For-Sale-By-Owners and other non-listed properties are an important source of extra inventory for our clients. Ironically, it gives us more selections to present than traditional realtors have.

Consequently, we work hard to make them available. We advertise for them, subscribe to a service, and have a Web site devoted to gather them. A former client regularly drives the streets of active neighborhoods. A very important source of these properties is from past clients ... in most cases, available to us alone for some periods of time.

Even so, it's not perfect, and it's constantly changing. (Purging lists is as difficult as creating them.)

• From your view point, they represent important offerings, but they still need as much or more analysis and review as listed properties. Sellers have likely had no professional counseling on value or much else.

  Non-listed properties still need inspections, disclosures, risk analysis, and especially, value analysis. They need to have the same "context" for good decision making developed, as they are compared to all other options.

  The use of buyer-friendly Board of Realtors contracts alone is a big benefit!

• From our standpoint, we're then free to deliver all the education and analysis necessary to evaluate all options. Our objectivity remains intact as we support impartial evaluation of all options, committing all our resources of time and experience in your quest for the best.
  
  

• Buyers and sellers both are attracted to for-sale-by-owners hoping to save money. But buyers that have us involved would seem to buy real value-added services. Instead of bringing 6% to the seller to pay "marketing costs" for both sides, they bring just 3%, for they're only paying for buyer-side compensation, service delivered exclusively in support of their interests.
  
  
• Most home sellers will work with an agent if the agent is the one who contacts the owner and shows the property to the buyer. So it's our job to get authorization to show the home, first! With compensation half of what a seller would typically pay, it's usually easy ... if done up front. So please resist the temptation to visit a home with us; it can easily cloud a great transaction, to the detriment of you as well as us.