How to sell my Sequim home?  This is a question being asked by many.  Here’s a story that may interest you.  The creator of the national website for FSBOs, ForSaleByOwner.com, whose name is Colby Sambrotto, just sold his personal residence using a real estate agent and paid a standard commission of 6% after months of trying to sell it himself.  Why?  How could the guru of FSBOs abandon the core philosophy of all For-Sale-By-Owners across America?  This is relevant for anyone asking how to sell my Sequim home.

How to Sell My Sequim Home

Homeowners who want to sell a Sequim home have the odds stacked against them.  Nationwide 85% of FSBOs end up listing with a real estate agent because they cannot sell it themselves, and after loosing a lot of precious market time (like the spring and summer months).  Of the remaining 15%, the majority take their homes off the market in frustration.  Very few homeowners ever get their own homes sold.  Why?

Apparently Colby Sambrotto spent six months trying to sell his own residence, but finally sold it through a real estate agent for $2.1 million and paid a 6% commission.  The real estate agent actually raised the price by $150,000 and sold it to a buyer that Sambrotto had failed to sell it to.

This is a text book example of why FSBOs fail over 95% of the time.  We don’t have complete statistics for Sequim, but I think I’m not far off.  Real estate agents here are selling 20 to 30 homes every month, but I think you can count on one hand the FSBOs that have sold during the entire past year.  I fully realize that FSBOs don’t like to hear the truth on this subject, mostly because they don’t believe they will fail.  But the vast majority do fail.

How to Sell My Sequim Home – Why They Don’t Sell

Why don’t FSBOs sell?  Here’s my short list of why FSBOs don’t get their homes sold (but it’s not the complete list):

1. Buyers are not searching for FSBOs, including FSBO sites.  I know.  I’ve asked hundreds.  A few will stumble onto a FSBO site, but selling a home should not be a game of chance.  Don’t believe the sales hype the FSBO sites give you.  Their sites are not very successful.  Many buyers have told me they avoid FSBO sites. (The owner of a FSBO site called me years ago in Sequim to ask me how to do it, because he had never even owned a home himself.)
   
2. Buyers prefer to search MLS sites with hundreds of local listed properties.
3. Buyers prefer to hire an experienced professional agent as their buyer’s representative.
   
4. A real estate agent with a large Internet marketing system will reach hundreds of potential buyers for every one  that a FSBO reaches.  This is not an exaggeration.  This is the biggest issue for anyone asking how to sell my Sequim home.
   
5. The average FSBO is overpriced, and buyers who have stumbled onto a FSBO that is overpriced, figure that out real quick, and they are gone without ever looking at the home or talking to the sellers.  (Years ago I did a study in Spokane and discovered that FSBOs were overpriced with comparably listed homes by an average of $8,000.)
   
6. The vast majority of home sellers simply do not have the experience to price their home right, and
7. Do not know how to professionally negotiate the best price and terms, and
8. Do not know how to put together the contracts, appropriate addendums, and handle the inspection and transaction details, and
9. Do not know how to overcome buyer objections.

No wonder FSBOs don’t get sold.  All of these are true.  These are the key answers to the quere how to sell my Sequim home. Sure there will be the occasional FSBO who has the experience to price and negotiate and draft documents, but we’re talking about the vast majority of home sellers here, not the few. Even the home seller who can do these things, does not have a large Internet marketing system that generates hundreds of leads from qualified buyers.  They are operating with a huge disadvantage.

Even the King of FSBOs, the founder of the nation’s biggest FSBO site, ForSaleByOwner.com, could not sell his own home without a professional real estate agent who is plugged into the buyer market.  That should send a huge message to FSBOs.

FSBOs often tell agents they will pay a 3% commission if they bring a buyer.  Agents will not say anything, but they won’t work with FSBOs without a listing contract.  So if you are a FSBO, don’t get your hopes up that an agent will bring a buyer.  They won’t.

How to Sell My Sequim Home for the Best Price

Want to sell your Sequim home?  You will sell it faster and at a higher price if you list it with a real estate agent who knows what he is doing.  That’s the honest truth.  I’ve been in real estate for 37 years, 20 as a real estate attorney, and now I am a full-time real estate broker with a huge Internet marketing system that I’ve spent a lifetime learning to build and tens of thousands of dollars building.  With all due respect, as a home owner who wants to sell your own home, you cannot compete with this.  Be honest with yourself.  If you own a Sequim home you want to sell, don’t you want every advantage you can get to sell your home?  Don’t you want to sell your home in the shortest time period for the highest price?

Email me at chuckmarunde@gmail.com or call me at 360-775-5424, and I will come out to your house and share with you my impression of your home based on what retirees want and are currently buying.

How to sell my Sequim home is a question many Sequim home owners are asking but what will you do with the answers?

Last Updated on October 1, 2019 by Chuck Marunde