Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
Which will be the first to go?
Will they sell or will they fold,
Or work with someone in the know?
That’s basically what I think each morning and evening as I drive past these houses. If you look closely in the photo, there are 4 Comfree signs – they are all over the neighbourhood, and each week another falls only to be replaced by a Realtor’s sign. I find these 4 particularly interesting. The closest one went up in mid-June. A week or two later the second one went up 2-doors down on an almost identical house (along with 2 more identical floorplans around the corner at varying prices). Another week later the fourth one in the distance went up, and a week after that the third farthest one went up. It’s like Comfree row or something. Now, I can understand the first guy and maybe even the second, but what on earth makes you think "wow, it hasn’t worked for my neighbours, so I’m going to give it a try it too?!?!"
As we’ve said so many times on this blog, not everyone needs to hire a professional to get their house sold. Sometimes it seems like the ones who need us the most are the ones who don’t even know it.
Every seller we meet with these days is surprised to hear that selling your home in Edmonton is not as easy as just putting out a sign and waiting for the offers to come piling in. There is a lot of competition out there right now and buyers and reveling in their new found power. By no means do we feel this is permanent.
In the current market, paying $700 up front, to a company who doesn’t care whether or not you sell (since they make their millions either way) is only adding to the eventual cost of selling your home, not saving you money as they claim. And now it’s costing you more than ever, since prices are dropping and as your home sits on the market it is depreciating. Then when you do list with a professional you have to pay additional fees and start at a lower price. At least with a professional you don’t pay until they get you results. Looks like the prices are falling and the average cost of selling is actually increasing.
Your so right on this one, Sara.
To the average person, that $700 seems like such a good deal, but nobody tells you about the lazy way things are done to ‘try’ and sell your property, including the lawyers they have working for them. If you want your place sold, you get a good realtor, if you don’t care or arn’t in a hurry, give these people your money.
Are the homes sitting because they are on comfree or because they are asking too much?
Buyers are aware of comfree so if a property is competitively priced I do not understand why it would not get attention. Buyers are looking at both Comfree and the MLS when searching (i hope).
Um, how do you explain this? In my neighbourhood (Strathcona/Millcreek), there is a house for sale using a realtor (E3104328) which has been de-listed and re-listed twice now with significant price drops (pretty honest, this realtor). I believe it has been on sale for at least 3 months. I can give you more examples of realtor listed houses that are floundering in my neighbourhood, but you get the point.
Conversely, this house, listed on Comfree a couple of weeks ago(Comfree number 17662) sold within a week. The houses are on the same block. There are also examples of houses that haven’t sold on Comfree in the neighbourhood.
My point is going with a realtor “in the know” guarantees you nothing. Neither does going with Comfree. If your house is priced well, it will sell.
But you’re a realtor, so I understand that if people use Comfree you don’t get paid. So I can hardly call you out for being so obviously slanted.
I still think comfree listings should get realtor action on the buyer’s side, and sellers listing with comfree should be prepared to offer a buyers agent a commission for arranging a sale with their client.
In the era of apparent “easy money”, I’ve seen many realtors try and take the easy way of just running around trying to get listings…Our last house showed the best of any on our block sold in 1 day and we paid our realtor huge $$$ to have his assistant put a sign on our lawn. Sure, the argument can be made that there’s behind the scenes stuff that goes on and I would agree.
For some houses, they must be “sold”…nobody is going to naturally fall in love with an average or below property in a lousy location that is asking $50K more than what the flipper paid for it 5 months ago. A coat of point and some fertilizer and lawn mower gas ain’t worth that much.
Seriously house hunter…lol…They aren’t even comparable propeties, price ranges. Come on is that the best you can come up for an example.
They are 250,000 apart in price. You wouldn’t be dealing with comparable buyers…
I can’t comment on every other agent out there. To be honest, what I’ve witnessed on this street could be equated to one home owner hiring Joe Bloe agent, followed by the second home owner and the third and fourth. Now why would #3 and #4 hire Joe Bloe when he’s already failed #1 and #2? Not every agent out there is the same, we all offer different levels of service and expertise. With Comfree they are all getting exactly the same thing, so you’d think they’d know it’s not going to work for a bunch of very similar houses on the same street.
