ForSaleByOwner.com founder needs Realtor to sell his home...for $150,000 more!

For those of you who might be considering For Sale By Owner.

(Excerpts from a Wall Street Journal article 8/3/11. Thanks to KCM for the heads up)

A founder of a website dedicated to direct sales of homes by their owners has sold his two-bedroom apartment in Chelsea for $2.15 million -- with the help of a real-estate broker and a standard 6% commission.

Colby Sambrotto, a founder and former chief operating officer of ForSalebyOwner.com, a large website for owner sales, spent six months trying to sell his condominium himself through online listings and classified ads, before turning over the listing of the 2,000-square-foot apartment to a broker at Bond New York in November.

The broker, Jesse Buckler, said he told Mr. Sambrotto the apartment in the Lion's Head building on West 19th Street near Sixth Avenue was priced too low and wasn't drawing the right buyers.

By May, it went into contract, he said, after attracting multiple offers. It closed in the last few days for $150,000 more than the original asking price.

"At first he wouldn't let me increase the price," Mr. Buckler said. "I told him I know what I am doing -- the market is picking up."

Looking to move his family to the suburbs, Sambrotto said he carefully staged his apartment for sale himself, and put it on the market. But after using a mix of websites to publicize his apartment, he said he had only "middling success" and switched to a broker because many buyers were so reliant on brokers.

Matt Brown, director of business development for ForSaleByOwner.com, said selling without a broker "is definitely not for everybody. In the high-end market the sellers might not have the time to dedicate to selling" their homes themselves, he said.

Bruno Ricciotti, a founder and principal broker at Bond, had a different perspective. "FSBOs are a significant source of leads for us," he said, since brokers are trained to use the owner listings to sign up new customers.

After looking for houses across the region, Mr. Sambrotto said he and his wife had decided to stay in the city, and to buy a second home on the East End of Long Island.

Thinking of Painting? Here are some tips.

• To calculate how much paint you need, multiply height by length of wall, divide by 250 (average amount of square feet covered per gallon) to determine how many gallons of paint you need.


• Wash walls with soft sponge dipped in water with a little dish soap added to it.


• Wash wood with a soft cloth dipped in 70 proof rubbing alcohol. Test to be sure it doesn't harm the finish.


• Put toothpicks in any nail holes you want to keep for hanging items once the job is done. Fill the balance of the holes with spackle.


• Add 4 drops of vanilla extract to a quart of latex or 1 tablespoon to a gallon of paint to help cut the odor of latex. If the paint is white or ivory, use one drop of lemon extract per gallon.


• Use chapstick on the inside of glass around the edges to help in removing the paint when painting next to the glass.


• If you apply rubber cement to the hinges on doors, when paint gets on them, it is easy to remove it.


• You can use plastic wrap around knobs etc. to protect from paint.


• Spray face, arms, hands with Pam cooking spray to make cleanup easier.


• Add 1/2 cup fabric softener to a gallon of water to clean brushes or rollers of latex paint. Simply dip the brush or roller into the mixtures and the paint will magically come off settling in the bottom of the container. It is a good idea to clean your brush every two hours or so to make cleanup easier.


• Slide your paint tray into a heavy-duty plastic trash bag. Press the bag into the corners and use tape to hold in place. When the job is finished, simply turn the bag inside out and toss it in the garbage.


• To seal the edges of your tape and keep paint from "bleeding" underneath it, take a tapered plastic tool and quickly run it along the edge. This heats up the waxy tape and helps it to seal, thus keeping the paint from seeping under it.