I sold my NYC condo without a broker and so can you

Here is the guide and steps I took to sell my manhattan nyc condo (for sale by owner fsbo). It did almost kill someone.

I finally sold it!!!

The Why

Why did I take the route of going FSBO?

• The dollar commissions at stake were staggering.
• Manhattan condos are hot commodities. Demand far outweighs supply. As long as I priced it well, people would want it.
• The apartment was renovated and well maintained. The product sold itself.
• My job at the time was cushy so I could spare the time to handle the commitment that came with selling on your own.
• I’m stubborn

However, an event happened which tested my resiliency.

About Me

I am not a real estate agent and nor do I have the desire to be one. The experience of selling my condo on my own has given me a newfound appreciation for the work brokers do. I am neither for or against using brokers nor am I for or against going FSBO. I’m here writing about my wacky experience.

The apartment sold for over $1400 per square foot at the end of 2017 which is on the high end for the building at the time. This experience has also helped me in launching www.transparentcity.co

Transparentcity | NYC Neighborhoods & Apartments

Broker Fee Matrix

The Who

Regarding the parties involved in a sale, there are usually four scenarios that play. The fee matrix I created is based on the standard rates most brokers offered me when they pitched me on taking the listing.

1. 0% Commission — Sell to a buyer not working with a broker.
2. 3% Commission — Sell to a buyer that has a buyer agent.
3. 4% commission — List the apartment with an agent who finds a buyer not working with a broker.
4. 5% commission — List the apartment with an agent who finds a buyer working with a broker.

Before I listed, I did the research and found comps in the building and neighborhood. Being realistic, I figured the sale price would be in the range of $820,000 to $850,000 whether I went with a broker or sold it on my own. No similar unit in the building had sold over $850,000.

For context, the characteristics of the apartment are:

• 1 Bedroom 1 Bathroom
• Under 600 square feet
• 20ish floor
• Midtown East Manhattan
• Condo hi rise building with around 40 floors built in 1988
• Renovated kitchen and fantastic condition overall

In the price matrix, you will notice that when a broker is involved, the commission ranges anywhere between $25,000-$45,000 depending on the final sale price of the apartment. To dive into a couple scenarios: if you want to net $850,000, the sale price would have to be around $895,000 if two brokers are involved. Or a sale price of $850,000 would net you $825,000 if a buyer broker is involved.

Those are the price benchmark targets I had to achieve in order to validate that doing it on my own was even remotely a good idea. My gut tells me had I listed with a broker, my close price would definitely be higher than it was. A lot of brokers I met are super pros. The question comes down to how much higher the deal would have closed for. At this point we will never know!

The How

When it came to deciding on where to list the apartment, I only listed it on www.streeteasy.com. I felt the majority of buyers for the NYC market are using that site. In retrospect it might have been dumb to only list on one site and I wonder how much more traction I would have gotten had I listed the apartment on more sites.

To start, I listed the apartment just under $900,000 for feelers even though based on the analysis, I expected between $820,000 to $850,000. I took pictures using an app called Curb Appeal on my phone. The pictures came out alright but looked nowhere near as professional as it should have. I’m terrible with taking pictures and it has nothing to do with the app.

Curb Appeal - Real Estate HDR Photography for iPhone

The Start

For $500/mo, the listing was officially live. Soon after, I got a flood of emails from people. Most of them were brokers looking to get my listing. I started scheduling multiple 15 minute increment meetings on weeknights mostly with brokers and few prospective direct buyers and held open houses on weekends. This went on for four weeks straight before the crazy event happened.

If you decide to sell on your own, be prepared to hear non stop pitches. Each broker has their own marketing material to give you. After the first week of meeting with brokers, I compiled the marketing material they each left and stacked it up on my dining table. Each broker who came to look at the apartment would see a bigger stack. I had no choice but to have them add theirs to the pile.

I went through the first few but stopped soon after realizing they were all the same. Poor trees. Maybe there is some synthetic recyclable way of creating that material so that it doesn’t just go to waste.

