“For Sale By Owner” Website Founder chose to use a REALTOR when he sold his personal home!
It’s true! According to a Wall Street Journal article dated August 3, 2011, Colby Sambrotto, the founder and former CEO of forsalebyowner.com recently hired a real estate broker to sell his home. He did try selling it himself but after months of low traffic and lowball offers, he gave up and paid a broker 6% to get the job done. Here’s what he learned: Following his own advice of pricing the home under the competition, he discovered that he was marketing to the wrong buyers! In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal,
“the house closed … for $150,000 more than the original (FSBO) asking price.” In other words, he made a lot more money by using a real estate professional to market his home. And he learned something else: “Staging and The Internet Does Not Sell A Home!” According to the WSJ:
“Looking to move his family to the suburbs, [Mr. Sambrotto] said he carefully staged his apartment for sale himself, and put it on the market. But after using a mix of websites to publicize his apartment, he said he had only ‘middling success’ and switched to a broker because most serious buyers work with brokers.”
With his FSBO website, Mr. Sambrotto made a fortune off homeowners. Who knows how much money those home sellers lost as a result of following Mr. Sambrotto’s advice!