What do they call that when you do the same thing over and over and expect different results…I’ll leave that up to you
How about this then: same Comfree property, sold in a week (Comfree number 17662). Realtor listed house (MLS E3097932), which has been delisted and relisted with a price reduction. On the market now for months. Comparable specs. However, realtor listed house is further north and in a better location. AND much newer. Still unsold. And the realtor is a seasoned veteran. I guess it doesn’t matter if you’re closer to the ravine and you have someone in the know working on your half if your property is overpriced huh? I’m sure the sellers are thanking their lucky stars they have an agent working on their behalf. LOL.
Simply put I can tell you that for the most part you are deluding yourself if you think you can negotiate the value on your home the way a professional can. I hope you if you do it works out. It is not as simple as it is made out to be by those who’ll line their pockets with gold with no care of what happens to you once they pay you.
Some people should not sell their homes themselves simply because, they are not personable enough or they are not aware enough of all the issues.
The number of buyers who look at the average fsbo is higher than what it takes us to sell one of our properties, partially because we know how to address the buyers and their particular needs.
When I meet with someone who has tried on their own. I always ask, “how many buyers have you dealt with”. I get numbers like 30, 10, too many to count, and none. The one who answered none at least knows what a buyer is. Someone coming through a home for an open house is not a buyer.
Not all buyers are aware of Comfree in fact, especially buyers from out of market who are not willing in most cases to trust their most important investment to the good graces of a seller who has no obligation to be fair to them. Many of the other buyers I deal with professionals included are too busy to follow the market as closely as I do and therefore need our assistance to differentiate between what looks like good value and what really is good value.
Search any community in Edmonton on Google. Search Edmonton homes for sale in Edmonton. We come up way before comfree. That’s how our (mine and Sara’s properties get way more traffic than a typical comfree property gets).
Out of town buyers mostly work with agents.
I will sell comfree properties to my buyers if they are a good deal. If I end up doing seller agent duties then I charge accordingly.
The fact is they (comfree)doesn’t care whether you sell or not. I do. I don’t get paid unless I get you the results my clients want.
When I work with buyers I have them under contract. That means I’ll show them any property they are interested in, no matter who is selling it. It also means I will get paid if they buy a home… Most buyers that I work with under contract nowadays ask me to show them the MLS listings first, since that means they won’t have to pay me, the seller will. FSBO listings take second seat in most of our buyers minds.
If you think you save any money using comfree your I would argue that as delusional. Factor in the cost for your time. If your time is only worth $5./hour than maybe you’ll save money. Think of the hours you put into it. Not everybody sells in a day (and when we did we still out sold comfree properties on average). Several times last year people left comfree and listed with us and we sold the property netting them more money with our fee than if they sold on their own. I guess that can’t happen cause in comfree land everyone will pay the same price. Nonsense and most adults should know better. Sales is an art and selling your home is a business not a craft. Marketing is important. And when it comes to the value of your home, negotiating is crucially important as well. An improperly negotiated offer will cost you thousands.
Now I will admit that comfree provides a better service than some Realtors but those people are more than willing to give up their fees to get business. There are hundreds of true professionals in this market who impress me with their ability to add value to their clients.
For the most part though, if you’ve seen what I’ve seen for law suits and issues revolving properties improperly negotiated, and your lawyers can’t help you once the warranties and representations have been made. YOU are on your own. If I screw up at the very least I have errors and ommissions insurance.
But I stand by the fact that the average cost of a transaction is going up not down with trying on your own first, and not succeeding (the large majority aren’t) then re-listing with Realtor while their property value has gone down.
Many of the sellers who have contacted me haven’t even had a single phone call on their comfree ad. If price is your only fix then you don’t understand real estate the way I do.
As for the easy money comment…I can’t really take a guy who thinks Calgary is worth bowing down to seriously, but, there is nothing easy about the money we’ve made. The hours we’ve put in (Sara and I) is incredible. We certainly are not getting rich, nor do I live in the mansion that the owners of Comfree live in. I’m not crying though…not like the number of comfree sellers who have now started sending me overtures to help rescue them. I’m just trying to help them avoid that pain.
I have to admit that I sometimes take exception to real estate agents referring to themselves as professionals. This invites comparison to other professions, for example: lawyers, engineers and accountants. One of the characteristics of these professions is that they are self governing to prevent unethical practices.
