A common mistake made by For-Sale-By-Owners is not pricing their properties correctly. About 10% under-price their homes, and these often sell in less than 2 weeks. Many of these are snatched up by investors on the lookout for under-priced FSBOs who often buy them for 10-20% under market. About 1/3 of all FSBOs are overpriced, and don't sell until they reduce their price.

The other problem is that many FSBOs tend to be impatient, and expect to sell their home in less than a month. Even if a FSBO is priced right, it still takes an average of 4-6 months to sell. The reason it takes so long is that they are missing the major real estate market that is dominated by MLS and Realtor.com. Obviously, a house will sell quicker if it is exposed to 20 times as many buyers.

Many FSBOs drop their price sooner than they should when their house doesn't sell right away. Most give up during the first month and list with one of many real estate agents who contacted them when they first put their sign in the yard or ad in the paper.

The biggest complaint from FSBOs: "I get a lot of calls, but they're all from annoying real estate agents who just want to list my house!"

Final outcomes for "For-Sale-By-Owner" homes

*These figures include private party FSBOs only, and NOT professionals or investors

For-Sale-By-Owner websites

All the FSBO sites combined comprise about 3% of all real estate listings, compared with 90% on Realtor.com alone.

National Inventory of Homes for Sale, Including All "For-Sale-By-Owners"

On 8/16/07 we did property searches of 3 top national FSBO websites and Realtor.com to compare their number of listings. We entered 3 random cities: Plano, Dallas, and Las Vegas, to see how many listings each site had. These were the search results:

To verify findings, just click on the site links in the table and run searches for any city in the country.

For-Sale-By-Owner websites make money by charging sellers to place ads on their websites. Their fees can range from a few hundred dollars to thousands. A common problem is a lack of follow up by website management, resulting in many houses still being advertised that are off the market. The websites look more appealing and viable to sellers the more listings there are, which can be one reason why many FSBO websites keep listings posted long after the houses are off the market. Buyers get discouraged quickly when they leave messages for a sellers and don't hear back from anyone.
 

What's the solution?

We are not trying to discourage anyone with these statistics. The numbers are what they are. Our message is: by all means, sell your home as a FSBO, but take advantage of the marketing tools we can make available to you, and use the resources available on this website. We want you to succeed in selling your home, and we'll provide you with the important link to the major real estate market for less than most FSBOs spend on newspaper ads.