How to Effectively Prospect FSBO
Similar to prospecting withdrawn & expired listings, many realtors overlook prospecting FSBO’s. But they are actually a great way to get listings. Let’s dive into how you can contact them, what you can offer them and what to expect when prospecting FSBO’s.
How A FSBO Can Market Their House
When a person lists their house, they don’t have a lot of options to market the home:
- For Sale sign in yard
- Craigslist
- Zillow
What homeowners don’t realize is that even if they’re doing these three things, they are only reaching about 30- 40% of people in the area. Also, listing a home on Craigslist isn’t as effective as it was a few years ago. Things have changed and unfortunately, there are many scammers that have caused buyers and sellers to stop looking there as much.
There are flat service MLS options that are becoming more popular and people can use them to get their home listed on the MLS. If they are using this service, they will inevitably ask, “What else could you do that I’m not already doing?”.
What You Can Do To Market & Sell Their House
- Professional photos
- Improve the description/write-up in the MLS to grab people’s attention
- Increase the number of Open Houses to get traffic through the door
- Improve the social media exposure of the house
- Negotiate strong on their behalf
Reasons Why Their House May Not Be Selling
Most FSBO’s think that they can easily sell their home and get frustrated when it doesn’t – but they may not realize what they’re doing wrong. Explain there may be reasons that their house is not selling and that you can help with these matters:
- Staging/de-cluttering
- Pricing- they may have it priced too high
- Poor marketing
- Unwilling to work with a buyer’s agent/pay any commission
- Unable to screen buyers (i.e. takes an offer from someone who is not approved)
- Aggressive with buyers- may not leave them alone when looking at the house
- Not available to show the house when requested
- Negotiating the price
- Negotiating the home inspection
What to Say When You Call
Be energetic, friendly and professional. Gain their trust by listening to the issues they’re having with selling their house and clearly communicate what you can do for them to get it sold quickly. Go over the points above (what you can do to sell their house), ask if they have any questions and try to set-up a time to meet.
Reasons Why People Do FSBO
- Bad experience with a realtor in the past
- They want to save money- they’re frugal. They figure that they’ll sell the house at the same price a realtor would list it at, so why should they pay 2-3% commission? But that’s really not the case at all and you need to explain that you will sell it quicker and for more money than they can. It’s not about your commission, it’s about what they will get at closing.
Note- Be open to negotiating your commission. Coming down a little bit may help you get the listing and generate new leads. For example, you will start hosting Open Houses and can get a lot of buyer leads from them! This will add up to more commissions overall.
Additional Resources
There are a ton of videos on Youtube explaining how other agents approach prospecting FSBO’s, be sure to check them out. There are a few subscriptions that you can use to get the phone numbers of FSBO listings so you can save a little time. One is TheRedX and the other is Espresso Agent– check them out to see if they can help you!
At Dalton Wade we believe that today’s buyers and sellers need a trusted resource that can guide them through the complex world of real estate and that’s what we provide to our clients- exceptional service.
We also believe that real estate agents deserve to keep 100% of their commissions. Dalton Wade Agents work on 100% commission, pay a $79 monthly membership fee, pay $79 a closed transaction and are paid at closing! If you’d like to learn more about keeping 100% of your commissions, contact us today!
