When Eric Meany bought his U Street-area house in Northwest for $240,000 in 2002, he used a real estate agent to broker the deal. When he sold it for $565,000 in May, after spending about $100,000 in renovations, he worked alone.
“To save a lot money was the total goal,” he said, noting that sellers generally pay a 3 percent commission to their real estate agent and another 3 percent to the buyer’s agent.
That adds up to $18,000 for a $300,000 home.
Meany is not alone — foresalebyowner.com, the site he used to list his house, reported a 12 percent increase in the number of people listing on its site this year despite the depressed housing market.
Sellers pay the company $90 a month to list their home on the site or $399 for a six-month package that includes a listing on the Multiple Listing Service, which real estate agents use. While the company declined to say how many Washington-area clients use forsalebyowner.com, which gets about 2 million hits a month, a quick search yielded about 500 listings.
“People do it to save their own equity, to save money,” said Vice President Greg Healy. “The majority of the people who sell by owner are independent, do-it-yourselfers who really feel like they can sell their home.”
Healy said about 55 percent of the sellers who stop advertising on the site report that they are doing so because they found a buyer.
Nationally, about 12 percent of buyers sold their homes independently in 2006, the most recent data available, according to the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors. Only 3 percent of Northern Virginia sellers chose to sell independently.
“Marketing a home can be very complicated and there are strategies that are used by Realtors that home owners may not be familiar with,” said Jill Landsman, a spokeswoman for NVAR. “The motivation is to save the real estate commission, but when the home is marketed correctly, the seller will usually end up getting a better price.”
A recent Northwestern University study that focused on the Madison, Wis., real estate market found that independent sellers in that area got as least as much for their homes as those who used an agent, after accounting for the commission.
“We all know it’s a challenging real estate market out there,” Healy said. “You can list your home more competitively if you don’t have to build in a commission.”
One pitfall can be the listing time — with less exposure for their listing, independent sellers may need to have more patience.
Area sellers who use agents generally sell their homes within three months; Meany listed his for six.
