Today we’re going to talk about how to list on all the websites that matter for all you NYC homeowners who want to For Sale By Owner. This is no easy task mind you, as the buyer search universe is extremely fragmented. As we’ve previously discussed, you’ll want to hit the main free websites such as Zillow and Trulia. You’ll also want to be listed on StreetEasy, which increasingly has become the most popular real estate search website in NYC. Lastly, you’ll want to find a cheap and efficient way to also list on the Manhattan MLS and OLR. Now you can do this individually for the free ones or use a free service called Postlets which is actually owned by Zillow. My personal favorite method is to use a listing service like Hauseit to list your property on StreetEasy, Zillow, Trulia, Manhattan MLS and OLR - basically every major real estate website in one go. A service like Hauseit basically enables you to borrow a broker’s listing technology for a discounted flat fee. I personally recommend these guys because the fee they charge is only a few hundred dollars which you earn back in one month because StreetEasy will charge you that amount to list just on their site for only one month. The downside of using Postlets is that it only goes to a handful of sites, the most important of which is Zillow, but it doesn’t get you to the multiple listing service. One thing to note is, no matter which service you use, be prepared to sign some sort of listing agreement to be able to list on the multiple listing service and OLR. The reason you need to sign an agreement is because StreetEasy and databases like OLR want to maintain their data integrity. They obviously do not want multiple brokers listing the same property. They call this an open listing which is banned on StreetEasy and OLR. You should search your property address to make sure brokers aren’t advertising your property without your permission. If you find out that they are doing this, they are in effect using you as an open listing to source leads for themselves. You should contact them or complain to the search website and tell them that they have listed your home without your permission. Now even after I’ve said this, I know a lot of you out there trying to sell by owner are control freaks at heart. You don’t want someone else to list your property even if you’re not paying them 6%. It’s really a give and take. I of course also enjoy having complete control over my listing, however there are many advantages to going with a listing service. One of the benefits besides saving you a lot of time listing each website individually, is that you’ll have the protection of a listing broker. By going through a discount broker or listing service, other brokers will assume you have already signed an exclusive with that broker. By default you will get less harassment because you have already signed on with someone else. I’ve have found that this saves me a lot of painful cold call from junior brokers. Let me know if you have any questions and please check out the rest of my blog for other posts on how you can for sale by owner in NYC.
Today we’re going to talk about some of the existing sites available that you can post your listing for sale by owner in NYC. Zillow is the first name I will mention because I’m sure you’ve all heard of it. Zillow is by far the biggest search company for consumers in the nation and it is also a public company. Trulia is another name which I’m sure you’ve heard of and it is also a large consumer search website. Trulia was actually purchased by Zillow a few years ago for over three billion dollars. Those two, Zillow and Trulia, are the biggest search websites in the country. You can post on them for free. In NYC specifically another website called StreetEasy is very popular with buyers. I’m not sure how StreetEasy became so popular but many buyers use them for their interface which is very well designed. For example they have a feature where you can draw the boundaries of where you want to search for your listings in the city. The sad news is StreetEasy is not free. It actually costs 400 U.S. Dollars to post your home on StreetEasy for one month. Another popular site is Realtor.com. This site is operated by NAR which stands for the National Association of Realtors. Despite being a web site owned by a Realtor association it is quite popular for buyers to search and it is especially well known with international buyers. The NYC for sale by owner community is divided on how best to approach a sale and how many sites you need to be on. For example, there are dozens of other search web sites out there like propertyshark, Homes.com, Yahoo Homes and AOL real estate. Needless to say, the buyer search universe is very fragmented among many different websites. Adding to the issue is the fact that there are some databases or web sites that are not accessible to retail consumers. What I mean and what I am referring to are the infamous MLS Databases. The MLS stands for the multiple listing service. It is basically a database where only brokers have access. It is a database which requires its members to upload their exclusive listings usually within 24 hours of signing an exclusive. The interesting thing about this database is that it allows the listing agents to post the percentage commission offered to buyers’ agents. This crucial distinction makes the multiple listing service extremely important to buyers’ agents. ***In NYC the MLS is actually not a MLS. The main inter-brokerage database is operated by REBNY (Real Estate Board of New York) and is called the RLS (REBNY Listing Service)*** Because of the multiple listing service and its history of participating firms buyers’ agents have confidence when they see a commission offered that they will actually get paid. And this is important to my fellow home owners because you definitely want to make friends and sell your home to represented buyers as well. By some records, over 80% of the buyer universe is represented by real estate agents. Needless to say when you get harassed by agents about being on the multiple listing service they aren’t joking it really is important. Lastly in Manhattan the dominant broker database is not even a multiple listing service, it’s actually called OLR. OLR stands for Online Residential and it isn’t affiliated database with the National Association of realtors and it is for profit and currently the most popular broker database in New York City. Let me know if you have any questions