BuyMyHousePlease!

We've rented our home as of May 1st and have deactivated our listings until further notice

2008-04-30T13:15:00.000-07:00

Check back next April to see if we re-list our house for sale!

Another Week, another dollar (or two) and Terabitz

2007-09-21T08:22:00.000-07:00

I've been busy as hell this week trying to get everything ready for the closing on our new house, and I think we're all set, just waiting for a few callbacks from mortgage and title companies. The Homepage ForSaleByOwner.com listing has been up for a week now and it has generated 170 views from their homepage off of 5692 impressions, a CTR of 2.98%. This number continues to drop, but if a large percentage of the site's traffic is repeat visitors, I don't think that this would be out of the ordinary, after all how many repeat visitors are going to click to look on our listing more than once? I think that my theory about high volume low yield is starting to evidence itself in the results I have seen so far. This week there have been more calls from realtors and a few buyers, but no new appointments have been setup. I even received an email from a supposedly interested party in the UK, but something didn't feel quite right about it and I suspect that it is the beginning of a money order/transfer scam. Once this featured homepage listing is over with I don't think I will be renewing, instead I will sign up for a featured local listing and see if the lower volume, more targeted leads/clicks are a better investment.

Aside from the results on FSBO, my neighbor who is renting expressed some interest in our house, so I'm hoping that something materializes from that. In the grand scheme of it all, I totally forgot about WOM (Word-of-Mouth) advertising, and that may end up being my most effective medium of all. I would definitely be happy if anything comes of it, but also wonder if it makes all the online work I have done on this project so far a waste? Only one way to find out - wait and see if we have a buyer!

Last bit (pun intended) I will share with you for today is on a new site I discovered, Terabitz. Now at first I thought it was a useful tool for buyers to setup customized searches on a local area, but it turns out that it is a really interesting tool for realtors as well. The first screenshot I'm attaching shows how you can customize your search to display info on a local area around an address you might be looking at (Maps, local news, weather, businessese, schools hospitals, etc):

And if you click on one of the for sale listings, it actually brings you to a local Terabitz for sale listing posted by a realtor for one of their clients:

Overall it is an interesting Web 2.0-esque Real Estate site, and I am attempting to get my listing published there as well. Their tech guys have gotten back to me already, so I'm wondering how much is involved to post and if they will actually accomodate my listing once they find out I'm a FSBO. More updates to follow until I sell this house, have a great weekend!

Weekend Update

2007-09-17T11:44:00.002-07:00

I have received more calls over this past weekend but still no more appointments have been scheduled for walk-throughs. So far on the ForSaleByOwner.com homepage listing I have seen my homepage impressions skyrocket up to 2776 views since launch, but my CTR has decreased to 3.24% (90 views). Overall since my listing launched I have had a total of almost 400 views to my listing, but not a whole heckuvalot of in-person foot traffic. I realize that this is not a simple PayPer Click campaign where I am trying to sell a $20 retail item, but I wonder what that magic number is that will help me convert a browsing consumer into a paying customer.

Aside from the FSBO listing, I have also seen the flat-fee MLS listing blossom onto other local realtor websites like Balistreri and Illustrated Properties, they both seem to have a fairly large footprint locally, so I think this should generate additional prospective homebuyer traffic for me. I stumbled upon this when I found another Realtor listing aggregator site by the name of Vast. Not only did it find my listing on ForSaleByOwner.com, but it also came up with the listings on both Balistreri and Illustrated Properties. I am very interested to see how these listings grow in distribution, and will keep tabs on where it appears through these different aggregators.

Also, I heard back from Trulia via email over the weekend, and they told me that they had no product for FSBO submissions, but are evaluating it for the future. It kinda sounded like the big blowoff but I am hoping that they may start to get more interested FSBO'ers sending them inquiries once my blog gets a little more distribution. Until then I will keep searching for other sites that can provide me with a free listing to gain more exposure.

