Posted Wednesday July 20, 2011 — 4:42pm
By Zac Schultz
Twitter @zschultz15
Madison: In fall of 2008, Sandy Mouras and her husband went shopping for their first house and found this small home on Upham Street. “We definitely fell in love with the house because of the charm when we saw it,” says Sandy.
The house was listed on the For Sale By Owner website, which allows buyer and seller to skip the typical 6% realtor’s commission. “We were attracted to the rugged individualism of it,” says Sandy.
Just last winter they decided it was time to move back home to North Carolina and listed the house. “Go FSBO, we had a really good experience and again we trusted ourselves that we knew enough about the market, what houses were going for around here.”
But after two months of open houses and only a couple of visitors, they realized the house wasn’t going to sell itself and started talking to realtors. “Managing selling the house on your own, trying to move out of state is probably a little bit more than we could handle to stick with FSBO.”
They aren’t alone. Mary Claire Murphy is Co-owner of FSBO Madison and says the number of homes listed though them has dropped dramatically. “Our numbers have waxed and waned like a lot of others, we don’t anticipate ever having the huge numbers that we had 5-6 years ago.”
Murphy says they had 700 properties listed by 2000 and more as the decade went on. They have less than 400 today. Murphy says Sandy and her husband’s need to move is common. “There’s a greater percentage of those folks now who have to move. Wheras in those mid-2000’s there was a greater percentage of people who were trading up because they could.”
After listening to what a realtor says the house would sell for, Sandy and her husband have decided on a third option. “We’re going to rent the house now. We’ve gone through everything. It’s like a rock, a hard place and a hard place.”
It’s not what they want, but otherwise the recommended selling price would have them bringing a check to closing. “If we sell we’re certainly lose everything. If we rent we just risk losing everything.”
Murphy says FSBO still has a market, just much smaller now. “We’re just there for the people who feel like this is the way they want to go.”
Sandy agrees. “It was certainly great for us at a time, and not great enough right now.”