Houston House

I’ve been selling Houston homes for about 15 years. I now sell mainly inside Houston’s 610 Loop and close-in neighborhoods like Timbergrove Manor, Oak Forest, Garden Oaks and especially Houston Heights. I’ve worked with a lot of Houston For-Sale-By-Owners. They are generally a pleasure to work with. Some do very well on their own; most do not. Now this tells some of my experiences. Hopefully this will be helpful to you.

Houston FSBO’s sell on their own for a variety of reasons. The most common are:

• They have little or no equity, so they can’t afford a commission. That is understandable.
• They want to save money. They will work with Realtors, but don’t want to pay a full listing commission. This is okay too.
• They have an attitude of: “Let’s give it a try. How difficult can it be? If I don’t sell it, I’ll list with a Realtor”. These people are fun to work with. They appreciate any info and advice you offer.
• They don’t like Realtors and they don’t want to pay anyone a commission! All right. Let’s leave these people alone. There are a lot of other properties to show.

Here are some of my first-hand experiences with Houston For Sale By Owners:

• I too was once a FSBO. I had 2 properties I wanted to sell. A rental in Bear Creek and a Galveston beach house. I gave myself 2 months to sell both, at which time I would list them. The beach house I sold fairly quickly (that surprised me-I thought it would be a pain to meet people an hour away to show). The Bear Creek house though didn’t sell in my allotted time. I listed it on MLS and another Realtor brought me a contract within a week. I was happy to pay 3%. I wish I had done it 2 months earlier.
• Buyers generally don’t want to mess with FSBO’s. They are afraid of being taken advantage of, or they don’t have time to deal with it. They want their Realtor to find out about it and decide if it fits their needs.

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