Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hn_throwaway_99 969 days ago
I agree with this sentiment, and I'm especially in favor of selling where you purchase services "a la carte" (e.g. pay a fee for a real estate attorney, a separate one to the escrow company, photographers if needed, etc.).

However, if you say "it isn't hard by any stretch", I invite you to take a look at listings in your area and compare for-sale-by-owner listings with those listed by an agent. Half the time it looks like the photos on FSBO listings were taken by a flip phone from the early 00s, often times the pictures look like the person didn't even clean or there are garbage cans in curbside pics, the descriptions have glaring typos, etc. My point being that I believe it shouldn't be hard, but I am often dumbfounded about how the average quality of FSBO listings (at least where I live) is abysmal. These people are easily losing out on a lot of money by not putting a minimal amount of effort into selling the biggest asset they own.
1 comments
DavidPeiffer 968 days ago
We sold our first home with some help of a FSBO service. I think it was $1,500. They wrote the property description (and passed it by me), created the 3d virtual tour which in my experience gives an amazing preview on whether the house would work for a buyer and would be worth visiting, listed it on their site and zillow, and for another $300 would provide an attorney to facilitate the closing.

I agree most FSBO pictures are awful. We were happy to pay for a service to help the listing look polished, and we firmly believe we got more money/closed faster because of it. With 7% interest rates on a 30 year mortgage, it would take about 5 years of payments to accumulate 6% equity to pay the commission to sell the house, before accounting for other fees (and appreciation).

We ended up paying effectively ~0.8% for the FSBO service and 2.5% to the agent representing the buyer. The agent was apprehensive, but the buyer really wanted our house. Everyone acted in good faith after the hail storm a few weeks prior to closing and everyone was happy as far as I could tell.

link