For Sale By Owner Property: A Growing Trend That's Here to Stay

In the world of property, FSBO is more of a new buzz-word than an anagram; For Sale By Owner is a new trend sweeping the world of online property sales. New because: before the advent of the internet and more specifically the online property portal, people sold their properties through estate agents. Then estate agents started selling their properties through portals, then portals opened up to private sellers and For Sale By Owner property sales was born.

Estate agents began listing their properties on portals because of their positions in the search engines, the resulting traffic they received and the quality of the traffic; namely people searching to buy property. I don't know whether a private seller approached a portal first, or portals started advertising to attract private sellers, I think it was the latter but either way once it started it was always going to become big.

This is because if portals are the trick up estate agents sleeves, and private sellers can use them, they are cutting out the middle man and therefore saving money. And the money they can save is huge; some portals advertise FSBO properties until they are sold for a one-of fee, I have seen this fee being as low as £59.

That low fee is based on the fact that the advertising portal is clearly confident it can sell the owner's property very quickly, and that belief comes from the fact that the property will be seen by thousands of people each day, more than in any estate agents window.

Since EBAY became so big and everything started to be sold online, it was inevitable that estate agents would start selling property online, and once they did that it was inevitable that people would start having a bash at selling their own property. For Sale By Owner property is with us to stay.