On Homepage of ForSaleByOwner.com

2007-09-13T12:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I finally caved and decided to fasttrack the promotional efforts for http://www.borgatahouse4sale.com/. I signed up for the $99 homepage promotion on ForSaleByOwner.com. Up until this point our listing had just over 200 views, and I felt like we could use a little more juice to get additional eyeballs on it. So for the next 14 days, our house will be up there with countless others all for the great price of $99. It seems like the listing went live late this morning, and had received 136 homepage views, and 12 listing views, so I calculate the CTR to be 8.82%. Pretty respectable for a web ad, but I really don't know how it compares to my national homes that are being rotated through that same inventory. Either way I think that it will be a worthwhile investment for the first 14 days, and then I might try the featured local listing to see what kind of traction that gets me. Honestly I think this first listing is going to be higher volume because of the national exposure, but lower yield. Conversely, if I sign up for the local spotlight, the $49 will be much lower volume, but definitely more qualified traffic. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out, but I always like to see my media buying theories played out in real life. Here's the actual view of how it looks on the home page, I'm pretty happy with it so far:

Showing #1 & Realtor.com

2007-09-11T11:14:00.001-07:00

So things seemed to go pretty well with the first showing. There was an actual realtor that showed up with their client (a HOMEBUYER), so I guess the story that there are no buyers out there isn't exactly true. I felt like the buyer was really just shopping around and they didn't seemed to be wowed by our house, but maybe I am just reading into it too much. We did the basic here is our house walk-through and made sure to mention all of the upgraded features and do a little demo on everything we have added on in the past year or so. Hopefully they like it and will call back for more info, but if nothing else it was good practice and we needed a fire-drill like this to get the house up to showing condition.

Also, I found out that our MLS listing did finally show up on Realtor.com, I hadn't been able to find it recently because their sort by price functionality does not work that great. I believe they do that on purpose so that the "Showcase Properties" get more traffic. Not 100% sure about that fact, but it makes sense that they would do that to push more visitors to the people that pay for the more expensive ads. I'm thinking that I may add more pictures to my listing, I believe the upgrade through JackKeller was only ~$100 or so. If I don't do that I may pay to have my ForSaleByOwner.com listing displayed prominently on their homepage for 14 days. It's only $49 for the local version and $99 for national, might be worthwhile for a one time thing. Either way I'll make up my mind before the weekend.

First Real Potential Buyer! (or our first showing)

2007-09-10T14:25:00.000-07:00

Ok, in addition to a couple more realtor calls/email, I have someone coming by to look at the house soon and am amazed that there was a real buyer at the other end of the phone when a realtor called. We spent most of the weekend watching shows on what to do and what not to do with your house when you are showing it to potential buyers, so we'll see how this works out.

I will provide more info in the next few days depending on how things pan out (in a confidential manner of course), but am excited to do our first showing. I have prepared a few more detailed brochures (with floorplan, lotplan, etc), and will provide further details when I can. I know that this may be one of many, but opptys that go nowhere, but look forward to seeing some fruit from all this labor.

Contacts Rolling in

2007-09-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

Well, I know someone is finally seeing all of my hard work. It hasn't paid off yet but there have been a few calls and some emails from Realtors and Mortgage brokers that are interested in "helping me out". So far I am not interested in this kind of help, but it is apparent that I am showing up in front of the right kind of eyeballs - and this is somewhat comforting. I am being nice to the people that do call and write in, because I may need them to bring me a buyer at some point in the future. I do wonder if there is an unwritten/unspoken rule nowadays with Realtors to not bother dealing with FSBO's because of the low commission rate that they are offering to bring a buyer in. More on this topic when I figure it out!

Trulia - just another mashup?

2007-09-04T11:10:00.000-07:00

Stumbled across this today after the holiday weekend, Trulia seems to be the next mashup-Zillow-type site coming down the pike to battle it out in this established Real Estate Industry. Turns out that they have a bunch of tools for Realtors and allow them to post their full listings while providing all sorts of useful widgets (I integrated their Search widget in the nav of this blog). In addition to this they have many Zillow like features for home values and local community data powered by

Their heat map was my favorite feature, and I have used it to gain perspective on what Zip codes around me are selling and at what price. I submitted my home to be listed, there really wasn't a FSBO section, so I hope I am able to get listed, will provide more updates when I hear back from them.

