FSBO Jane

As most of you know, and from the title of my blog, I am an advocate of the “for sale by owner” model. I have had much success with the company Buy Owner who operates the web site buyowner.com. Recently I have been inundated with emails telling me that “my favorite FSBO is out of business.” Most of these emails are from real estate agents who forget I can Google their name and find out who they are. So it was time to get some answers.

The Daily Business Review posted an article indicating that Buy Owner’s assets had been turned over to Michael Moecker and Associates for liquidation. But, it also said that they were an Assignee for the Benefit of Creditors, also known as ABC. This is an alternative to bankruptcy. Now granted that Michael Moecker and Associates is known for liquidations, it seems they don’t plan on liquidating Buy Owner. How do I know this? Because the company is still running. You don’t run a company to liquidate it, you just liquidate it.

It seems that Buy Owner is still alive, although like most real estate companies in this market, they are struggling. But this is the time to thrive. Investors and flippers want to make as much money as they can, that makes FSBO the best possible was to sell a property.

Oh, and to all those people sending nasty emails to me, here’s more news. ForSaleByOwner.com IS part of the Tribune bankruptcy. Apparently it is going to be split off to some smaller entity. ByOwner.com is on auction. That’s right. The owner is auctioning off his assets but shows no financial statement indicating how much income the assets generate. To me, that seems a bit shaky.

I have to give Michael Mocker and Associates credit for seeing an opportunity here with Buy Owner. While the other two major FSBO’s are either in bankruptcy or bailing out in fear, they have decided to put time, effort, and money into keeping the last standing FSBO around. If I were in a position to do so, I would swoop in and scoop up all three companies and corner the entire FSBO market. But that’s just me.

As a FSBO (for sale by owner) seller or buyer, the Internet offers an arena of information for you to acquire the tips and knowledge you need to be successful. But does it ever frustrate you when you’re trying to find an answer to a question, like the steps to making a bid, and all these realtor and agent websites show up? “We’ll do all the work for you” doesn’t exactly help when you’re trying it the FSBO way.

That’s why I find and save a multitude of FSBO blogs in my Favorites folder. And as you know, the Buy Owner Blog tops the list. This blog only covers topics that are helpful to FSBO buyers and sellers, with topics so widespread, you’re sure to find what you’re looking for. I almost always do.

Two recent blogs that I found to be helpful included one about how to accept a bid, as a seller, and one about how to make an offer, as a buyer. Each article covers the questions that a buyer or seller would have without help from an outside agent. But they also make it clear that the process is possible alone, and you’ll come out of the process with a lot more money and pride.

To check out these particular articles, read 8 Tips for Accepting a Bid and Making an Offer.

Welcome to a new series here at FSBOJane! I am always looking for ways to give you access to more information - one way I did this was through my series on using a FSBO help company (Buy Owner) at the end of last year.

Now I’m venturing into a new set of posts, this time about real estate terms.

Starting on Wednesday, I’m going to present articles that help explain terms that commonly come up when buying and/or selling homes.

Why a series on real estate terms? Basically, the most common complaint/excuse I hear from friends who don’t want to go FSBO is that they don’t know enough. Either they feel like they don’t know how to go about selling or they feel like there’s a hidden vault of information out there, which they don’t have access to.

So, to those of you who fall into that camp, this is for you.

Real estate doesn’t not have to feel like a secret code or a foreign language.  All you need is a little research or, in this case, a little time to stay updated at this site!

Stay tuned!

Image taken from Stewart

Maybe you’ve heard? The real estate world has been a buzz lately, discussing a CNN Money article entitled, “Farewell to ‘for sale by owner’?”

The specific article, four short paragraphs in length, tells the story of the entrepeneur behind FSBOWebsite.com. He’s sold about 50 sites, the article says, but now his volume seems to be dwindling. Where he’d get one call a day before, he gets one call a week now.

I’m no mathmetician, but do those numbers seem to indicate something about FSBO real estate or about the real estate world at large? I mean, the guy has sold 50 sites. 50. As in, half of 100. This is hardly a major player in the FSBO marketing realm.

And where were the figures from sites like BuyOwner.com or FSBO.com or Fizber.com? Why were those sites lumped in to the realm of companies that may have to bid farewell, based on one small, struggling little company of 50 sites?

