If you put your mind to it, you can come up with excuses for why it makes sense to do just about anything. For instance, if it’s Sunday and you really should go shopping to stock the fridge for the week ahead, but you’re all settled in to watch TV, you can reason that the supermarket coupons probably aren’t valid until Monday. Or, if the leaves are four deep along the garden wall, you really shouldn’t rake them until the last ones fall. If the last ones have fallen already, didn’t you read someplace that letting them molder right there is good for the soil? And so on…
That brings us to why it makes perfect sense for someone who is about to sell their Riverside home to “go FSBO” (For Sale By Owner). National averages do tell us that a touch more than one in 10 sellers will actually choose to test the FSBO waters—whether or not that choice lasts for long. Here are some imaginative excuses someone might dream up for going FSBO:
- I’ll get more prospective buyers since nobody’s going to check whether they’re qualified or not
- I get to choose the color scheme of my For Sale by Owner sign instead of having to use some Realtor’s®
- Buyers will trust the owner of the property instead of some professional real estate person with some silly California license
- It’s cheap to hire an attorney to make sure my sale complies with Riverside regulations
- I will attract buyers who want to save on the real estate commission since most buyers don’t know that it comes out of the seller’s proceeds
- I get to make my own hand-lettered FSBO sign, which will attract do-it-yourselfers
- It would take too much time to find a real estate agent who works in Riverside
- I get to save the real estate commission (just have to pay a few marketing and legal costs and the buyers agent’s commission and anything else that comes up)
- I won’t have to put up with some Realtor calling me to set up showings—I’ll just answer the doorbell whenever somebody decides they want to see my house…hold it! That’s a nightmare…I’ll add “shown by appointment only” with my phone number on the FSBO sign…hold it! I don’t want burglars to know my phone number…
These are only nine of many possible excuses that could have spawned one of those Riverside FSBO signs when you see it. Less fanciful and much more in the realm of reality is the NAR research that shows that many offerings that started as FSBOs eventually wind up being handled professionally.
If you are thinking of putting your own Riverside home on the market, before you have to dream up reasons to go FSBO, why not give me a call first? That will result in a fact-based, cost- and obligation-free consultation. You might wind up agreeing with the nearly nine out of ten sellers who choose to relax and let a professional get to work!
