Blog.ByTheOwner.com

I recently had the pleasure of listening to the author of Freakonomics, Steven Levitt, speak at York University. In his book, Freakonomics, has talks about the power of information and those who attempt to keep it from the public in order to exploit it for their own gain. He raises some interesting points about real estate agents.

The author, an economic professor at Chicago University, points out that a sample of 100,000 homes sold in the Chicago area included 3,000 properties that were owned by agents themselves. When the agents sold their own homes, the homes sold for an average of 3% higher, and lasted for 10 days longer on the market .

Why would agents sell their own home for more money and keep their home on the market longer?

The conclusion drawn from these statistics is that real estate agents are not motivated to hold out for the best price for their clients. For example, an agent could sell a clients home for $300,000 and receive their commission. However, the agent would only receive an extra $150 in commission if they sell the property for $310,000. Thus, the motivation is to sell the home for $300,000 and make their commission rather than take the extra 10 days required to receive an offer of $310,000.

To find out more, you can click on the image of the book…

William Stynes
Sales Manager

ByTheOwner.com’s website statistics for the month of March 2008:

Website visitors increased from 748,256 visits in March 2007, to 1,120,287 in March 2008. This is a 50% increase in website visits from March 2007 to March 2008. We set a ByTheOwner.com record with 1.1 million website visits per month!

Pageviews increased from 6.7 million page views in March 2007, to 9.7 million pageviews in March 2008. This is 45% increase in pageviews from March 2007 to 2008.

Unique visitors increased from 398,377 unique visitors in March 2007, to 570,885 unique visitors in March 2008. This is 43% increase in unique visitors from March 2007 to 2008.

Unique visitors and pageviews are the two most useful statistics when it comes to measuring the exposure you will receive from a For Sale By Owner website. Unique visitors is the number of individual people coming to look for properties on the site. Pageviews is the number of pages that those visitors look at.

Some websites claim to have a certain number of “hits”. This is not a valid measure of website activity, because a “hit” can be counted a number of different ways. For example, if a page has 30 images on it, and one person goes to that page, it could be counted as 30 “hits”. This would be like saying ByTheOwner.com received more than 200 million “hits”. ByTheOwner.com does not quote how many “hits” we receive because it is not a valid stat. Unique visitors and pageviews are the only real measure of website activity.

Stats provided by Google Analytics

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A recent Toronto Star article has some useful information on home inspections. The article can be found at:

http://www.thestar.com/living/article/309881

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The Canadian Real Estate Association has begun to air TV commercials trying to promote using a real estate agent over selling your home privately. You can view the commericals here:

http://www.realtor.ca/commercials.htm

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ByTheOwner.com’s website statistics for the month of February 2008:

Website visitors increased from 677,244 visitors in February 2007, to 1,040,248 in February 2008. This is a 53% increase in website visitors from February 2007 to 2008. We passed 1 million website visitors per month!

Pageviews increased from 6.0 million page views in February 2007, to 9.1 million pageviews in February 2008. This is 50% increase in pageviews from February 2007 to 2008.

Unique visitors increased from 362,585 unique visitors in February 2007, to 534,767 unique visitors in February 2008. This is 47% increase in unique visitors from February 2007 to 2008.

Unique visitors and pageviews are the two most useful statistics when it comes to measuring the exposure you will receive from a For Sale By Owner website. Unique visitors is the number of individual people coming to look for properties on the site. Pageviews is the number of pages that those visitors look at.

Some websites claim to have a certain number of “hits”. This is not a valid measure of website activity, because a “hit” can be counted a number of different ways. For example, if a page has 30 images on it, and one person goes to that page, it could be counted as 30 “hits”. This would be like saying ByTheOwner.com received more than 200 million “hits”. ByTheOwner.com does not quote how many “hits” we receive because it is not a valid stat. Unique visitors and pageviews are the only real measure of website activity.

Stats provided by Google Analytics

www.bytheowner.com

There is an article in today’s Toronto Star entitiled “Realtors Report a Big Drop in Sales”. The article points out that during the first 2 weeks of February, the city of Toronto’s agent sales dropped 18%, while the suburbs of Toronto dropped 11%. Also mentioned is that the Canadian Real Estate Association stated new listings had increased 9.3% during January. “More listings typically mean price appreciation will slow as more inventory comes to market” says Tony Wong, Business Reporter for the Toronto Star.

To read the entire article, please click here “Toronto Star: Realtors Report Big Drop in Sales”

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There is a great article in this month’s Toronto Life Magazine. Featured is one of our customers who saved more than $30,000 in commissions. Here is a link to the article “Free Agent - Toronto Life Article”

Click for full

ByTheOwner.com welcomes all our new builders listing homes in the Kitchener Waterloo Region. Current builders include:

Freure Homes
House smart
Bayfield Homes
Granite Homes
Chris and Sons Builders lmt
Sun Point Homes
Verdone Homes
Valleyrauss Homes

All the builders receive an extensive listing for their properties including their logo, photos, listing information, as well as links to the builder`s website. Each builder also receives a separate builder`s page showing all the builder`s properties listed on the website, plus information on the company.

All the builder`s homes are listed at NewHomes.ByTheOwner.com and on ByTheOwner.com, where they are exposed to more than 200,000 visitors per week.

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The spring real estate market might be starting early this year… ByTheOwner.com has seen our website traffic increase by 90% over last year and we are working hard to keep up with the demand. We have been adding servers and streamlining the website in order to handle the increased visitors. Last week we received more than 250,000 visitors to the website which is up from our average of 150,000 in 2007.

We are overjoyed when we see the results in our customer’s savings. One recent customer in Woodbridge shows exactly how much money can be saved. The couple listed their home for sale on Feb 5th, and sold it two days later. The asking price was $449,900 which amounts to $22,450 saved in commission plus an additional $1,122 saved in GST on the commission. This is a total of $23,500 saved by selling their home privately.

Did they get a good price? Let’s look at what other similar properties have sold for on their street: In 2007, there were three homes sold on the street. $415,000, $400,000 and $399,000 were the selling prices of the other homes sold. Those other homes were sold with real estate agents and mostly likely paid 5% commission. This means that the most the other owners took home was $393,000 ($415,000-commission and GST). Selling the home privately resulted in the owner keeping approximately $50,000 more than their neighbours.

Although selling in 2 days does happen (ByTheOwner.com has had more than 500 properties sold in less than 5 days), it typically takes between 30-60 days to sell your home. It requires a good home with a fair price, plus some great advertising. However, this example does show that there can be buyers ready to purchase in any neighbourhood, and by selling privately, you allow yourself the opportunity to sell quickly and save. Imagine if our clients had listed with an agent and sold in 2 days? It would have cost them $23,000 in tax free money!

Here is a link to the listing:

Sold in 2 days!!!

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There was an interesting article in the Toronto Star about what happens when you are moving out of your home. The article points out that the home need to be vacant when the new owners move in. To read more, click on the link below:

Toronto Star article: House must be completely empty when sale closes

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