The practice of re-listing that you have mentioned recently is rather disturbing and a perfect example of an unethical practice. Congratulations to you on taking a firm stand on your disdain for this tactic. But until the real estate association decides to punish those agents for using such unethical practices, realtors will have a hard time convincing anyone that they are a true profession.
It is possible that this perceived lack of professionalism is one reason that makes some sellers decide to go with comfree instead.
I guess I can’t expect someone from Edmonton to realize that my name is a play on words…I heard that there’s this river called the “Bow” that runs through Calgary…and some of us like to raft “down” it on these 34 degree summers days.
Out of town buyers aren’t even bothering to look at comfree?!?
There flyers and signs are everywhere. They have a central database with 2500 desperate sellers. It couldn’t hurt to look and lowball the lingering properties.
I can’t wrap my mind on the value added marketing by a REALTOR. If a buyer shells out more for top-notch marketing it is funds they can’t use for tanginbles such as a new roof or furnace. You might have a point on negotiations and legal issues.
All I know is that on 102 ave 48st? or thereabouts there are two comfree houses and one realtor house for sale almost next to each other. None of them are selling! I agree Sheldon that a homeowner shouldn’t sell their own house they should use a good realtor or a good salesperson. Enjoy the blog.
Apparently realtors fees are negotiable. Always find a realtor who will work for less. If you are unable to sell your home via Comfree and decide to use a realtor, at least have the realtor discount you by the $700 that you paid Comfree. It will work EVERYTIME! So don’t worry about the Comfree fees. At least TRY TO SELL YOUR HOME yourself first. You have nothing to lose.
I must say I’m really tired of agents slagging ComFree or making fun of people who use them, and equally tired of ComFree insulting Real Estate Agents and touting the massive money to be “saved.”
To be honest it makes you look bad to make fun of someone else and pretend to be superior.
ComFree has its place, as does using a professional agent. Let’s accept this fact and get on with providing value to clients, rather than trying to constantly toss each other of the sandbox.
You are so right Jon. I enjoyed the blog until the new home sales people and Comfree were insulted and the superior comments were made.
Seems somewhat trivial to stereotype FSBO homes like this.
Several coworkers of mine have recently sold through comfree and moved to Vancouver.
They were tech savy and had a websites with 360 degree virtual tours and full specs on their homes up after an hour or two of work. Had their wives/husbands at home to field calls and sold within a week.
A realtor for them would have been a $10,000+ expense for maybe 20 or 30 hours of work.
Bearclaw – How do signs and flyers attract out of town buyers? They can’t see them from Toronto, or Vancouver or wherever they are from. So what do they do? First step, check out MLS – it has the most homes for sale in the country all in one place, and they’re used to using it (if they’re from Canada). Second, go to a search engine and search. Does comfree come up? Sometimes, not nearly as often as other sites (like ours). Then they call someone for help – help making sense of it all, help deciding what neighbourhoods are best for them, help deciding on schools and commuting routes and re-sale value. Most of these people have never been here before. Comfree is an Edmonton phenomenon, in other cities there are other dominant FSBO assist companies (Calgary – Welist, Toronto – Assist2Sell etc…) so most people moving here don’t know about comfree, they don’t see flyers in their home towns, and they don’t find comfree on the search engines.
Laura – why should I pay someone’s Comfree fees? They knew we were an option before hand, and they decided to take the risk and pay Comfree first. If I pay their fees I’m just encouraging people to make a mistake. Our commissions are negotiable – we negotiate based on the services we offer, not based on mistakes the seller has already made. In fact, we have to market a former comfree home much harder than a home listed with us to start with since its first impression has already been made, and made poorly… I’m sure there are many agents willing to give you back your $700, but they will be cutting something to make up that cost.
Jon – I totally agree with you. Right in the article I said “As we’ve said so many times on this blog, not everyone needs to hire a professional to get their house sold.” I wrote the article about 4 houses in particular. 4 houses all in a row who decided to follow their neighbours’ unsuccessful strategy. All they’ve done is set themselves up for an internal bidding war – if a buyer does show up on this street, and visit all 4 almost identical houses what do you think they’re going to do? Find out who wants the most money??? No, go from one to the next saying “your neighbour is willing to go to this number…can you beat it?” Until they find the guy willing to go the lowest.