as New York is especially complex and complicated of an environment. We will discuss more later about how to get on all these various sites. Guys were going to talk about the practicalities of how to sell by owner in NYC today. The first thing you need to do is to have a fake e-mail address and phone number. And this is easy to do, you can either use google voice or any other of the various apps that are available. As for the email address, yahoo and gmail are all very accessible ways to create a temporary email address you can use to receive inquiries from. The obvious reason is to not have your personal information visible is because this may get indexed and you don’t want brokers to have your contact information to harass you in the future. I cannot even imagine how infuriating it would be to not be able to take down your information from somewhere Google has indexed with your personal phone number and email, trust me! You do not want this to happen. After you have created new contact information for this transaction the first thing you should do is make sure your home is ready to show and make sure that you’ll be able to show your home or at least have an open house. In this day and age I know many of us wish buyers can just purchase based on the floor plan and photos alone. However that is not possible for an asset class as complex and unique as real-estate. Most buyers in my experience will always still want to see the actual place especially if they aren’t professional investors. Now I will admit professional investors when they are purchasing homes that are very similar to each other with ample comps may not care to visit. But we cannot bet that we will be so lucky. Most first time homeowners are definitely going to want to see your property in person. So the next step after making sure your personal information is not going to be publicly available, you just need to make sure your work schedule allows the flexibility to show your home. You may need to state in your description that you can only show in the evenings or weekends. You may also want to have an open house scheduled for Saturday or Sunday afternoon. I’ve personally found that Sunday afternoon is preferable to Saturday afternoon because that is when most people are in town especially foreign investors on their open house tours. Now if you have connections in the broker community if maybe a good chance to ask them for help or advice before you start this process. Just kidding, we have the internet now! But now in terms of sites and research just google NYC for sale by owner or how to sell by owner in New York and you’ll find quite a few blogs besides mine or forums of large popular search sites that will have educational information for you on this topic. You should do serious research on the topic of selling by owner before you began the process. So thank you for taking the time to read this and remember the first steps after getting your email and phone number for this is to make sure you have time on your schedule to be realistic about expectations of time that it will take, and lastly to ask for advice and learn as much as you can before you start the process. Later this week we’ll talk more about how to actually execute your listing and get it out there so the world can see it which is the most important part!
Hey guys we're going to talk about how to sell by owner when you first start out just trying to do it . It’s certainly not an easy process and I don’t envy anyone who’s about to do it for the first time. I myself was the most clueless of all when trying to sell my home by owner many years ago in NYC. I thought I could just posted on Zillow for free and soon enough I would be bombarded by hundreds of buyers without brokers and easily get around the 6% commission . Boy was I wrong. What instead happened I could’ve never imagined in my worst nightmare. I was harassed for weeks on end by brokers from the worst firms that I have never heard of to Corcoran, Elliman and some of the big names you hear back about in town. I even got multiple cold calls by the same firm when I said I had no interest in listing with them . So what’s really important to know even before you begin is that if you try to sell by owner you will be harassed constantly by many many brokers. A friend who tried to do the same thing actually told me that "if you want all the brokers in town to contact you" the best way is to post a FSBO listing. Now I have nothing against brokers and I realize that they need to make a living but this is certainly not what I had in mind when I’ve socialized with brokers before . They’ve all seemed to be really nice and for the most part normal people when they network with me at parties and events. However I suppose once money comes into the picture everything changes. I’ve never seen people in this day and age of Google, Microsoft and Apple where hundreds of young, presumably, talented individuals cold called for a living because they are the junior brokers in the firm. But again I think the reason for sale by owner so hard in NYC is because in New York agents have never been a part of the National Association of Realtors. In Manhattan they actually have their own broker association called Rebny or in other words the Real Estate Board of New York. They are actually much more anti-competitive than NAR. And I think the reason for that is there’s so much more money involved in the real estate market of NYC. I will have more tips for you readers this week on the actual steps of how to sell by owner but the point of this article is to remember that this would take patience, time and a lot more patience to be nice to these brokers who will harass you. As you can see, I'm very passionate about this topic and can't wait to share with you all the concrete steps and skills I've learned in how to sell without a broker in New York. It's possible I promise!
Hey guys this is my first post I just wanted to share with all of you my experiences with the selling by owner process in the city which as you know can be a nightmare. I’ve personally been through a for sale by owner process and I have been harassed by hundreds of brokers for doing it. It’s not something I wish for anyone to go through unprepared so I hope this blog is able to help my fellow NYC homeowners!
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JACK RAMONENYC FSBO Survivor, writer and Father Archives
September 2016
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