Get Real

We are trying to sell our house near Fayetteville, NC without a realtor. We had a horrible experience with our agent when we bought the place - she absolutely did not act in our best interests, and attempts to hold her accountable all failed. This left us with a mistrust of the rather large brokerage that employs her. Since then, we have observed nothing that could restore our confidence in the ethics of the local realtor community, so we decided to try FSBO. We listed on the MLS using a flat-fee service and offering a 2% commission for buyer agents. Guess what? No calls. I shouldn't be surprised. By law, agents are not supposed to let commission issues stand in the way of showing candidate properties to clients, but clearly none of them are interested in showing our house (which is really nice) when they may only score 2% commission. There may be other issues at play here - for example, our house is priced in line with other resales in the neighborhood, but in our immediate section, the builder seems to have gotten desperate and has underpriced some homes. Obviously competing with new construction is not easy. However, this is a military community, so there are always people who want to move into a house without the wait for a builder to finish construction, probably not on time. Bottom line is that I am even more disgusted than I was before starting this attempt to sell. Fortunately, we still have some time so I am not panicking; I am just annoyed.