When doing a FSBO, do you usually offer a percentage of the sale for real estate agents to bring their clients?

The traditional way agents get paid is that when the seller lists a house with an agent, the seller commits to a 6% commission. The sellers agent splits that with the buyer’s agent 50/50, or 3% each. (Now on some markets it’s less than 6% because home prices are unusually high. As an FSBO it is your job to know if that’s so.)

Anyway, if you list on an MLS, you might get inquiries from buyer’s agents about the commission you will pay them. If it is not competitive, no agent will show your house.

You will not get that exposure, and it will slow your sale.

Now you might say “how about the buyer pay the buyer’s agent”. That has 2 problems.

First, it guarantees the buyer will reduce their offer by at least 3% and probably more.

Second, buyers typically don’t have the cash. it is usually essential to buyers that they fold as many closing costs into the mortgage as possible. That is why buyers do weird things like have sellers do renovations instead of just lowering their offer.

FSBO is a lot harder than it looks. There are 100 things like that.