We never thought back in 2012 when we bought our house that it would take 6 years to complete our renovations.  In fact, we never really finished because in a 100-year-old brownstone there are always improvements to be made.

We decided to put the house up for sale, not because we wanted to leave the house but because we decided we’ve been in New York City long enough and it was time for a new adventure.

Of course, as DIYers, we wanted to sell our house ourselves as we did with our For Sale by Owner condo.  Over the last year, we’ve worked tirelessly to get those little details completed and the house in the best shape we could to lure prospective buyers.  We were lulled into complacency regarding the actual selling of the house until it was almost too late.  For our condo, it was so easy.  We took photos, created a Word Press website with all the photos and financials.  We found a service online that listed it on Zillow and Trulia and got it ready for the open houses.  We had about 2-3 open houses before we received an offer and within two months we had an accepted cash offer.  Easy peasy.

Not so this time.  Things have changed at Zillow and Trulia (owned by the same company).  They are not For Sale by Owner friendly.  We signed up with an online service that was supposed to get our listing on all the real estate websites.  Read the fine print, my friends.  It took weeks to get our listing on Trulia and Zillow because there was an incorrect listing on the site that had our street address but which featured another home down the street that wasn’t even for sale.  By the time we got this ironed out, it was late spring already and we were missing peak selling season.  Our goal was to be in contract by the summer.

We listed it on the NYTimes website first and although we received little interest there (like really no point in wasting your time) we did get one couple who, if their life and financial obligations had worked out, we would have sold it to them.

We tried courting buyer’s brokers but even with an offer of a 2.5% commission (what they’d get when working with a seller’s broker) but we had little interest.  It wasn’t until we listed it on StreetEasy.com (at $599! and also owned by Trulia) that we received more interest on our home but not the traffic we were seeing at other local open houses.  We even paid our daughter to hand out flyers outside these open houses!

What was the problem?  People in the brownstone price bracket seem to work with brokers rather than looking on their own.  The other factor was that our house has its drawbacks:  it faces an expressway.  We needed to get people to the house to see that with our high-quality windows it was hardly a factor at all.

If we had started our process about 6 months earlier, we are convinced we could have pulled it off but time was running out and we wanted to be settled in our new home city before the school year started.

When you list your house as For Sale by Owner, be prepared to be inundated with brokers pretending they want to show interested buyers your home.  What they really want is to represent you.  We had brokers show up at our low turn-out open houses to ask how it went, which we thought was pretty smug and unprofessional.  Brokers, you should never do that!  The other downside to listing your property on your own is that brokers, in general, do not want to encourage these so there is a bit of a blacklist situation – in our paranoid opinion.

One of the brokers that contacted us did stand out from the rest.  Her name was Danielle Nazinitsky from Corcoran.  She did not hound us the way some of the others did.  She was persistent but at each contact, she provided us with value.  She sent us all the similar properties in our area that were having open houses and provided us with good comparables.  When we’d finally decided it was probably time to pick a broker, she serendipitously sent us a post to her blog entitled, “Resistance is Futile!”

We were actually hesitant to go with Corcoran because we figured they were the biggest in NYC and probably the most expensive but mainly, we tend to lean toward the underdog. We later learned that the commission was about the same for all the major firms.  Once we realized this, why not go with the one that has the best marketing and that was Corcoran.

Danielle promised that she’d get us an offer within a month and that she did.  Her main strategy was to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible and take good photos.  From the moment we signed the contract, she was on the case and things moved quickly.

Now, I maintain that my photos were good but, according to brokers and prospective buyers, people want the overlit and in my opinion, misleadingly large kind.  Here is an example of both:

This was mine, taken in winter with a cozy fire.  I thought it was pretty good!

This was our second attempt – brighter and showing off the deck.

And the professional one.  Ok, it looks pretty spectacular and it really shows off the whole room.

There are several advantages to having a broker.  She does all your open houses so you get your weekends back and you only need to worry about cleaning.  When you do get an offer, she negotiates with the other broker and deals with all the questions.  When you are in-contract, she is there for any inspections and additional showings for the buyers, as there inevitably will be.

Still, if you want to give For Sale by Owner a shot to save the money, here is our advice:

1. Start early
2. Get professional photos
3. Have a buyer broker open house and offer a commission
4. Find out which real estate websites are the most frequented and spend the money to list on those.  Don’t bother with those listing online services.
5. Make flyers and hand them out all over your neighborhood
6. Make sure your house is open house ready – clear all the clutter, clean it so you can eat off the floors, touch up the paint and spend some money on art (Ikea has some nice inexpensive framed pieces), new towels, and a professional designer consultation if you are at the higher end of the price range.

When you’ve given it your best shot and it is time to hire a broker, give Danielle a call.  Corcoran gave us a deal that if any interested buyers that were a result of our earlier efforts made an offer, Corcoran would not take a commission.  We’d highly recommend such a clause.  They offered us two weeks to get an executed contract.  This is ridiculous.  We did not think that any of the prospective buyers would be back but just our luck, one made an offer!  Two weeks was not enough time but in the end, it didn’t matter because this buyer was looking to low ball us in addition to having made a racist comment about undocumented immigrants that we were not cool with.

All that aside, you definitely want to have this clause in the contract but ask for a month to execute the contract.  If they want your business, I think they will agree.