To be fair, the article also sites Sean Murray, of Real Trends, a market research firm in Colorado, who predicts percentage of FSBO sales may slip to a smaller slice of the greater market. But you know, he also says the market will bounce back, which doesn’t sound like a farewell to me.

CNN Money: Disappointing, to say the least.

Really enjoyed this recent article in the New York Times, which profiles a few For-Sale-by-Owner sellers and their properties. Here’s a clip:

Common wisdom might suggest that in an economic downturn, Mr. Ruzal and others taking the for-sale-by-owner, or FSBO (pronounced FIZZ-bo), route, would do better with a broker’s knowledge of the market and powerful advertising reach. On the other hand, at a time of cutting corners, the savings implied by a FSBO sale may appeal more than ever.

To read the rest of the article, go here.

Recently, the Inman Blog announced its list of the “25 Most Influential Bloggers” in the real estate world. I keep track of almost all the winners in my reader, and I feel pretty confident that one thing is in common between them: they are, at least mostly, aimed at real estate agents. (Have you seen the list? Do you agree?)

That makes sense, I guess. Many consumers aren’t interested in real estate until they’re selling their homes, at which point they think they need a Realtor. So the audience for real estate blogs would be–who else?–agents.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t think your home sale is all about your agent. I don’t think the real estate world needs to revolve around agents. In fact, I firmly believe real estate and home selling and home ownership are all about YOU.

When you, a home owner, want to sell your own home, where are you supposed to go for insight? What blogs will give you updated information and selling tips? What are your resources?

Well, beyond this little site (ahem), I’ve begun compiling a list of the best real estate resources out there. To qualify, they must focus on YOU, YOU, YOU and putting helpful information in your hands. So without further ado, here they are.

The Buy Owner Blog: Welcome to the Buy Owner Blog, your source for regularly updated market information! Founded in 1984, Buy Owner is the leading provider of real estate marketing services. We pioneered the “For Sale by Owner” (FSBO) market, which today represents over 20 percent of all residential real estate transactions.

About.com: Home Buying & Selling: Though written by an agent, this About.com page directs its information at home owners and gives helpful information, advice and tips.

A picture is a worth a thousand words, especially when you’re trying to sell your house. Overly abbreviated text in a newspaper ad may be informative, but it won’t convey your home’s beauty and overall appeal the way a photograph will. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 83% of home buyers check home-listing photos on the Internet before they visit a house. A bad photo, however, can be worse than no photo at all. (This is one of the many reasons I use a fsbo help like BuyOwner.com)

Here are a few simple tips for transforming your bland photos into breathtaking works of art.

Get to know your camera. Even digital point-and-click cameras have built-in features designed to simplify the photographing experience. Take a look at the camera’s instruction manual, or take a few test shots until you are truly comfortable.

Set the camera on its highest resolution. If you decide to just use the photos online, you can always decrease the resolution.

Shoot in full daylight, preferably sunshine. Never take a photo of your house with a shadow across it.

Get as close as you can to the house while still including nearly all of it in the photo.

Remove cars and other vehicles from your driveway to showcase the drive’s length, construction and quality.

Wet down the brick patio and concrete pool surround to avoid it being too bright in the photo. Wetting it down also brings out the rich color in the brick.

Consider investing in a tripod to avoid blurry, out-of-focus shots. If you are unable to afford a tripod, try this old trick: Press your arms against your sides and spread your feet to form a tripod effect with your body to steady your shots.

When photographing interior shots, use natural light to illuminate the room. Make sure the light is coming from the side or back of you when taking your pictures to avoid glare. Lamps and light fixtures that have tungsten bulbs will give your photographs a yellowish tint.

If you want to showcase lamps and other light fixtures, use your camera’s flash to correct any color tints.

Turn off your camera’s flash when photographing reflective surfaces like mirrors.

Make a room look homey. Arrange books and magazines on the coffee table with the colorful ones on top.

Think before you shoot. Your photographs should showcase your home’s best qualities while downplaying any imperfections. For example, if you have new hardwood floors, be sure that the floors are visible in your pictures.

Give your home a thorough cleaning before you begin photographing.

Remove all people and pets from the room before you begin shooting.