Nate – if you have the right skill set and enough time on your hands you can successfully sell your home on your own. Our experience shows you won’t net as much money as if you hired us (not other companies….us) but that’s beside the point. I bet your coworkers sold their home prior to June ’07? Things were a little easier then – the comfree magazine was half the size it is now (I don’t know if you’ve picked one up lately but it’s like looking through the yellow pages).
So just to clarify once again….this article is about the four houses illustrated in the photo above. It’s not about every house currently for sale or that has ever sold. The proof is in the pudding – they’ve been on the market for over 6 weeks, the value of their home has likely dropped 5% in that time (over $24,000 if their estimate on market value was accurate). They have already spent at least $700 marketing their home on Comfree. So by trying it on their own, they’ve probably cost themselves $25,000 before paying any commissions to a real estate associate. Sounds like the cost of selling has gone up to me!
“The proof is in the pudding – they’ve been on the market for over 6 weeks, the value of their home has likely dropped 5% in that time (over $24,000 if their estimate on market value was accurate). They have already spent at least $700 marketing their home on Comfree. So by trying it on their own, they’ve probably cost themselves $25,000 before paying any commissions to a real estate associate. Sounds like the cost of selling has gone up to me!”
I see houses being sold in my area by realtors up for over 6 weeks, some even 8 to 12 weeks. So I guess those sellers have lost at least 5% plus what they will pay the realtor once sold. $24000 + at least $10000 to the realtor once sold. Cost of selling has gone up indeed.
I can comment from the perspective of the (busy professional) out-of-town buyer. I am moving to Edmonton in a few weeks and have been monitoring the listing on both Comfree and MLS. I think anyone with Google and serious interest in uncovering listings in the Edmonton market will stumble upon Comfree, MLS, and this excellent blog.
One advantage of Comfree is at least all the listings have pictures. As pointed out in some of the previous articles on this site, I can’t believe someone would pay thousands of dollars to an agent that can not take decent photos of their home. Shame on all the real estate agents that that try and sell a million dollar home with a couple of blurry dark photos or even worse no photos. Those pictures are all I have to judge homes from a few thousand kms away and listing without photos never make it on my radar.
Bottom line is that SOMEBODY has to be doing the job of selling the property. If someone is determined to sell using Comfree, he had better be prepared to do the actual job of selling. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen an open house sign on a Comfree house, but there was no indication on their listing that they were having an open house. Nor did they bother doing any other advertising. Sad part is one in particular is now listed by a realtor who has parked the listing on MLS and gone on a 3 week vacation without advising the seller.
In this case, I don’t see much difference between the vendor and the realtor, when the property is not being marketed other than by virtue of an internet ad and a lawn sign.
The whole write up is about listing house with realtor or by comfree. in comfree you are the person selling the house and it all depend on how you are presenting your house to the buyer. While in case of realtor they are just taking commision and almost doing nothing. when the houses were selling very fast, realtors were telling everyone that i have sold that many houses in a month, so they were getting all the credit of the house sell. Now what happened to them, why they are running away from the seller after doing the listing. You meet many realtor, they very first sentance they tell the seller or the buyer is ” I am in this bussiness for the last 25 years”. I recently met a realtor (his age is not more then 35 years) he told me that i am in this bussiness for the last 25 years (he must have started this at the age of 10). Overall, its not necessary that the realtor is a good choice, everything depends on the market. realtor is a big waste of money.
The whole write up is about listing house with realtor or by comfree. in comfree you are the person selling the house and it all depend on how you are presenting your house to the buyer. While in case of realtor they are just taking commision and almost doing nothing. when the houses were selling very fast, realtors were telling everyone that i have sold that many houses in a month, so they were getting all the credit of the house sell. Now what happened to them, why they are running away from the seller after doing the listing. You meet many realtor, they very first sentance they tell the seller or the buyer is ” I am in this bussiness for the last 25 years”. I recently met a realtor (his age is not more then 35 years) he told me that i am in this bussiness for the last 25 years (he must have started this at the age of 10). Overall, its not necessary that the realtor is a good choice, everything depends on the market. realtor is a big waste of money.
Thanks for the comments. Every now and again we have to put something worthy of dicussion.
In every case even if we were all best friends we wouldn’t agree on everything. I/We are posting our opinions. Sure you may agree sometimes. Other times you may not. In any case this would be a very boring read if we just played it safe with our posts. Thanks again.
