[It's been quite a while since our last post. We will never win a prize for the most dependable bloggers, but at least we offer real meat in our for sale by owner advice postings :-)]
As you probably already know, our FSBO service at Sell-Your-Home-FSBO.com includes getting your home advertised on almost 100 For Sale By Owner sites. Yes, a number of these are minor sites or, as someone referred to them, "mom and pop sites". But some of them are among the top FSBO sites available and, indeed, thanks to partnerships we have developed over the years, our clients' homes are listed on several top for-fee listing sites as part of our basic fee, which saves them significant money over having done the listing themselves.
But for every client we help, there are hundreds who not only prefer to do it themselves, but pay good money to post on sites that have minimal traffic, little if any search engine presence, and even limit the ads to minimal information about the home...or choose sites with more traffic, but only from other sellers. Then - when they aren’t successful selling - they give up and go with a realtor, when all they had to do was use the Internet correctly in the first place.
In talking to home sellers about this, we have decided that there are 5 main reasons for this.
1. They think like sellers when choosing a site to advertise their home
This is our mantra: “Think like a buyer, not a seller”. This is why we advertise properties on almost 100 FSBO sites plus get it listed in all the top search engines...to get homes in front of buyers, not just other sellers, no matter where they look. Totally different techniques are needed to accomplish this, techniques that most FSBO ad sites don’t bother with because they make their money from the sellers.
Most buyers don’t even think ‘for sale by owner’...they are simply using the Internet to find homes for sale...or information about homes they’ve found. (Oh, and if you are a FSBO seller who is also looking on those FSBO sites for possible homes to buy, keep in mind that most sellers already have a home in mind and don’t search that way.)
2. They believe that simply posting their home on the Internet will bring in big traffic to their property ad.
Nothing could be further from the truth. If you type in the search term “for sale by owner” on Google, there are 11 million results. Obviously buyers aren’t going to search all 11,000,000 results...assuming they used that search term in the first place. That’s a seller’s term...not a buyer’s term. If your home isn’t listed on the first page or two of search results, it’s not going to be found. And homes listed on many of the most ‘famous’ FSBO sites do not show up at all! How does that help you?
3. They believe the advertising hype on the websites
There are numerous sites that advertise things like “we are the premier for sale by owner site on the Internet” or “we get 1,000,000 hits per month”. Well, since it’s the Christmas season, we say “Bah, humbug” to that.
It is not enough that sellers find a listing website...buyers have to find it, too. We are always amazed that anyone would pay to list on a site that claims it’s been around for years and has only 3-4 homes listed for huge states like California. If other sellers aren’t listing there, that should tell you something.
(Now, if it’s free, go ahead and list because it only costs you time and you want the exposure...and we have a great FSBO Form Filler tool, by the way, that saves 95% of the time it takes to list...available at Sell-Your-Home-Yourself.com)
Also keep in mind that anyone can claim anything on the web...and the number of hits doesn’t mean anything. You want to know the number of unique visitors. (Hits refers to the number of files returned, so a web page with 30 images on it will count as 31 ‘hits’ for each visitor to that page. So you could look at 5 pages on that website just to check it out, and that would count for 155 ‘hits’.)
A couple of other things to be aware of here:
~~~ Some sites will claim dollar amounts in sales. All that means is that those homes have been marked as ‘sold’ by the sellers, not that the FSBO site had anything whatsoever to do with the sale.
~~~ Others will keep homes listed in their database forever to make their site look larger than it actually is. Check the dates posted for other ads.
4. They believe that, since they found the website, everyone else will.
Again, keep in mind our mantra. You are going to search quite differently from a buyer...and buyers are who you are after!
Sellers often believe that, since they found the website where they place their ad, everyone else will. But look at it this way, how many buyers do you think are going to search for a home by typing in, say, “free for sale by owner ads”? Yeah, that’s what we think, too :-)
5. They think that Internet advertising is all they need to do.
Well over 90% of homes are sold to people already living in the vicinity of the home. Local advertising is essential. Using the Internet primarily allows you to provide all the information about your home, not just a couple of lines in a newspaper ad. Part of our service is to provide sellers with a professional FSBO website to create “Internet curb appeal”. But we constantly remind sellers that they need to advertise that website in the local newspaper. People being people, they will check out a property website before they will make a phone call. We recommend ads like those our clients successfully use:
3 BR, 2.5 BA, corner lot
$198,000, (785)123-4567
BuyThisFSBO.com/YourURL
Or
3 BR, 2.5 BA, $198,000
BuyThisFSBO.com/YourURL
~~~~~~~
In conclusion, when you are doing your research, keep these points in mind. And remember something else: You can contact other sellers to see if their ad has helped them!
Yup - check the sites’ references! People check our references all the time with people using our services. We think it’s a great idea. They find our clients’ properties advertised on the web or via our regularly-updated Examples page and ask. So should you! You’re trying to sell FSBO to save money, aren’t you?