The majority of brokers (90%) I talked to were fantastic and I would have listed with some of them if I wasn’t so stubborn. I still keep in contact with a bunch of them for future business. A handful of brokers (9%) were pushy but to be fair, wouldn’t you be a little pushy if some chump (me) stood between you and a $25,000-$45,000 commission? The worst experience I had was with this one prick from Douglas Elliman who took the cake. He would consistently sent me the generic email generated through zillow/streeteasy each week even though I had politely declined to list with him. The generic email usually goes like ‘Hi, I’m such and such and am interested in your unit. You can reach me @such”. After sending me that message a few times, he decided to change it up. One message came in saying “you will never sell it this way” and nothing else! In total, I got over 20 separate email chains from this guy. I should report him for bullying. I mean who does that? Little does he know that I used his email and signed him up for all sorts of random crap. He’s probably wondering why his email is subscribed to a plethora of cat videos. Maybe he’ll figure it out if this article ever gets to him.

Fires me up every time I think about it. Excuse me while I go sign him up for some more garbage. Prick.

By the third and fourth week on the market, things started to heat up and a few offers started to roll in. They all came with a buyer broker and financing. I got into negotiations and contract discussions. Nothing was signed so I kept showing the place.

Then one day, a lovely English broker fellah, who I also stay in touch with, recommended I have the windows cleaned. Harmless good advice that anyone would take. What’s the worst that could happen?

The Event

My wife and I just had a newborn daughter a couple of months before the apartment was listed. We are a family of three in a one bedroom. Why did we list the apartment? Duh, we needed more space. She was on maternity leave and stayed home so it was fine to schedule the window cleaners during the day while she was home.

When you think of window cleaners, people tend to think of the scaffolding on the outside with a string pulley and people are on the outside cleaning. Scary shit right?

In Manhattan Condos, it is the opposite. Windows are cleaned and squeegeed from the inside. Usually an entire frame is comprised of two or three windows. One window is stationary while the others can be pulled out of the frame to be cleaned. Also due to the apartment height, window cleaners are supposed to wear straps to keep them from falling out.

I’m at work while my wife is home. I’m getting the status play by play via text. “Cleaners are here”, “doing this doing that yadda yadda” “done with the bedroom windows and moving onto the living room. Then all of a sudden I’m reading “dude, they dropped the window. Come home”. I ask “So the window is broken?” thinking it just fell inside and warped. She replied “The window fell OUT of the building” and followed up with a frantic call. I just kept thinking “Oh shit! Dear god, I hope no one was hurt”. My wife witnessed the whole thing.

Here is her snapchat sequence:

The window cleaners dropped the window 20+ floors. It fell to the street ground and shattered into pieces. I had hundreds of thoughts running through my head but one thought trumped all others: As long as no one got hurt.

I could write an entire post on that sequence of events and what followed but i’ll stick with the topic of selling the apartment.

Right after the incident occurred, I had to immediately put all offers and negotiations on hold, had to cancel scheduled showings and open houses, and then ultimately had to pull the listing off the market. We also moved out of the apartment because we didn’t want the baby to have to deal with people coming in and out of the apartment anymore. Oh and it was still winter and our living room was missing a window.

So close until you feel complete and utter defeat.

The Finish Line

Seven months later after the window fiasco, I finally put the listing back up. The new frame had to be custom ordered and installed, a process that took 5 months! All the other drama shook out and the apartment was ready for sale again.

However, during that ‘downtime’, brokers were chomping at the bit thinking I gave up because I took the listing down. To be honest, a huge part of me was thinking of giving up because there is only so much stress a person could handle. Early on in the downtime, I got emails asking when the apartment would be ready again. I explained the situation to everyone who inquired and said the apartment wasn’t ready. I’d get push back for several reasons. “The market is hot. You need to show it”. “Oh, the window can’t be that bad”. “My buyer won’t care about the window”. In a few cases, it got to the point where I think they were calling me out and flat out didn’t believe me. I get it. This type of shit doesn’t happen very often. How can it be real.

