For sale by owner gang, where have you gone?
Heads up real estate market conspiracy theorists. You are going to just love my take on this one.
Back during the bubble years, for sale by owner acolytes were on a mission to convert the rest of us. Why pay a Realtor a commission? Get off your lazy duff and sell your house. It’s just so easy, the FSBO crowd would croon.
Well, maybe not. The number of home sales by owners flying solo has dropped precipitously, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors and the National Association of Realtors report.
MAR contends just 6 percent of 2010 sales were FSBO transactions, with nearly 60 percent of these owners having known the buyer beforehand. NAR is crowing that the FSBO share of the market has fallen to 9 percent from 13 percent during the bubble years.
I am hardly ready to take these numbers as gospel – it is a bit like asking the Herald how the Globe is doing, or for that matter, getting the Globe's take on the Herald.
Yet I am not among those very vocal few who seem to believe that industry trade groups like NAR and MAR simply pull their numbers out of the wide blue sky.
It certainly matches with what has happened with the real estate market over the past few years – it’s a heck of a lot harder to sell a house. And frankly, I am not finding myself besieged with e-mails from the FSBO faithful on their latest successes in selling solo.
If you think I am wrong on this, then let me have it FSBO fans.
Still, I have to admit I have always been dubious about your claims.
And we can debate endlessly on the job performance of the average Realtor.
But I also sense contempt for the value of expertise – just, ironically, as it becomes more valuable then ever in our increasingly complex society. Newspaper reporters? Who needs them – everyone can just start a blog and report the news on their own. And so it goes, on down the line, from teachers to public servants to social workers.
If you are married with children and both you and your spouse work outside the home, who has time to learn the Realtor game and start marketing your house?
Don’t know about you, but I barely have time to read my latest favorite book before I drop into bed at night.