If you own a condo or townhome without a yard but with abundant community amenities, take pictures of the clubhouse, pool, spa or tennis courts.

Create interest by positioning focal points to the right or left rather than always in the center.

Think about timing. Try shooting the part of the house at the time that is most likely to be used.  For example, shoot the breakfast area during sunrise while waiting until sunset to shoot the kitchen and dining room.

I’ve spent a lot of time here posting about disappointments I’ve had with FSBO companies. Today, I want to tell you about the company that met all my expectations and then some: Buy Owner. A while ago, I posted about the things to look for in a FSBO company: Buy Owner provided every one. I have not a single complaint about their service.

In addition to quality photos and text, I was looking for: attention to professionalism, a website with a large readership, ads that bring buyers to me, available customer service and assistance with getting the right buyers. Again, Buy Owner did all these things, too.

SUPERIOR PHOTOS/DESCRIPTIONS
If you use a good FSBO company, you should be getting assistance with marketing your home–including stunning photographs and great descriptions. Let’s face it, you’re not a photographer. I know I’m not. So why would I trust myself to take the best photographs? Buy Owner sent over professional photographers to take showcase-worthy pictures. The same goes for descriptions. Ok, so maybe I have some writing ability. But not everyone does. Buy Owner had their professional writing staff create my properties description. Not just four lines of text saying “great view”, they wrote a multi-paragraphed indepth description of my property.

VIRTUAL TOURS
The photographers go through these pictures with you, including virtual tours, to make sure you’re happy. Buy Owner also uses professional writers to create clear, feature-filled descriptions of properties. The rep I met with took very detailed notes about every aspect of my property-from the floors in my kitchen to what shopping malls were nearby.

EXCELLENT WEBSITE
Plus, Buy Owner’s website is the best I know of. Their marketing campaign includes national television commercials, frequent billboards and other things to bring millions of people from all over to their site. These visitors look for properties–your property–meaning that the buyers are coming to you. Of course, I still marketed my home, too: that’s the FSBO way. But Buy Owner made everything simpler, easier and better.

ADS THAT BRING BUYERS TO ME
Unlike byowner.com and some other disappointing FSBOs, Buy Owner puts your phone number up with your advertisement. They’re not trying to steal interested parties, getting them to buy a more expensive property like a real estate agent does. They have every reason to make sure you sell YOUR home.

Also, unlike other companies, Buy Owner doesn’t squeeze tons of ads into one spot. Your ad is your ad. You have your own section in the magazine and your own page on the Website. You also won’t see Google ads popping up all over.

AVAILABLE CUSTOMER SERVICE
The people I dealt with at Buy Owner were always helpful and on top of details. If I called with a question or to update something, they got it done right away, helpfully.

INFORMATION OVERLOAD
Your ad with Buy Owner contains so much information that it really works to prequalify interested parties. What do I mean? When your advertisement gives tons of quality photos, virtual tours, detailed community information, room dimensions, lengthy descriptions, square footage, features, listed schools in the area and more, the buyer looking at your ad has all the information to know if they’re interested. A simple listing in the newspaper may bring a few calls, but of those few calls, the majority will be calling to find out if they’re interested; not because they’re interested.

TOOLS FOR YOU
Buy Owner has a special section for sellers that gives you statistics on your property’s activity online. It also allows you to print flyers, add photo captions, schedule open houses and more! The seller tools give you control over your advertising.

A really great feature of the seller tools is that you can pause it. Right after I started my ad, I had a family crisis to take care of. I was able to put my advertising on hold until I got back–there’s no time limit at all. When I called Buy Owner to ask them about pausing my ad, they told me I can do it online myself, or they can do it for me. They also said that the property is listed until its sold… so no matter what the real estate market is doing, you’re covered!

STEP BY STEP GUIDANCE
Once I found a buyer for my property, I called Buy Owner. They put me in contact with their transaction team who offered to help write up the contract. As an ex-real estate person, I didn’t really need the help, but hey, why not: One less thing I have to do. They also told me about their title department and how they could assist me with the closing. It was then I realized what they said was true, start to finish, Buy Owner is there to help. I know a lot of people who want to sell their homes FSBO are scared of the contract and title part of the process. Its normal, but you’re not alone. Unlike other services, Buy Owner was there to help, whenever I need them.

