The most important thing home owners need to realize when they try to sell for sale by owner in NYC is that they canu2019t avoid all brokers completely (How to sell for sale by owner in NYC).If you avoid all brokers, and write u201cno brokers pleaseu201d on your FSBO web listing, you by default will turn away all buyers represented by agents (3 Reasons why NYC FSBO sellers Fail). As it turns out, buyersu2023 agents represent over 80% of total buyer traffic, which is not surprising considering there are 27,000 real estate agents in NYC alone.If you try to sell for sale by owner in NYC and either actively avoid or get ignored by buyersu2023 agents, your listing will by default be considered u201coff-market.u201d Ironically, being off-market, or ignored by the majority of buyers was never the intention of FSBO home sellers in the first place!If over 90% of home buyers start their search online, why do most buyers still choose to be represented?The fact that most buyers start their search alone on the internet these days is a prime reason why most homeowners decide to try to sell for sale by owner in NYC. Unfortunately, most are not aware of the second part of the fact, that despite this most buyers still end up submitting offers through buyersu2023 agents.You would think that the internet would be able to seamlessly connect buyers and sellers without a middleman, so why do buyersu2023 agents still exist?The reason is quite simple if you step back and think about it. Remember when we mentioned there were 27,000 real estate agents in NYC alone? Collectively, real estate agents represent the biggest salesforce on the planet, offering a customized, high-touch concierge service for free to buyers about to make a major life decision they usually have little experience with.When someone offers to send you great ideas that have just come to market, organize your open house tours for the weekend, negotiate on your behalf, schedule and take you to showings and pryou with general, market and property specific advice for free, no strings attached, itu2019s really hard to turn down.And keep in mind, the pitch may very well be made to you where itu2019s most effective, in person at a social event by someone who may even be your friend. Now perhaps itu2019s starting to make sense why the next savvy real estate search website funded by equally savvy venture capitalists never seem to be able to eliminate real estate agents.Unfortunately for home sellers, buyersu2023 agents are here to stay for the foreseeable future. Barring the invention of highly capable, robotic AI with the full range of human emotions it will be extremely difficult to eliminate buyersu2023 agents in the near future.Learn why buyer agents are here to stay: Is buying a house without an agent in NYC a good idea?Fortunately for home sellers looking to sell for sale by owner in NYC, the commission model will be changing, just not as drastically as one would hope. The real estate commission model is not going from 6% to % since weu2019ve established that buyersu2023 agents arenu2019t exactly in danger of being made extinct.Instead, the model will be transitioning from 6% to 3%, and with additional competition on the buyer agent commission rebate front, to effectively 1-2%. Unfortunately for the homeowner, in order to remain competitive with commissions offered in traditional for sale by agent listings, they will have to continue to offer 2-3% to buyersu2023 agents even if they are selling for sale by owner in NYC (Real estate buyer agent fees in NYC). If they offer less or nothing at all, inevitably buyersu2023 agents will steer their clients away from the listing, assuming they even decide to gamble on letting their clients see a FSBO listing.The biggest savings for those home owners trying to sell for sale by owner in NYC will be on the listing broker commission. While u201cflat fee MLSu201d listing companies have been around for decades, the next generation of listing syndication companies like Hauseit have dramatically increased the effectiveness of buyer agent engagement for FSBO home sellers. Traditional u201cflat fee MLSu201d listing companies have the same problem as a non-MLS syndication service like Postlets: everyone knows itu2019s a FSBO.As weu2019ve discussed, once itu2019s known that youu2019re really a FSBO the advantages of being in the MLS largely go away. Buyersu2023 agents realize they wonu2019t be dealing with another real estate professional and begin to doubt whether the commission will honored. Moreover, the fact that the listingu2019s photos are all watermarked with the flat fee MLS listing companyu2019s logo make it completely obvious even to the most unsuspecting broker. As a result, the home owner experiences no reduction in listing broker solicitation and harassment versus if she had just sold for sale by owner in NYC herself.The next generation homeowner listing company Hauseit solves this issue by discreetly listing your home under an affiliate broker who has none of the reputational issues of a traditional flat fee listing broker. The affiliate broker will typically be a full-service, traditional broker who may normally engage in full commission work. The affiliate broker will list your home in over 90 major real estate search websites like StreetEasy, Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com and more importantly, co-broke on your behalf in your local interbroker databases (RLS for NYC) so you can get the full attention of buyersu2023 agents. All inquiry is automatically forwarded to you via server level forwarding rules so there is no interception or intermediation of leads.Itu2019s very important to be on more than just one real estate search website even if youu2019ve managed to list on your local brokerage database. As weu2019ve discussed before, over 90% of home buyers start their search online by themselves. You want to have every opportunity to capture a potential unrepresented buyer so you can save on the broker commission completely.Therefore, you need more exposure than just Zillow. Hauseit makes sure youu2019re on all the relevant, most popular local search websites like StreetEasy and Brownstoner in addition to national ones like Zillow and Trulia.Hauseit also offers complimentary open houses, comparative market analysis, professional floor plans and real estate photography to its customers so they have a fair shot and a level playing field against a professional real estate agentu2019s comparable listing.
