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New Math On the Old Commission
The do-it-yourself approach was "a complete disaster," says Dan Kilcoyne, with his wife, Shira, and daughter, Madeline, at their new home.
(By Ricky Carioti -- The Washington Post)
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In addition to the $199 package Keim bought, the firm will write contracts, rent lockboxes, and offer other services off an a la carte menu. They have also set up a sister company, Everything Real Estate Inc., to offer traditional services. They refer clients back and forth.
Through the flat-fee business, they sold 364 homes last year with a sales volume of $158,031,584, Schmidle said. Had all those sellers paid a 3 percent commission, listing brokers would have collected $4.7 million.
But the promise of a cheap, easy deal does not always pan out.
When Dan Kilcoyne and his wife, Shira, decided to sell their Silver Spring townhouse, he logged on to ForSaleByOwner.com and found a local flat-fee broker who gave him everything he expected for $300: a yard sign, the paperwork, a posting on the multiple-listing service. "It was very smooth and very easy."
But 60 days into the process, he knocked $20,000 off his $585,000 asking price because he had no offers.
"Other agents would not bring people into our house," said Kilcoyne, 31. They told him they feared doing more work for less pay, because he did not have an agent. He also offered a relatively low 2.5 percent to agents who brought him a buyer.
Ninety days into the process, he hired Joan Caton Cromwell, a Long & Foster agent who had the house under contract at the reduced $565,000 price in about two weeks, he said. He paid 5.5 percent in commissions.
The do-it-yourself approach, he concluded, was "a complete disaster." People knocked on his door at all hours. His family had to keep the house spotless -- no easy feat with a 21-month-old child. And he had no time to follow up on inquiries.
Could he have fetched a higher price had he hired an agent earlier?
Kilcoyne sighs. "I try not to think about it."