My husband and I just bought our first house last week and I can’t imagine ever going through this process without an experienced realtor.
Our realtor pointed out so many things to us that we would have never seen or thought to have asked if we had been looking through comfree.
What some of you are forgetting is the emotion that is tied into selling your own house. You really do need a neutral party taking you around, a current home owner is not going to tell you what the defects are or if they had any past issues in the neighbourhood. They have a vested interest in only telling you the positives.
Like in any profession, you have some who are outstanding, some who are great and some who need to find a new job.
There are 5 units for sale in our condo complex. Two are listed with real estate agents. The ones listed with the agents are listed in the 280K’s. The three listed on comfree are listed at 290K and above. Selling with a realtor (even at a lower price) does not guarantee a sale in a slow market.
I only wish I had a job where someone paid me $10K + for less than a week’s worth of work. Mabye I should become a realtor…
I was out fishing and was fishing with a guy that had never fished before, with over 30 years of fishing experience I figured I could teach him a few things and definately catch more fish than he would, after all I had a $100 dollar fishing rod and every imaginable type of fishing hook in every color. The fishing started of slow, then we started catching fish, he caught one and I caught one, basically when the fish were biting we both caught fish and when they quit biting either of us caught a thing. Through the boredom, I thought this is reminding me a little of the realestate market, then my rod bent and I caught another fish, hey I outfished the rookie my 30 years of experience and hundreds of dollars in equipment really did pay off……………?
Ok now the point of the story, last summer the market was a frenzy and just about any realestate or comfree person could sell a house, but now that the market has slowed down, experience and the right hook might make the difference.
Some people are just not good at selling and should not even attempt it. Others don’t want the hassle of selling themselves or they are buying from out of town.
I don’t think the real issue here is if FSBO, ComFree or a Realtor is better. What is better for each person? Some Realtors are worth the money but many are not. Some people can sell their home and do a good job but many can’t.
The real issue here is are the Real Estate Boards going to crack down on re-listing homes and other practices that should not be going on? More needs to be done regulating the industry and cutting out the fat. It really is a gamble trying to get a good Realtor. Even if you know one personally or see their sales record that really does not mean anything. I could be a really nice guy or sell hundreds of house below fair value and tell all of you “look how many homes I’ve sold”! I’m an awesome Realtor! How do you know if I cost my clients thousands of dollars to make these sales? You could lose just as much on a sale with a bad Realtor as you could selling it yourself? If you have bad Realtors and they lose you $10,000 on the sale of your home what did it cost them? $300 dollars? Does this really bother some Realtors? If you could get paid $6,700 in fees as opposed to nothing what would you choose? This makes the choice really easy for unethical Realtors and is feeding the real problems in the industry.
Realtors are taking a beating over consumer perception of them recently. I have nothing against Realtors but the good ones are being lumped with the bad. I have Realtors in my family and I used them once a long time ago but I did not use them to sell my last condo this year! Why because they were simply a bad Realtor. I did use another Realtor though and was happy with the results.
The only solution I see for Realtors is to improve the quality of people and quality of service. This may mean tougher education and requirements to become a Realtor and better enforcment of industry practices.
I do not know the Realtors running this Blog but I have watched it for 6 months or so. I believe that at least they are doing something to try and make it better and appear to have been fair with their comments.
My industry 6 years ago was in the same situation. People were being Certified left and right because the requirements were so easy to meet. I am a lot better at what I do than most (I’m not trying to brag) but I had a very tough time landing good employement because 90% of my peers were next to useless. They basically turned what should have been a decent Certification into useless paper. This was not my fault or even their fault it was the fault of the Industry boards that were in control. A few years later the testing and requirements became a whole lot harder. Twice as hard at least. Now my Paper means something again and it actually helps me get work.
The Realtors situation right now is similar to Stock Brokers 15 years ago. If you wanted to buy stock most people used a broker and paid the fee. Now hardly anyone I know uses a Broker and they trade online for less fees. Are they making more money? Not sure? The point is the Brokers lost half their clients in a very short time period. Realtors are on the edge of the cliff right now. The risk of losing clients big time is now right in their face.
