how to sell for sale by owner in florida
hey folks my name is chris at hauseit
based here in miami florida today we're
going to talk about this question that
many sellers often ask especially if
they're trying to sell for the first
time they learn about the enormous costs
associated with traditional broker
commissions usually six percent of the
sale price paid at closing and uh
oftentimes that's split 50 50 if the
buyer has an agent otherwise the
seller's agent keeps all six percent uh
needless to say regardless of which
state you're in uh this six percent
traditional broker commission is
typically the largest uh closing cost a
single closing cost that sellers will
face
so
how can you sell successfully for so by
owner in florida
well
for sale by owner is not a
unique concept to florida new york or
any other state it really works pretty
much the same way and you know first
we'll go over the the traditional for
sale by owner process and then we'll
also explain why that's not very
effective and how you can do better if
you do wish to do it yourself through a
household agent-assisted fsbo listing
so let's get started
well first of all if you want to
successfully sell for sale by owner you
want to make sure that you have
professional photos to start with now
this may seem self-evident but
given what we see in the for sale of my
owner listings you'll find for example
on craigslist or zillow when people
click and just post on a single site by
themselves
you often find that the photos are you
know almost never professional in nature
they're often taken by
the seller's cell phone camera sometimes
it's even you know as bad as a flip
phone camera so it really the quality
varies and you know very
often
you know there's no consideration to
lighting different exposures or such
or any sort of staging or decluttering
and
you know oftentimes
the photos are quite dark or maybe
grainy or even tilted
there's just lots and lots of issues
that we see versus you know if you take
a look at some of house it's
professional photos and we'll put some
before and after
photos out here as well
you'll see that we use triple exposure
so this way when you take a photo we use
three different exposures so you can see
you know if there's a window in the
picture you can see clearly the outside
view it's bright as well as well as the
interior so you really get best of you
know all worlds in terms of exposures we
always digitally retouch and enhance our
photos and such
and you know we can do with
some virtual staging as well get rid of
anything that might need to be
decluttered digitally so there's things
we can do
that a professional photography team can
and that's something we highly recommend
even if you insist on you know doing it
yourself completely um
and just essentially doing the digital
equivalent of of sticking a yard sign
you know
for sale yard sign out on your yard um
you know you should at least at the very
least make sure you have the best
professional photos possible
and you know that may cost a few hundred
dollars um you know with an outside firm
depending on on who you source with of
course you can order through a household
as well for a very competitive rate the
next uh the next topic we'll talk about
is pricing so
as a for sale by owner seller you're
already disadvantaged versus other
listings on the market which are you
know quote unquote on market and because
you're selling for sale by owner you're
a quote-unquote off-market because your
listing is not in the mls which only
brokers can list in
and uh you know because 75 and 90 of all
home buyers are represented by an agent
depending on the market
you're not going to be ultimately
engaging with all of these buyers
brokers because you're not offering any
commission contractually in the local
mls so you're kind of off market so you
know because you're off market pricing
is very important
a lot of traditional for sale by owner
sellers
make the mistake of you know trying to
list way too high and so not only are
they off market they're not getting full
exposure
um you know they're also
at the same time like way overpriced
versus competitors so competitors so you
know even the few buyers that are
looking directly and many of them are
vulture investors
or predatory buyers who specifically
scour you know first for sale by owners
sites or you know sort by for sale by
owner listings specifically to prey on
on you know more naive sellers like this
and you know it's quite dangerous just
because what will happen is you know
obviously it's overpriced so you're
already not getting enough exposure
buyers aren't really seeing it and you
know buyer the few buyers who do see it
will usually avoid the listing and not
even bother reaching out you know
there's um
a lot of sellers think well you know
i'll list it high and give myself room
to negotiate and you know if buyers like
it they'll put in an offer even if it's
lower and we can negotiate from there
well you know that's a flawed assumption
because that assumes buyers have
infinite time and you know ability to
reach out on every single possible
listing you know in reality what happens
is buyers see a listing that's priced
too high and they'll think you know the
seller's probably unrealistic and they
move on they don't bother to spend time
