How good is bytheowner.com

[gingin]

Anyone has used bytheowner.com to buy or sell a house/condo?
Is it an efficient method to sell?

any other free sites that can be used to advertise?

Thx...

[bobmans]

A buddy at work used one of these services to sell his home. I think his cost was about $650.00 when he sold his property in Stoney Creek for about the same value as others in his area, about 325,000. He was more than happy with how the process worked out. I guess if you price your home accordingly it shouldn't be an issue and the commission savings are huge.

[condorguy]

I used bytheowner.com to sell my house and I found that the value they provided was in their professional looking signs and their feature sheets that you can print from the web site.

I did not have anyone come by to see the house that saw the house on the website. The eventual purchaser was a couple that was in the area that saw my open house while looking at agent's open houses during the weekend in the neighbourhood.

That being said, I saved $20 000 in commissions.

[monomono]

I haven't tried bytheowner, but did try craigslist and kijiji for a while.
In short they suck. 75% of calls are from desparate agents trying to get you to list with them. 10% are from strange sounding people calling from blocked numbers asking for your address, probably so they can come round and break in. 10% come from commercial private sale services such as bytheowner.com trying to get your business. The other 5% are actual potential purchasers who ask a bunch of questions and usually never show up.

Also tried livedeal.ca which is a terrible site and did not generate one call, since if you use their free listing nobody can find your ad.

[ERIKAAMORRIS]

We tried Bytheowner.com and found them very professional. We had about 40 calls, and 10 visits. Our open house date brought in 3 people too. Of course, mentioning our home on RFD also produced 4 visits.

You're best to use BYTHEOWNER when you have time to spare. (at least 6 months) And you need to be realistic with your pricing. It's all fine to save 20K in relator fees, but you need to split those with the purchasers if you're gonna get the sale. Get the top realtor in your area to see your home, price it, get a list of the current listings and sales in the last 6 months (bytheowner will send you this list too in the package)

Then put your home on bytheowner for 4% less. You can show potential sales the realtor's suggested list price as proof that they will benefit from the private sale.

We didn't have a lot of time, so we had to use a realtor when we were down to 60 days until closing on our new house.

[JetLi]

I saw someone use ByTheOwner near my house earlier this summer, I don't think their home was on the market for more than a month. I'm not sure what they were asking and what they got, but considering I saw the sold sign relatively quickly, it couldn't have been too bad.

Get the top realtor in your area to see your home, price it, get a list of the current listings and sales in the last 6 months (bytheowner will send you this list too in the package)

One thing about Realtor's. I have a friend who interviewed 4 Realtor's in his area to get a pricing idea. We noticed a small pattern, the top Realtor who's face is on every bus stop and pretty much everywhere you look, was able to access the home in about 20 minutes. They also valued the house $30,000-$65,000 LESS than the other 3 Realtors. I'm not going to mention any names or where I live in this thread, but the fact that the Realtor offered a guarantee of being able to sell the home in 30 days or he buys it, I understand why now. He advertises homes about 10-20% lower than the market value so of course it sells! Get a few quotes, don't just get one from the top Realtor in your area is all I can say after hearing this, but if you're looking to buy, find the Top realtor in that area and look at their listings. You know he's already lowered the price of the home! :twisted: (although it sucks for the existing home owner, it was their decision to go with that Realtor!)