The Real Estate Industry needs new direction and must adapt if they want curb the loss of clients and the growing number of people who do not see a need for their services. It does not matter even if the Realtors are right and can net you more money. The Brokers were in the same situation and they lost. Action must be taken fast before it gets worse. It will get much worse for Realtors if nothing changes.
This is a Great BLOG !!!
Well I just looked up the comfree duplex at the end of my block again. It was originally put up 4 weeks ago at $408,000. It was reduced to $388,000 2 weeks ago.
Now when I look the ad is gone. A new listing with the same address at $365,000 shows up! It actually says NEW LISTING on it as well.
Ha Ha. I guess they are now doing the same thing de-listing and re-listing? So I guess the Realtors are not the only ones doing it now!
Personally, I prefer using a Realtor. Yes, it likely costs me more and when I see my lawyer send $10,000 of my hard earned equity to the Real Estate Broker, it ticks me off. But here is why I’ve used a Realtor on four different occasions. I have tried in the past selling myself and I don’t have the patience to deal with the bargain hunters, tire kickers, manipulators, and other unscrupulous types, who are out there looking to profit and take advantage of inexperienced sellers. Many of the potential buyers who contact private sellers fall into that category. Last year was an unprecedented sellers market in Edmonton and Comfree’s business grew because Realtors were unflexible and couldn’t accept that in a sellers market that their services were considered expensive. Sellers were no longer willing to pay over $10,000 for their services. If Realtors would have been flexible and had adjusted their commissions accordingly last year, then they wouldn’t have lost business to Comfree. In Calgary, were Comfree is not as popular, Realtors lost business to a company called We-List. In many countries, commissions are in the 2-3% range, which is more reasonable. The commission structure has to change, and I don’t have the exact answer, but something has to be done. Edmonton Realtor’s have made the owners of Comfree millionaires because their business model is flawed and the owners of Comfree (former Realtors I believe) cashed in on that fact.
Well said Jess, Totally agree.
Most “successful” realtors are simply good listers. They plant a sign in your yard and move on. They will “try” to get your price if they think it is too high and then beat you over the head with the price when it doesn’t sell. They skim the cream (the principle) off the price of your house and leave you with the existing mortgage that has been paid down over years with after tax money plus interest. Easy money for the best listers. If they hold open houses, the realtors use this opportunity to “prospect” for new clients.
Also, it is a “numbers game” for realtors. That is, the more listings they get the more sales they make. Top listers make more sales, it’s that simple. This fact can be used to give the impression that they are better than the rest of the pack when they actually spend less time per house on trying to sell it than other small time realtors. In real estate school they teach that if a house is priced right then it will sell itself. This means, to the experienced realtor, that the house must be priced as low as possible in order to get that “sold for 98% of list price” or “sold for 40% over list price” credit. Many over priced houses just sit on the market whether or not a realtor is involved.
We listed with Comfree to start with and after our house didn’t move, we listed with a realtor. This realtor was very interested in listing our house and agreed to accept the fact that we were trying to sell it on our own. He agreed to charge no commission if we sold on our own and pay us the Comfree fee if he sold it. We thought that was fair. Unfortunately Comfree enacted a paragraph in their contract that apparently states if you list with a Realtor, you no longer have a valid contract with them. This certainly leads us to believe that what is being said here is correct. All Comfree wants is the money. I do not see a valid reason why they would feel threatened by a Realtor if the Realtor doesn’t feel threatened by them.
On three occasions I have listed with realtors.
#1 The realtor’s contract expired without a single viewer being brought by. A few months later we sold privately to someone who heard about it through a friend and we got more than the realtor listed it for.
#2 The listing was incomplete and the realtor never brought anyone by until we complained, the contract expired and we sold through an FSBO web site.
#3 There have apparently been plenty of calls but only one viewer and no offers, the contract is expired and we’re unsure what we will do next.
The moral of the story is, it works both ways and the author of this blog is obviously a real estate agent with an obvious biased opinion.
In the above cited examples, our first realtor was angry with us because we wouldn’t take his listing price and insisted on a higher price. The second realtor was nothing more than a “sign installer” who’d then wait for the callers to come to him.
This time around we actually had a second realtor planting a directional sign down at the corner beside our realtor’s sign and when I phoned (acting like a buyer) she informed me that the property was “colisted”, which it was not.
Imagine what my opinion of realtors is now.