Ethical Homes

As I mentioned in the “Why Would A Realtor Help A FSBO?” article, I try to provide as much general real estate information as I can to anyone who needs it. There are many other services that I could also provide, of course, but most of those either enter the realm of providing actual brokerage services (which by law I can’t do for anyone with whom I don’t have a contractual relationship to provide those services) or consume a non-trivial amount of resources on my part. There’s no way that I can provide the former services to FSBOs, unfortunately, but I have no problem providing the latter so long as my basic rule of doing business is followed: the transaction must result in a “win-win” situation, of mutual benefit to everyone involved; among Realtors, these exchanges are referred to as “Fair Trades”.

Some of the Fair Trades that I can offer to FSBOs in DC and Northern Virginia include:

• CMA
• Guest Registry Service
• Talking House Broadcaster
• Neighborhood Watch Agent

CMA

The Offer: One of the first questions most FSBOs ask themselves is, “how much should I list my home for?”. Intelligently determining an exact listing price can be a complicated process, requiring a detailed analysis of not only recent sales in the area but also of changing micro-market conditions and macro-market trends at the time of listing, and factoring in how variables such as showing availability, seller financing, and flexibility of settlement date will affect the final sales price as it plays off against a seller’s other goals, such as minimizing risk and coordinating the scheduling of the sale with other events. A basic CMA won’t factor in most of that information, but it will provide sellers with a basic range of possible listing prices that, in a relatively stable market, they can use as a starting point for determining their eventual listing price.

The Fair Trade: Most of the information that goes into a basic CMA is available as part of the public record, but compiling it all together could take a typical consumer hours; since I have the infrastructure and systems in place to quickly gather that information, I’ll gladly prepare a CMA for you to give you a starting point for determining the price at which to list your home. In return, all I ask is that FSBO sellers give me weekly updates on the number of calls/visits/offers on their property, which helps me track how the FSBO market is moving relative to the market as a whole.

Guest Registry Service

The Offer: It’s generally a good idea when selling your own home to keep a guest register, and have anyone who comes to view your home sign in with their basic contact information; among other things, it’s just a good safety measure, to keep track of who comes into your home and when, and it also lets you figure out who is just a “looker” and who is a real buyer—if someone isn’t willing to sign in, they definitely aren’t ready to buy.

The other advantage of a guest register is that it lets you keep in touch with the people who came to visit, and confirm whether they are thinking of submitting an offer—sometimes, something as simple as that follow up call can be enough to motivate a buyer to make an offer—and if they aren’t then you have an opportunity to get some feedback on what about your marketing or the staging of your house might need to be tweaked in order to help your property sell.

The Fair Trade: I’ll provide the guest register for you, take care of all of the follow-up calls, and provide you with all of the feedback that I collect (which will usually be more accurate than the feedback that you would receive if you called directly—people are generally hesitant to critique a property to its owner). In return, I get a small amount of advertising (I’ll have a small blurb on each page of the register), and potentially a few new clients (if any of the people with whom I speak during the followup calls decide not to submit a bid on your property but need representation at some point down the line).

Talking House Broadcaster

The Offer: One big issue that many FSBOs run into is the accessibility of information to prospective buyers. Many buyers who drive by a property with a FSBO sign don’t want to come up to the house right then to ask for details; unfortunately, most buyers out searching on their own also aren’t very diligent about following up by calling for more info, if they even bother to take down a phone number from the sign.

One way to deal with this phenomenon is to use a “Talking House” device—an FCC-compliant AM broadcaster (on one of the reserved “local use” public bands of the spectrum, similar to airport parking information services) that can provide a running commentary about your property. Buyers are much more likely to tune in to the Talking House broadcast than to knock on a FSBO’s door to ask for details, and once they have learned a little about a property, they are much more likely to take the time to write down any contact information and make a followup call.

The Fair Trade: I provide a Talking House device for all owners who have retained me to sell their houses, but I sometimes have an extra unit that isn’t on-site at a client’s home. If I do have one, I will let you use it for some agreed-upon amount of time. You will be able to record your own message, which will be bracketed by a brief plug for my services, so I will receive some advertising, and the phone number that the device will broadcast for more information will be mine; this again helps both of us, as you will have someone to answer calls and answer basic questions for you even if you are not available, and I get to establish a relationship with potential buyers, so that if any of them decide not to submit a bid on your property and are later interested in having a broker to represent them then they may choose to retain my services. NOTE: I also charge a nominal monthly fee (the exact amount depends on how many of my other Talking House units are currently in use) for this service; the fee doesn’t come close to covering the lease payments on the devices, but I have found that it does motivate FSBOs who are using it to return them promptly when they are finished using them, so that I can be relatively sure of having them back in stock when needed for my clients.

Neighborhood Watch Agent

The Offer: For any FSBO who is interested, I’d be delighted to set them up with a free Neighborhood Watch Agent that will let them keep track of the properties in their neighborhood that are on the market or that sell (including the final sales price of homes once they go to closing).

The Fair Trade: Because I already have the infrastructure for the Neighborhood Watch Agents set up for my clients, it doesn’t actually cost me anything more than a few minutes of time for me to set up new Agents for FSBOs, so this service actually isn’t a Fair Trade so much as something that I just do to earn people’s goodwill.

If you are a FSBO who would like to make use of any of these services (or perhaps some other service that isn’t listed here that you would like to propose as a similar Fair Trade), please contact us to discuss your needs further.