Howard Owens

These are things that home sellers do (both FSBO and agents) that are irritating and potentially cost them sales:

• Advertising an open house, then not open up.
• Hang a for-sale sign, then not include an info box on the sign pole.
• Hang an info box, but let it run out of flyers and not restock it.
• Hang an info box, stock it with flyers but neglect to include the asking price.
• Almost universally, neglect to mention the square footage on the flyer or in the newspaper ad.
• Worse, leave square footage off the Web site listing.
• Not include the year built on the flyer.
• As a FSBO, state on your flyer that you won't deal with a buyer represented by an agent.
• As a FSBO, over value your house -- pretty much a universal FSBO mistake.

If leaving the price off the flyer is considered a business strategy, it's a pretty shitty one. It communicates, "we care less about serving you and more about looking for an opportunity to hard sell you." We pretty much have a policy of trashing flyers without pricing on them, unless the house, from the outside, looks too good to pass up. So far, no house without a price has met that criteria. There's a ton of homes for sale in Bakersfield. There's very little incentive for us to put up with seller who from the get-go are determined to frustrate you?