How many "For sale by owner" (FSBO) listings are there in each town?

That's an interesting question. Not all FSBO listings are easily found on the internet, and If you are considering selling your home by yourself, you probably already know that some of the bigger FSBO sites charge buyers a fee to look on their site to see YOUR listing. Hmmm, that's some racket!

I did a search of homes for sale in CT and guess how many results google search yielded? Over 54 MILLION!!! in less than 2 seconds, no less. Now there are only somewhere between 1.3 and 1.5 million households in Connecticut, depending on who you rely on for these numbers, so where does that HUGE number come from? It's mathematically impossible!

Why are those numbers so askew? There are some sites that have listings that are so old, the homes have been bought and sold and bought and sold yet again. This week, I got an e-mail from a buyer who found one of my listings on Trulia. She contacted me and wanted to see it because she assumed it was available, and it wasn't. It's my own listing that is still being advertised that is no longer for sale, and I can't even change it in their system- and I'm not just singling out one site. I have had people contact me from a Homes.com listing that was as much as two years old. I have no answer for that, it would be nice if these aggregator sites would update their feeds. I think the problem is that these homes for sale come up as individual search results, so one property can have as many as 15 or more entries in google. There is no time limit on the search results, and that's why over 54 milion homes came up on that search.

So how do you as an owner trying to sell your home by yourself get your home found on the internet among all of these other homes that are (or were) on the market? And how do you, as a buyer, find sites with current real estate listings and information? If you are buying or selling, meet with a Realtor, get the most up to date information, and have an agent represent your interests.