While you might think that “location, location, location” is all you need to sell your home, that is simply not true. Yard signs only attract 10% of all home buyers. It’s even worse for print advertising — only 1% of buyers find their homes through newspaper marketing. You have to employ a technically savvy marketing campaign to compete with all dedicated websites, blogs, and social media advertising that bombard the internet and attract buyers. If none of the above has dampened your resolve to go the FSBO route, another thing to consider are the security concerns of going it alone. Craigslist can certainly be an effective sales tool, but you have to be oh-so-careful about the scammers, criminals, and dangerous people you could be letting into your home. Realtors® have many more secure resources on which to market your property than you have access to, including highly qualified sites such as the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) or Realtor.com. As a FSBO, you will have to work within the confines of your accessibility on unknown or unqualified sites. This can be expensive and even scary. Finally, there is the ultimate and sole responsibility of showing your home. You have to pick up your phone every time it rings and be able to drop everything in order to meet potential buyers on their schedules. This might mean canceling your plans or even leaving work for a showing. You should try to make arrangements to show as soon as humanly possible. You can’t cancel or postpone on prospective buyers and when a home shopper calls and says “jump,” you have to be ready, willing, and able to ask, “how high?” That is the nature of sales. There is an immediacy involved in meeting the needs of anxious shoppers. If you can’t show them the house when they want, they could just as easily move on to the next interesting property. A Realtor® always answers the phone and moves heaven and earth to accommodate potential buyers. That is their job, and it’s a job you are happy to let them handle. If you are acting as your own sales agent, how will you determine who is a credible buyer and who is just browsing? Shoppers who cruise the FSBO section of your local newspaper are usually the type of shoppers who are looking for a deal at rock-bottom prices. A seller’s agent has been trained to ask the right questions about
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