Did a FSBO

We Did a FSBO

Situation:

It was late fall of 2004 when my husband, Matt, and I decided we needed a quality of life change. We were both high school teachers trying to raise two young children in Durham, N.C. I really wanted to stay at home with the kids and my husband was ready for a career change. When he found a job in Seattle as a project manager for a construction firm, we began to talk about how to sell the house.

Durham had a lively For Sale by Owner (FSBO) market and we lived in a highly desirable neighborhood next to Duke University and the hospital system. And, our basic nature is do-it yourselfers, calling in experts when needed. Since our home was our largest asset, we wanted to recoup as much of its worth as we could. Once we got beyond emotional barriers, studied up, talked to friends - one being a realtor - we decided we would try to sell the house ourselves.

What We Did:

To start, we interviewed three realtors to ask what they could do for us. Although we were impressed with their personalities and energy, we felt like we could do a lot of what they were offering, including marketing and advertising locally. As far as pricing the home, the price points were so wide-ranging as to be of little practical help. One realtor said, "More than $299K would be a complete steal." Another urged us to price it on the high end at $375,000. A third agent gave us a range of $250K-$275K, which we thought was ridiculous since we knew our home and what others in the neighborhood were getting. After meeting with them, we were more convinced than ever to put it on the market ourselves.

  • Getting ready: We read two books on how to sell: one on auctioning a house (that was beyond our comfort level) and the other on a traditional FSBO. We went through a FSBO Web site because we wanted professional signs in the front yard, a professional box for our color fliers, and a professional Web site with photos that would satisfy the Internet-savvy home buyer. Our idea was to market our home as loved and well-cared for.

    We also had knowledge and time in our favor. We knew at Christmas of 2004 that we were moving to Seattle June of 2005. That gave us six months and we worked like dogs to get it ready to show.

  • Pricing our home: Pricing was the part we were least confident doing, but we were determined. We had a 1940 Cape Cod-style home and the homes in our neighborhood were either cottages that were selling for top dollar, or big ol' Southern belles that needed lots of fixing. So, we went to the county building and got a friendly clerk who helped us find tax records on recently sold homes that were close to ours.

    Since we had a home that wasn't similar to others in the neighborhood, we went with the concept of pricing our home by square footage. We averaged the price - per square foot - of cottages and rundown Southern Belles and came up with $147/sq ft, which we applied to our 2,250-square foot house for a price of $329,900. Our real estate friend also suggested we price it to sell in 30 days or less. We gave ourselves 3-5 weeks to sell before we'd call in an agent.

  • Staging our home: Let's put it this way, we got sick of the word "de-clutter." But, de-clutter we did. We needed to purge and moving was a great motivation. So, we had a garage sale and made numerous trips to Goodwill.

  • Open House day: It was nerve-wracking because you feel like it's a beauty pageant. We removed our valuables from the house, planted flowers around the outside and put fresh flowers inside. We hired a housing inspector who was well-regarded in the neighborhood and had several copies of his report for people to take, but we asked that only serious buyers take one. We were very upbeat and peppy. We had about 50 families come through.

  • Bidding process: We stated in our flier that we would take bids immediately and we were willing to work with a buyer's agent, but we didn't list a fee since we wanted to negotiate the figure. We also wanted to avoid a bidding war, so we asked for everyone's best possible offer. We netted three offers within five days, all from people working without agents. Ironically, these came from folks who did not act the most enthusiastic during the open house. One couple, who could not attend the open house, asked to see it the next day and we pledged not to sell it until they had a chance. They turned out to be the eventual buyers and offered full value - $329,900.

  • Inspection: The buyers hired their own inspector who found some things our inspector did not. We fixed everything that came up, including replacing an old, electric wall heater that emitted CO2 when plugged in; fixing a water leakage problem in a back room, and other miscellaneous odds and ends. We ended up spending about $3,000.

  • Closing: We closed with the help of the buyer's attorney who was a well-known real estate attorney in our area.

We had one hiccup in the process: the buyers hired an appraiser from Chapel Hill, which is about 10 miles away, and it was an awkward situation. There is a rift between the two cities since Durham is very funky and diverse and Chapel Hill is more buttoned up. This appraiser came in and started criticizing the house. He didn't appraise it for the asking price.

I consulted my real estate friend and he said not to worry - just hire someone else. The buyers were fine with hiring a different appraiser as long as their lender would approve it. Their lender approved and we found another appraiser from Durham. He appraised it for $332K, but for 72 hours everyone was a little nervous.

After everything was signed and sealed, we all went out to a Mexican restaurant and celebrated.

Outcome:

We closed in late April, but couldn't leave our jobs until the end of the school year, which was May; we rented it back for about a month.

What would I recommend to anyone thinking of selling their home? First, talk to a lot of people. Do research. The more we learned, the more confident we became.

We figured out that if we went through a real estate agent, we were paying for someone to manage our fear and negotiate on our behalf. I didn't think paying someone thousands of dollars to assuage our fear was necessary. We felt confident we could negotiate if the sale came to that. Last, I would say take a deep breath and pray.

- Emily and Matt G., formerly of Durham, N.C, now Seattle residents