Buy and Sell a Home, without an Agent — with allre
allre is the latest to try to help home owners buy and sell. Of course, OpenDoor is another recent entrant in the “buy and sell homes online” camp. Allre recently presented at TechCrunch Disrupt:
My Thoughts
I am in full agreement there are people who desire to sell their home directly and save on the commissions. In fact, there are a LOT of those people (6% is a lot).
I’m in full agreement there are some people who feel comfortable enough making a large transaction like that on their own. They probably mostly consist of lawyers, and experienced business people — who have a bit of online marketing knowledge.
Thus, I’ll admit there is a market; I just don’t happen to think it’s that large. As everyone knows, the hard part of selling a home is finding the buyers. Most owners are not tech savvy entrepreneurs that can or will put in time to market their property. Like it or not, most people just want someone else to handle the sale of their home for them, so they don’t become the sucker that tried to do it themselves and lost $50,000 or $100,000. Of course, without a buyer, no one makes any money. Even if owners put these fsbo homes up on Zillow, there is no guarantee the right buyers will see them (due to this problem).
My gut is allre will not vastly grow the percentage of home owners who actually sell direct without an agent. What I CAN see working — is giving their platform to agents to use WITH their clients. But they cannot split the needle and have a platform that helps both owners complete transactions without agents and agents managing transactions — agents wouldn’t likely support such a platform with their dollars or time.
For allre to work at scale, the real question is will there be enough buyers? How much will it cost to reach them? You can bet they aren’t counting on agents helping educate their buyers that allre is another source to find listings.
New Vision Home Sales and Real
Posted at 05:29h, 22 SeptemberWhat a great move from allre but I still prefer buying with an agent to make my purchase somewhat legit and secure.
Sam DeBord
Posted at 08:02h, 22 SeptemberAll good points. The discussions about selling on your own often happen within circles of very motivated, savvy, experienced people who may be able to do most of the transaction on their own (though the potential liability is often unknown until something goes sideways).
The longer you’re in this business, the more you realize a huge percentage of our clients are relieved/happy that they don’t have to do it on their own. Not everyone is an entrepreneur or risk taker.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 08:05h, 22 SeptemberNot everyone? I’d say virtually no one is.
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 10:23h, 22 SeptemberBefore I was an agent I bought my current home without an agent or attorney.
The home was not even listed for sale at the time, and we just used escrow’s services.
Now that I am a Broker I realized I made a lot of mistakes during the purchase, but it turned out to be the best investment I ever made, and the mistakes were not huge, so it worked out great.
Had I brought in an agent asking for commission, my guess is the seller would have raised the price by the commission amount, so I would have paid for it.
My current website has a knowledge base and I give my opinion on every single paragraph on our Purchase Contract.
http://support.oahure.com/hc/en-us
Anyone can get all the advise I would give them in person for free. Had I had a website like mine when I made my purchase, I would not have made so many mistakes.
FlyerCo
Posted at 18:57h, 22 SeptemberSeems like this is starting to become a crowded space!
Drew Meyers
Posted at 18:59h, 22 SeptemberPeople have been trying to nail this one for 10+ years… no one has made a dent. Would love to hear a good argument from someone as to why they think it will work now when it hasn’t historically. If someone wants to take a stab at it, happy to post it as a guest post rather than a comment.
FlyerCo
Posted at 20:57h, 23 SeptemberI would actually love to do that – I just finished Zero To One book by Paul Thiel and he has a good point that I think directly relates to this type of startup.
Sam DeBord
Posted at 19:04h, 22 SeptemberIt’s becoming a crowded graveyard.
FlyerCo
Posted at 20:56h, 23 SeptemberSo true!