| I recently sold my house on my own. We live in a hot metro area. I initially listed it just on Zillow and did an aggressive social media campaign. Within a week I had several offers. My mistake initially was to try to attack both sides of the realtor(tm) mix: seller and buyer brokers. I was clearly taking the seller side out. But I was willing to work with buyers' brokers if they found me. But I wanted to twist the commission scheme, as a flat rate doesn't make much sense. (e.g., an incremental $100K is huge for me but very little for them.) So I tried to create a stairstep where if they came in below ask, the broker would get paid .5%, and if they were 100K above ask they would get 3.5%. Needless to say, this failed. I had many brokers tell me they would refuse to bring clients to see my place, DESPITE their fiduciary duty to do so. In the end, I offered 2.5% commission to buyers brokers (the standard in my area). I also listed it on the MLS using a shady site where you can pay to $150 bucks to a broker to list it on the MLS. Finally, I scraped the websites of 3 major brokerages in my area and did a mailing list to 100 brokers with the subject line of ADDDRESS X, 2.5% Buyer Commission. (100 brokers in 4 square miles. Should tell you something.) Had a 60% open rate and a 50% clickthrough rate. Lots of appointments right away. I endeded up getting 9 offers and having a 2 step auction. I of course netted out what I would have to pay to brokers, so folks without brokers had an automatic 2.5% advantage. I ended up selling without a broker on either side. 3 weeks from first listing on Zillow to contract signed. So yes - it's definitely possible to work without brokers if you're willing to do a little work, you're confident in your pricing skills, and you're in a hot area. As I said to my wife, each individual showing we did saved us about $2K! |