FSBO SELLING USUALLY GAINS YOU NOTHING; SURE YOU SAVE PAYING REALTOR COMMISSIONS, BUT WHAT YOU REALLY WANT IS THE HIGHEST PRICE YOU CAN GET…AND THAT’S WHAT REALTORS DO FOR YOU

Yuk! FSBO signs are usually radically unprofessional looking like this one.

Now THAT is a beautifully worded and professional looking Realtor yard sign!!!!

Having a Realtor sell your house statistically brings a seller 16% higher in sales price on a home. That’s the difference between $230,000 vs. $198,200.

FSBO stands for “For Sale by Owner” and most of the time, unless you already have a buyer in your pocket, it’s generally an exercise in futility.

FSBO transactions have dropped dramatically since 1997 from a high then of 18 percent. In 2005, only 13 percent of sellers did sales without a real estate agent.

Additionally, of those FSBO sales, 39 percent of them were between a buyer and seller who knew each other beforehand. In 2004 the figure was 32 percent.

In both 2003 and 2004 the FSBO share all sales was 14 percent. The highest ever was in 1987 at 29 percent. It had likely been higher before that at some time, but NAR only began following FSBO statistics in 1981.

For a lot more good information about FSBOs and why being one may be hazardous to your pocketbook, visit my FSBO real estate sales section of my web site. . DF

(Click on photo above to enlarge)

This Orange County Association of Realtors real estate mixer had the biggest turnout of real estate agents that I had seen in the past two years. But then the event was held at the very posh El Niguel Country Club.

The appetizers were to die for and the service and servers were terrific…I couldn’t believe how many waiters and waitresses they had for the big room and the Realtors had a terrific time. No doubt this is also because consumers have suddenly woken up to the fact that there IS no real estate bubble in South Orange County and if they are going to buy or sell a home, they better get to it. Which means, of course, that for 90% of them, they are going to be contacting a Realtor.

My husband, Bill Koelzer and I got there early. (See my 1000-page web site HERE and I had a great time seeing old pals like Todd Snider, Connie Hootman, Mary Powers and the ever-enchanting Karen Masters who, Bill says, when she wants to be, becomes the most beautiful woman in the world, next to me, of course.

And we met Realtors new to the area, like Amy Mosley, only two months here from New Jersey and who still maintains a thriving real estate office there. And we talked with Magic Gourgy, Mortgage Consultant from Wells Fargo.

Realtors there went nuts with the literally dozens of drawing prizes, mostly of the bottled kind, though there were some monster “baskets.” You know, the kind all wrapped in cellophane that look like a thousand dollars worth of stuff until you start taking them apart and see that the boxes of goodies aren’t QUITE so big as they looked through the plastic…but we will gladly take any that we win and give to the staff.

The Orange County Association of Realtors has a mixer every month, usually the same day/time each month. Call OCAR to see when the next one is or visit OCAR at www.OCAR.org.