because their time is valuable they
don't bother to spend time to
to negotiate with a low ball offer
usually and see if you know you're
wildly reasonable beyond their
expectations and makes you somewhere
more reasonable
so
that's definitely a mistake to make um
so you definitely want to be if you're
going to do that traditional for sale by
owner route at least price it
competitively or slightly under price
your competitors since you're saving on
the commission
ideally
so this way at least it'll grab some
more attention
another uh mistake to avoid is to um you
know is to not have your home listed on
the mls so this goes into the
alternative that we talk about which is
you really want to make sure your market
is
your property is fully marketed if
you're trying to do it yourself
and you know most for sale by owner
sellers in florida for example though
you know they'll
just post it on one or two random
third-party sites like for example
zillow you know you can list for sale by
owner or they'll pop it on craigslist
take a few you know cell phone photos
and and hope that works
um
that's a serious mistake just because if
you compare it to what professional real
estate agents do sellers agents though
listed on the mls plus
hundreds of
third-party websites pretty much every
website that's relevant and you know
what usually happens is when a when a
listing agent puts the listing on the
mls
the mls will then automatically
syndicate you know or distribute the
listing to hundreds
of
third-party websites so all relevant
websites realtor.com zillow you know
street easy in new york
trulia homes.com realtor.com any of
these sites it automatically gets
distributed to
throughout the upload process through
the mls usually
and um and yeah so you'll get complete
exposure versus you know for for sale by
owner you're kind of okay well let me
find one specific website zillow or
craigslist and let me manually upload
onto that website and you know it's not
the same right not only are you not in
the mls properly engaging buyers brokers
you're also you know on one website or
two versus 200 for example so what we
recommend
uh you know if you do want to do it
yourself and and want to save on the
broker commission is to do it right make
sure you list uh on the mls and you can
do that without having to pay six
percent through house it's
agent-assisted fsbo listing service
where you can pay a flat fee up front
it varies it's as low as under a hundred
dollars in south florida and you know
starting at 4.99 in in new york
in the new york city market
so it really depends on the region but
you pay a small flat fee up front
and your property gets listed by house
it and your relevant local mls so for
example in south florida it would be the
southeast florida mls also known as the
miami mls and then it gets automatically
syndicated to you know all industry
standard websites like we talked about
and and then our team we have email
filtering rules that are on the back end
that automatically
pass on inquiries to you if it has a
similar address to yours that we
pre-programmed when your listing is
uploaded we have call centers that are
24 7 overseas based and we also have
human
assistance virtual assistants
that'll check during business hours to
make sure the filters are capturing
everything if you know anything say less
than one percent of inquiries you know
aren't caught by the filters and
automatically passed on to you then they
will manually forward those to you
during business hours and once you
receive
those inquiries it's up to you to take
it from there just like a traditional
for sale by owner listing you know you
can call text email the inquirer
directly
and the beautiful thing about this is
because your listing is in the mls
we automatically co-broke or offer
commission to buyers brokers on your
behalf
because it's in the mls the the offer of
commission is automatically contractual
with all other
mls members so you know buyer's agents
don't need to worry about being you know
interdicted intercepted or losing their
client i remember that buyer's agents
typically don't even have any sort of
exclusivity with their clients so of
course they don't want to
you know send it to a furso by owner
listing and just get looped out
automatically without any protection um
because it's an mls they won't be afraid
to show the listing
so yeah that's those are i would say
three of the the most important points
to keep in mind there are of course
other uh you know advice and things you
can do so check out our our blogs um
leave us a comment below if you have any
other further questions or comments as
well my name is crested hauseit
we cover all of
new york city all five boroughs long
island the hudson valley and in
southeast florida we're based in miami
dade county
we also cover broward palm beach brow
martin and st lucie counties as well we
can help you save all six percent with
our agent assisted fsbo listing service
and of course if you're buying we could
help you save two percent or more with
our house empire closing credit program
where we give you two-thirds of the
buyer broker commission subject to our
team keeping a minimum of one percent as
of this writing
my name is chris at hassan and we'll see
you on the next one