Labor Day contacts

2007-09-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

I hooked up my web mail to my Treo this morning after I found out I missed a couple emails over the weekend at my steve@borgatahouse4sale.com address. Turns out someone responded to my craigslist post looking to find out what the property address was, and some realty company spammed me for a flat fee MLS listing through my ForSaleByOwner.com listing, so I promptly reported it to their abuse department. Apparently they have already taken care of it by blocking their emails, so looks like complaining pays for a change. Here's hoping all future contacts I receive are more promising - enjoy your day off everyone!

DOH! moment for a FSBO'er

2007-08-31T13:43:00.000-07:00

So I had my first DOH! situation of this whole process For Sale By Owner-Online Advertising project. I just received confirmation that my listing has been posted to the MLS and should go live on Realtor.com in the next 10 days or so. Actually it is great news, but as I was searching for more listing services, I stumbled upon IggysHouse.com that offers a Free MLS listing. I'm sorry, what? a Free MLS listing? I already paid for mine so there is really nothing in this for me to promote them, but I figured that it would be good to share the wealth with anyone else that is doing FSBO and looking to cut costs. IggysHouse is backed by BuySideRealty that gives up to 75% commission rebates back to the buyer that are earned from the seller. Both sites look like they are ready to turn the real estate industry on its ear, so I wasn't sure why I hadn't heard of either before, but please comment and let me know if you use either and have success with them. I am very interested to find out how it works.

Oh, I found out something else about Google Base, it turns our your free listing on Infotube.net and your paid listing at ForSaleByOwner.com are automatically uploaded each day to Google Base, this saves you the hassle of re-uploading every 10 days. Now if someone knows how to do this with Craigslist too I will be set.

Other Free House listing Sites for FSBO property

2007-08-30T05:37:00.000-07:00

So the Search Engines proved to be my friend again when it came to finding a few more free posting services. I wonder at what point it proves to become a hindrance to updating details across all of these listings. There were several free listings, and some may prove to be a bit cumbersome to manage (GoogleBase - needs to be updated every 10 days), but all are at a cost of only my time, so for now I will try it.

Allthelistings.com - Decent free listing service with a Google PR of 4/10. Allows you two free pictures (60k or less) and has tracking of page views of your listing.

GoogleBase - is Google's attempt to dominate the real estate market, and they are already partnering with Realtors on many of the listings. They haven't announced a "Google Real Estate" product yet, but you can already see the integration throughout Search:

The listing is fairly full featured, but it expires after 10 days, so I need to find out how to update this automatically, or else it will become a chore to manage.

TheHomeDog.com - Decent free listing and some tools for homebuyers. The Home Dog allows you to upload several pictures at no charge and for buyers has an email "Retrieval" alert service for MLS and FSBO listings.

Houselist.com - a free basic text listing for your home. Google PR is 4/10, no real higher-level features unless you fork over $100-200. Not sure it is worth it to do anything more than the basic listing.

VirtualFSBO.com - seems like a made-for-adsense site, but they do have an attractive free listing with map, flyer, and real estate forms as well as forward to a friend functionality

What the heck is Kijiji???

2007-08-29T09:09:00.000-07:00

So I was looking for other free listings and stumbled across Kijiji:

Kijiji is a group of free, local, community-based classifieds websites. Kijiji offers a convenient, fun, and easy way for people in the same city to meet, trade, share ideas, and help each other out in areas such as goods, cars, services, housing, jobs, and personals. The word "Kijiji" (pronounced like key-gee-gee) means "village" in Swahili. This name was chosen because it captures the essence of what we are creating - a site where people can connect with others in their community. Kijiji sites are currently available in more than 1000 cities/neighborhoods around the world.

Kijiji first launched in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, China, Japan, and Taiwan in February 2005. Later that year, Austria, Switzerland, and India also joined the family. Today, Kijiji now has over 17 million users across these markets and is a leading classifieds site.

The process was slick and the interface is much more friendly than Craigslist, so I expect to see them grow in the future.. Check out my listing here.

