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.