The Legal Description

I just authored a post on Rain City Guide (a smokin' hot real estate blog) regarding a property's legal description and the importance of including that description in a purchase and sale agreement. Check it out.

Successful FSBO web pages

Here's an interesting article from the front page of yesterday's NY Times regarding an FSBO web page in Madison, WI -- FSBOMadison.com. As discussed in the article, this web page has about 20% of residential listings in the area. Given the average value of a home in the area, sellers saved more than $17 million in commissions last year by using this site.

If you're looking for a similar page in the Seattle area, check out SeattleRealEstateByOwner.com. The site is owned and operated by two young guys who live here in the Seattle area. There are several other FSBO web sites with Seattle pages, such as HomesByLender.com, ForSaleByOwner.com, SeattleFSBO.com, and ByOwner.com.

In addition, 2006 will see the launch of several other sites that will, apparently, allow a user to search real estate data in a variety of ways. These sites (such as Zillow.com and Sellsius) will combine listings with a variety of other related data. They have significant financial backing and are generating a lot of buzz in the real estate industry. Time will tell whether they are of assistance to FSBO sellers.