At some point, I just stopped writing and sent them this picture:

Eureka! They believed me! The badgering stopped and they waited for me to reach back out. I wasn’t kidding when I told them it would show poorly. Who in their crazy ass mind would spend $800,000+ on an apartment for a wooden board for a window?!? We carried the cost of two apartments that entire time and it was stressful.

Sold!

I emailed every broker that had reached out to let them know the apartment was back on the market. I held another six straight open houses on consecutive weekends until it went into contract. The apartment being empty did have its benefits. The doorman has access to keys and I would leave instructions online when people needed access to the apartment. A lot of people were able to look at the apartment without me being present. There wasn’t much left in it so security was not a concern.

During that time, I received a handful of offers and ultimately decided on accepting an all cash bid from someone who came in by himself.

Because the buyer wasn’t working with a broker, we had to handle the board package together. That part is another nightmare in itself. You’re printing out pages and pages of paper that goes straight to storage. Is it worth chopping down a tree per board package? I call that 21st century waste and inefficiency in an industry controlled by old school building management companies. This should all be online by now and is an industry ripe for change.

The Analysis

Once you decide to undertake selling on your own, you think to yourself ‘okay, i’m going to show the apartment to everyone who is interested’. That includes all of the brokers who contact you because you assume that a lot of them are working with buyers. Womp Womp!

I went through all of my emails and realized I spoke to a total of 110 Brokers! I got contacted by 110 Brokers for this one apartment and met with a little under half of them. There was a lot of noise. Don’t get me wrong here. I understand the apartment is worth a lot of money but Ryan Serhant #mdlny doesn’t get this much attention.

I now have a rolodex of 110 broker emails. Here is the breakdown:

Left table sorted by number. Right table sorted by alphabetical

Out of the 110 brokers, I would say 15 of them were truly buyer brokers with warm leads. I had traction of 10 direct buyers not included on this list who were warm leads. By warm I mean the conversation had gone forward and multiple showings were done. So my statistics were telling me for every 19 brokers trying to get the listing, I would have 3 buyer brokers come through the door with a lead.

Some observations about the industry:

• Something is not quite right with the current model. Is there a better way to divide the $25,000 to 45,000 commission amongst 110 people? Could 110 people have made my life easier if they were all paid $300?
• The platforms and websites out there are all listing sites and pushing brokers to fight for the few FSBO listings but there is no standard product platform out there that is focused on matching buyers who are looking to work with brokers.
• I noticed that there are many buyers who could truly use the help from a buyer broker. Many of them are willing to work with a buyer broker.
• Halstead, by far, came in with the most prospective buyers. They were very pleasant to deal with and I found myself giving them more attention because they kept bringing people in. I was days away from going into contract with them before the incident.
• What I found fascinating is that many brokers within the same brokerages do not know each other. As I started to meet more people from the same brokerage firm, I started name dropping fellow brokers. It was a near zero hit rate. Even if they work in the same place, to me it looks like they are competing against each other.

Advice I Wish I Knew

Be prepared for all of this if you are serious about doing FSBO in Manhattan. The process and experience was an absolute grind. I’ve been getting asked if I would be willing to do it again and the truth is I am less likely to do it a second time around because of what I now know. It is an intricate and detailed process and requires thick skin. It takes time to respond to all the people that come your way, it takes time to show the apartment, it takes time figuring out who is real and who is not.

• Fair housing laws prohibits brokers from discussing certain items such as demographics which is unfortunate. They legally have to leave out all sorts of information that is pertinent to buyers. That law is useful in ways but very detrimental in others. As an owner, I was able to answer anything and everything without hesitation.
• I found that having lived in the apartment, building and neighborhood for so long it is an advantage because you know the ins and outs. You can answer every detailed question. Buyers are roaming to 10 different open houses in a day so if your answers are more detailed, they listen.
• Be extremely responsive to emails. Whether it was a broker or direct buyer, I talked to everyone. The more you respond, the more people take you seriously. I answered everything.

• The saying is true that you have to get the apartment into contract because otherwise you are exposed as a seller. There is no deal until the contract is signed. Take the emotions out of it. Keep showing and sourcing deals until a definitive agreement is in place and the deposit is held in escrow.

Thanks for reading!

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