Posted Listings on ForSaleByOwner.com and Infotube.net

2007-08-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

If I hadn't been such a dope, I would have looked at some of the listing sites first to see what they offered, I may have known that they automatically create a brochure from your listing. So all that work I put into the MS-Publisher flyer was not necessary, but I do think my brochure looks a lot nicer. Also, my neighbor's company is relocating a division to this area, so I needed to get him a copy yesterday, if nothing else it helped me brush up on my Publisher skills.

I chose ForSaleByOwner.com over BuyOwner.com simply because it was less expensive, and I had heard a few other FSBO'ers generating a decent number of leads from this service. The most expensive listing option is $899 versus BuyOwner's platinum package that runs somewhere near $5K. More importantly ForSaleByOwner.com's platinum level includes MLS listing, syndication to Realtor.com and several other websites, as well as signage, a flyer and a number of other nice tools for buying and selling a home. I went with the flat rate $199 "until sold" plan, and upgraded to the online distribution (Yahoo.com, SaleByOwner.com, ByOwnerSales.com, Military.com, ATT.net, USAToday.com, Areaguides.net, etc.) for another ~$30 since I am already on MLS. They also offer you a number of advertising options for your property to advertise it further - Featured on the home page, Featured on the local home page, banner ads etc, and I think I may use some of these in the future. Overall the listing is fairly decent, and the site boasts over 2MM monthly uniques with some decent distribution outlets, as well as reporting on the number of pageviews your listing sees, so for now I am fairly happy with my choice - look here to check it out, I will even give a litle ad plug to their service.

Of course I missed the free posting option on Infotube.net when I first opened the Tube that I purchased at Home Depot. It was only when I was throwing out the packaging that I stumbled upon it. Their Google PR is only a 3/10, but that is probably more due to the .net domain. The company has been around since 1988 and was the inventor of the Infotube, so they are no dopes, but it seems like they are a little late to the Internet game (although they seem to be catching on nicely). Their free listing is pretty good and allows you to upgrade to a paid/Featured listing as well. Infotube is also one of the original Flat Fee MLS listings, but they are a bit expensive at the ~$499 + $50 processing rate -www.why6percent.com. Overall they seem to have a number of helpful features and a free listing, so far I like what I have seen, especially considering the price.

Infotube and FSBO sign

2007-08-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

I went to Home Depot and picked up an Infotube and For Sale By Owner sign for our house and yard. In our community they don't allow you to post signs on your yard, so I had to get some magnets to stick the FSBO sign to my garage. I also picked up some reflective number stickers because my handwriting is so illegible.

With a little help from MS-Publisher I was able to put together this brochure and will stick a dozen or so flyers in the Infotube on my lawn near the mailbox:

Craigslist and MLS signup

2007-08-27T07:46:00.000-07:00

So I did a lot this weekend to get a few more listings live for my house. The MLS signup was initially completed, but my payment still has to go through and I need to send over some photos before they will turn it live.

Craigslist so far is the easiest, quickest, and it's free but they require you to update your listing every 45 days. West Palm Beach is my local area, but to post one for yourself, go to www.craigslist.com and navigate to the nearest metro area and then click on the Real Estate link under Housing. I was able to put mine together in a few minutes, but I want to try and figure out how some listings are a bit more robust with several pictures and HTML formatting. They allow you to use 4 pictures and seem to have a decent amount of traffic, I just wish I could see stats somewhere for how many people have viewed my post. It seems like some listings appear multiple times, on different dates, so I'm going to have to figure out how to do that as well.

MLS Listing

2007-08-24T07:27:00.000-07:00

So I think I've done as much research as I possibly can on the MLS listing services, and have found two local companies that two people I know have used. Jack Keller Realty is the first one I heard of and has a flat fee listing for only $150. Others I stumbled upon ranged from $159-500, and there are various levels of more established companies and realty firms offering the listing service, so I will try to investigate a bit more before committing to one or another. Most offer a free basic listing on Realtor.com, and may try to get you to upgrade to a more robust listing and syndication based on Realtor.com's distribution. Not sure which option is right for me, so will look around a bit more before I sign up.

