In D.C., a Tale of Two FSBOs

Shan Sparshott's for-sale-by-owner, a 1952 brick semi-detached on Nevada Avenue NW. (By Beth Gilbert For The Washington Post)

Tony Hix, a do-it-yourselfer who recently renovated his Washington house, has now decided he can sell it himself, too.

"Although I'm not a salesman, I believe I'm offering a top-quality product," Hix said as he leaned on the breakfast bar in his new stainless steel and granite kitchen.

Like most people who opt to follow the for-sale-by-owner route -- often called FSBO, pronounced fizz-bo -- Hix wants to avoid paying the typical 6 percent commission to real estate agents. It would come to about $41,000 on his $685,000 asking price. So he took the advertising, marketing and open houses -- and, he hopes, the eventual sale -- into his own hands. He is banking on his successful FSBO track record: He has renovated and then sold houses in Sterling and Leesburg.

A similar but slightly different scenario is in progress just around the corner at Shan Sparshott's Nevada Avenue NW home. "I know my home's attributes and don't think anyone can show my house any better," a confident Sparshott said early last month.

To help with her FSBO sale, she turned to the Internet, especially a site called Letsgofsbo.com, for assistance. "Initially, the choice of not working with an agent and saving a significant amount of money in a falling market is what attracted me to trying to sell my house on my own," she said.

The two houses are almost identical: brick, semi-detached, with three bedrooms, two full baths and a powder room. What Hix offers in updates, Sparshott counters with a large, private yard and the quieter street.

The big difference in the two homes was price. Sparshott started at $750,000. After almost two months without an offer, she cut her price to $680,000 in mid-September. Hix stands firm at $685,000. He said he consulted real estate agents for a market analysis and priced his home at 15 percent less than similar houses in the neighborhood.

Nancy Wilson, the listing agent on the Nevada Avenue house when Sparshott purchased it in 1997, said, "Pricing a home is an art, not a science."

Like many real estate agents, she thinks FSBOs often overestimate value and underestimate the nuances of what it takes to sell a house.

Wilson pulled a list from the local multiple listing service of comparables sold in the neighborhood in the last 90 days. One semi-detached house on the 5200 block of Nebraska Avenue sold on Aug. 21 for $625,000, almost $25,000 below the initial asking price. Another house on that block was listed for $599,000 but sold for $565,000, less a $15,000 subsidy from the owners, which essentially brought the price down to $550,000.

Since the beginning of August, Hix has had signs in his front yard, and a big red-white-and-blue "Open House" flag every weekend. He believes the quality of the materials and attention to details in his renovation set his house apart from the more than 30 other semi-detached brick houses that stretch for about two blocks on a busy section of road just east of Connecticut Avenue.

Back when she started, Sparshott thought that what she got for $1,300 from Letsgofsbo.com would be enough to market her house. It included two signs, fliers and an ad in a free magazine. But after more than two months on the market, more than 60 phone calls, with an equal number of visitors and no offers, Sparshott spent another $300 to have the Web site Forsalebyowner.com put her house in the multiple listing service and is willing to work with an agent if one can bring her a buyer.

"Owners lack some perspective and can often get offended by certain questions that buyers want to ask. An agent can bridge that gap by being objective and open to buyers' concerns," said Donna Evers, principal broker with Evers & Co. Real Estate in Washington.

Selling your own house in today's market is more challenging than either Hix or Sparshott thought it would be. Many people think the showing is the "easy" part, and plan to contact a real estate lawyer when the time comes to sign papers.

Those in the industry disagree. "Contracts are such a small part of the real estate transaction process," said Randy Rothstein, a former agent and now a principal and settlement attorney at Paragon Title and Escrow in Bethesda. "Over the past 25 years I've worked with countless for-sale-by-owners. I often refer them back to the agent who initially referred them to us because, aside from the forms and legal issues, there are a myriad of considerations regarding the psychology of a transaction that an agent is almost always more capable of handling."

Sparshott and Hix said traffic from window shoppers has been good, but that offers have been slow to come. Hix finally has one, which he is in the process of negotiating. But as of last weekend, his signs were still out and Sparshott was still waiting.