From beginning to end, each transaction I had with Buy Owner was smooth and successful. I have no complaints!I highly recommend them, and I always tell my real estate classes this. My students are surprised to hear someone so passionate about a FSBO company, but trust me: this is for real! Don’t take my word for it; try Buy Owner and see for yourself. You too will be saying Thanks, Buy Owner and you’ll be hooked on the FSBO way.

Over at the Real Estate Investing site, this interesting post explains the value of a FSBO, as it’s most simply understood:

“However, many homeowners still find it expensive to sell their property through an agent. And for good reason. Take a $200,000 property. If it is sold through an agent, 6% is $12,000. Thus, many hesitate to part with that amount of money. Nowadays, FSBO (For Sale By Owner) is becoming many of the homeowner’s preferred method of selling their home. This is largely because of the Internet, which continues to grow rapidly.”

Since 1988, Kevin Wood, founder of byowner.com, has been helping homeowners sell their own properties without paying commissions. Today, the site offers many different ways to advertise your home; however, most of them are quite confusing.

PLACING AN AD ON BYOWNER.COM

There is a fee to post an ad on byowner.com, and with this ad, homeowners can post up to 25 photos (although it seems as if no one actually posts 25 photos… maybe about 10 or so total), and their descriptions of the houses can be 1,000 characters in length. That’s not very long to describe an entire house, especially if it’s a big one. Byowner.com also boasts “NO COMMISIONS EVER.” However, there is a little asterisk with the following sentence attached: “assuming you choose just byowner.com and not the MLS option.” The way this is worded, it sounds as if Byowner.com would offer an MLS option. In reality, they actually spend paragraph after paragraph on another part of the site bashing listing on the local MLS, while promoting Byownermls.com, which is another site where your advertisement is place (free of charge). This is so confusing, is it not? And how would potential buyers know about the buyownermls.com website?

SELLER WOES

Sellers show their own properties and pay for yard signs. Byowner.com also has a plethora of products for sellers to purchase. Some of these include a listing on eBay (costing $199 through byowner.com, when you could do it yourself on eBay for much less), 30-day phone support for $69 (so you have to PAY to speak to a human being regarding YOUR ad that you already paid to place?) and a listing on FSBO.com that costs $79.95 (this site has 5 packages ranging from $69.95 - $499.95, so which package are you getting through byowner.com?). Why pay for an extra ad on eBay, phone support and an extra ad on FSBO.com if you are already paying for a listing on byowner.com that comes with a FREE listing on byownermls.com??

FEATURED PROPERTIES

Once on the main page, there are a few highlighted properties. However, when you click on some of them, some of them are “no longer listed” and some of the property descriptions say “description to follow.” If these properties are so special, why are the ads not completed? And why haven’t new properties been highlighted once the featured properties are sold? How often do they update these? It looks very unprofessional.

BLOG AS FREE ADVERTISING??

Byowner.com has a blog. In this blog, they list properties and their descriptions. Do they do this for every property? How does your property get to be one of the lucky ones on the blog? Is this another FREE advertisement?

BUYER WOES

Byowner.com advertises their hard copy magazine (which is only available in Chicago, Memphis, Miami and New York, even though they advertise properties all over the nation) subscription of six monthly issues for $15. This is listed under the dropdown menu for BUYERS. The testimonials page has people boasting about how fast they sold their homes… so what kind of buyer would want to look for a house for 6 months?

Also, the advertisements don’t direct you to the seller. As a buyer, you call ByOwner; they refer you to a coach; the coach maybe takes you to the buyer. That destroys the whole point of selling BY OWNER!

TESTIMONIALS

Speaking of testimonials, that page is just weird. Some of the first comments say:

Edide Reso and Donald Clement - Property #20092446 . We sold the house. Thanks byowner! . Please remove from website.

Phyllis James - Property #62798 3503 W Carla Vista Dr Chandler, AZ 85226 sold for full price in July of 2005. It was easy and great, thanks for your forms and expertise. Please remove from website.

Did byowner.com forget to take their listings off of the web? And why is Phyllis James’s exact address on the page? If this property sold to someone else, would they really want their new address posted on the Internet for everyone to see?

NO PREQUALIFICATION

Byowner offers no method of prequalifying potential buyers, so you have to wade through any and all calls on your own.