Zillow my house

2007-08-22T06:34:00.000-07:00

So in order to put my house up at a reasonable price, I visited Zillow.com to see what they said my house was worth. Basically they look at comparable (comps) values of other houses in your area to come up with their "Zestimate" of what your home is worth. If you are like us and bought several years ago, their estimate may be a lot lower than other homes in your community (even right next door for instance), so it is a good starting point, but not 100% accurate.

What I liked most about Zillow is that they allowed you to update their "Zestimate" with improvements that you have made to your house (buyer's estimate), and also post a free listing of your property. Once you have posted your free listing, you can also purchase ads to promote your house throughout their site - > EZ-Ads

Zillow is not just here to help Nosy Neighbors and FSBO's like me, they also have a number of tools and services geared towards Real Estate professionals, so who knows, maybe one day they will be the "Google of Real Estate"..

Bogged down in Mortgage paperwork

2007-08-20T18:52:00.000-07:00

OK, so I thought I would get things moving sooner rather than later but we have been working on a few minor repairs to get our house ready for showing condition and things took a bit longer than I thought they would. Add to that the fun details of getting everything together for the new mortgage I am taking on and that's how things have taken so long to get anything accomplished.

I finally put together a few more pictures on the http://www.borgatahouse4sale.com/ site, and have done some research on MLS and some other online listings services geared towards FSBO properties. A few former co-workers have referred me to some flat fee MLS listing services and I am trying to figure out which one offers the most for the least $$. As soon as I have all of that figured out I will post more details here.

I just got back from vacation...

2007-08-16T18:41:00.000-07:00

OK, so we are in contract on a new house and just got back from a week vacation with my family up in Myrtle Beach, and I really new to get cracking on putting our house up on the market. I really have no clue what I am doing, but decided to go ahead and give it a shot at selling our current house by owner. We are moving up with the new house we are buying so we'd really like to sell our current property without handing over 4-6% in commission to a realtor. I have seen too many houses in the surrounding communities sit on the market for a long time in the hands of a "skilled professional" and have only seen home-owners eventually chop down their asking price (and profits) to a bare basement price in order to move their house.

Now we were fortunate enough to buy this house 6 years ago, pre-construction, at the bottom of the last boom, and were not planning on moving anytime soon. But it turns out that we stumbled upon a much bigger house on a cul-de-sac, on a decent sized lot (for FL), that is zoned for all A schools, and couldn't pass it up. We are in a much better position than others that have bought in the last 1 1/2 - 2 years and are trying to break even to get out of their current home.

The first things I did was buy two domain names and setup a blog that both domain names are redirected to. I thought the domains were catchy enough to remember, and might have some commercial opportunity for a local realtor after I was done with them. The domains are www.borgatahouse4sale.com and www.borgatahouseforsale.com. I thought that this would be a much better link to use on printed material, signage and other web listings and uploaded one picture to it.

That's all for now, I'm going to be researching how to post via MLS and see if Buyowner.com is worth it for my needs. My brother had used Buyowner a while back to sell successfully but I have heard they have raised rates a short while back and a few other people I know have tried it lately and haven't seen much success. Will see what I come up with.

Why am I doing this?

2007-08-14T18:33:00.000-07:00

Ok, so you might wonder why I am trying to track this little project of mine via a blog, but I am really intrigued to see if I can succeed at selling my house without the help of an established, licensed real-estate professional. I have had several friends and family members succeed at posting and selling their properties via some of the FSBO websites that are out there, but the housing market isn't really what it was at the time. Also, we went ahead and bought another house (that we couldn't pass up) before we even put our current house on the market, so the need is definitely there to sell sooner rather than later and maximize our profits.

Finally, I have been taking notes over the past week or two to track what I have accomplished, and will start posting fresh notes starting here on out. Hope you enjoy this, and anyone else that is out there going through the same thing situation might actually learn a few helpful hints.

***Keep in mind I am not a licensed real-estate professional and have never sold a house FSBO, so definitely consult a professional when in doubt, I am merely sharing what I am doing in the course of this project. My success or failure is not indicative of what you should do***