Home Buying

Going the ‘for sale by owner’ route with your home? Get ready for a backlash

Some brokers can really put the pressure on when they hear a homeowner is trying to sell without professional help. Kayana Szymczak/The Boston GlobeA realtor gets ready for an open house.

By Scott Van Voorhis

April 19, 2016

3 minutes to read

So you want to ditch your broker and sell your own house and save a few bucks while you’re at it.

Well, the hard part of selling your house on your own may not necessarily be finding buyers.

Rather, it may be dealing with pressure from irate brokers unhappy that you decided to sell your own house instead of hiring them to do the job.

That’s what one Newton homeowner found when he opted to go solo with the sale of his colonial.

He wound up having to fend off aggressive real estate brokers who worked overtime to convince him he was making a big mistake.

However, the experience of the unfortunate Newton homeowner is not all that unusual, experts say.

With a shortage of homes for sale, brokers are battling desperately for any and all listings, and some see those who decide to go the for-sale-by-owner route as fair game.

“There is definitely a lot of pressure put on people,” said Owen Gilman, owner and chief executive and owner of Marlborough-based ISoldMyHouse.com.

In the case of the Newton seller, the pressure came in the form of emails and calls in which a particularly intrepid broker offered a revolving cast of reasons why he should list his home with her and not go it alone.

She claimed brokers would not bring buyers to his house – they wouldn’t feel comfortable without a broker on the other end. She also claimed her insurance policy wouldn’t cover a transaction if there wasn’t a broker representing him.

Plus, she argued, an agent is trained to deal with problematic situations. “’If someone walks in your house and gets out of control, we know how to deal with it,’” she told him.

Such claims, for the most part, are unfounded, experts say.

There is absolutely no reason why a broker’s errors and omission insurance policy – which covers him or her in case of a lawsuit – would only work with another broker present, Gilman notes.

And sure, some brokers may prefer to deal with other brokers and not directly with the homeowner.

But that would hardly stop him from taking a client to a house where the owner is in charge of selling it, not another broker, said Sam Schneiderman, principal broker of the Greater Boston Home Team and president of the Massachusetts Association of Buyer Agents.

“It’s unfortunate that some agents resort to spreading false information, thinking that they will enrich themselves as a result,” Schneiderman said.

“Our commitment is to the buyer and to find them the right situation,” he said. “If that means working with for-sale-by-owners, then we will pursue any lead.”

Warning a home seller that brokers and buyers will avoid his house is actually a prohibited practice called “blackballing,” Gilman noted.

One problem driving such tactics is a shortage of homes for sale, with the number of listings having been on the decline for years now in the Boston area and having plunged another 20 percent last year.

While it’s a shortage much bemoaned by buyers, it has also made for tough times for some real estate agents, especially those who don’t have well established businesses.

But harassing homeowners who try and sell on their own is hardly the route to success, Schneiderman notes.

Nationally, the average agent is selling just six to eight homes per year, he said. The numbers, in turn, are probably tougher in the Boston area, where there is an even greater shortage of homes for sale.

“When you are in a market that gets even fewer listings, it gets even tougher,” he said. “The competition for listings gets intense.”