors that will show your home and potentially sell your home, you are limiting the amount of money that you can make when you sell your Santa Cruz home.
Another thing to consider when you’re doing a For Sale By Owner is the emotional element. Now, I read an article recently, and this is really interesting, that business transactions are business transactions, but real estate is the only business transaction that has an emotional element involved in it. After all, your home is where you may have raised a family; seen your baby take their first steps, learned how to make your Grandma’s pie, or brought home your beloved dog. Your Santa Cruz home is maybe where you have enjoyed having friends over; talking for hours or relaxing with them after a long day at work. Your home is filled with your memories, making it emotional to you as a seller. So, adding the element of business to an already emotional transaction without any sort of buffer in between you and the person purchasing your Santa Cruz home can add a lot of turmoil and challenges to the actual transaction itself.
Another thing to think about if you’re considering doing a For Sale By Owner sale of your home is that real estate is actually a full-time job, especially if you are going to be successful at it. Whether it is getting the house prepared for a showing, cleaning and staging the home, making sure that all of the information that you need is online and available to potential buyers, answering phone calls, hosting open houses, marketing it, continuing to market it, negotiating, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So, remember, if selling real estate is not already your full-time job, it will become your full-time job when you are trying to sell your home as a FSBO. So, unless you have an extra 120 hours in the week, outside of your actual job, and you do not care about sleep, it will take over your life. Think about the time you will save by hiring a professional to help you with the real estate transaction process. They do all the work, so you do not have to. And it is our full-time job, so Realtors can sell a home and they do it so well.
The other thing you should consider if you’re considering For Sale By Owner versus hiring a real estate professional or a Realtor is do you have a large database with thousands of people who are potentially interested in buying a home? Realtors come with the benefit of a large network of people in their database, meaning lots of potential home buyers. For example, at Fox Realty Group, when we have a home that will be coming on the market, we are able to not only market it to the thousands of clients in my database and also the thousands of Realtors that we have incorporated into my database, but we are also able to send it out to thousands of other Realtors in surrounding counties and at least 500 of the neighbors surrounding our listing. And we also utilize the power of social media ads, so we really get the maximum amount of eyes on every Santa Cruz property that we sell. As a For Sale By Owner, it is really challenging to get your home seen by the masses, unless you already have a database of 10,000 people.
Trust me, I get it, For Sale By Owner sounds really romanticized, especially with all the fun and entertaining real estate programs that we watch on TV these days , like Selling Sunset. And a lot of the information that it available on the internet, oversimplifies all the hard work that goes into selling a home. But remember, as I said earlier, that when selling real estate there is a tremendous amount of legal risks. So, hiring a Santa Cruz Realtor to represent you in the sale of your home helps protect you against those legal risks.
And last but not least, when you are considering selling your home For Sale By Owner remember that Realtors are actually professionally trained to be negotiation masters. I personally take classes every year so that I can really dive deep into negotiation strategies and have the ability to successfully negotiate, not only at the beginning of the transaction, but throughout the entire escrow process. Because every step of the way, there will be an additional hurdle, an additional challenge, an additional step of negotiation tactics that need to be applied in order to get the best results for my clients. Would you feel comfortable and confident negotiating the sale of your largest asset? And would you be able to stay level-headed during the negotiations even though you are emotionally invested in your Santa Cruz home?
So, if you are considering selling your home For Sale By Owner, by all means, explore that as an option, but also please reach out to a couple of real estate professionals. {Interview Questions to ask a Realtor} See if they have any value that would really add to your life and to the sales process for selling your Santa Cruz real estate. If you have any questions or you’d like additional information, please feel free to reach out. I’m Shemeika Fox, your Santa Cruz real estate expert. And as always, I’m here to help.
