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Online Properties For Sale Reaches 4,000 For The 1st Time.
2007-06-08 09:39:39
Today ByTheOwner.com’s online properties for sale reached 4,000 . This is the 1st time that the company has passed this plateau. This is excellent news for both sellers and buyers because: more homes online results in greater selection for buyers, and more homes online means more buyers for our sellers. It’s a great cycle! ByTheOwner.com looks carefully at our volume because it is so important for both buyers and sellers. We know that buyers will return to our website each day if we have lots of new homes for sale. We currently average 1000 new properties per month. It is actually becoming harder to maintain a high inventory level because our sales have increased. When homes are sold they appear as “just sold” for 2 weeks and then they move into our sold database. We recently added the “just sold” feature because buyers were calling us to ask “What happened to that home for sale?”. Now buyers can see if a home they were looking at &ldqu
Read more: Properties

Home Staging - how much is just enough ?
2007-06-07 09:49:08
So, you decided to invest a few hundred dollars to prepare your house for sale. But how much should you budget ? How much home staging is enough ? And what are the top priorities ? These are the questions which I often encounter from clients. The answer is – it depends ! Each house and each situation being unique, so is the approach to staging your property. But we’ll try to give you some general rules and tips to help you evaluate what needs to be done to sell your house quickly and for most money. On average, you should plan to spend between 0, 5% and 1% of the property’s market price on fixing it up and staging it. How do you decide where should your money go ? A good starting point is to walk through your house and examine each room – be critical and objective. If a room looks small, cluttered and/or unclean, put it on the “to do” list. If you notice things which need to be repaired, your visitors will too, so put the items to be fixed on the ”to do” list
Read more: Staging

Real Estate Housing Market Grows in both FSBO and Agent Sales
2007-06-05 07:41:57
The housing market in Canada is setting a record pace this year. Both ByTheOwner.com sales and mls.ca sales have increased in 2007. It was reported that mls.ca sales increased 1.5% in April 2007. Year-to-date sales of homes by agents have increased 6.7% so far this year. ByTheOwner.com’s sales have also increased. April’s sales grew by 52% from 314 private sales in 2006 to 482 private sales in 2007. Year-to-date, ByTheOwner.com’s sales have increase 42% from 1544 private sales in 2006 to 2196 private sales in 2007. Both ByTheOwner.com and mls.ca are on pace to break home sales records in 2007. Mls.ca is forecast to pass 500,000 sales in Canada and ByTheOwner.com is forecast to pass 5,000 sales. It is important to note that ByTheOwner.com’s full service is available only in Ontario, Quebec, and BC. This means that ByTheOwner.com accounts for more than 1% of all sales in those provinces. www.bytheowner.com  
Read more: Estate , Housing , Market , Agent , Sales , Real Estate

HGTV Designed to Sell Website Has Great Suggestions for Selling
2007-06-05 07:05:27
HGTV has great tips on how to get ready to sell your home and how to stage your home. Their Designed to Sell program is all about staging your home and making appeal to buyers so that you can make the best impact and get the most money for your home. There is no doubt that having a clean, uncluttered, and fresh smelling home makes an enormace difference in helping you sell. At ByTheOwner.com we list more than 200 homes per week, and we can see the difference it makes. If a home is well prepared when we come to take the photos, and the owner is ready for showings, it is more than likely that the home will sell in 2-6 weeks. Of couse the home also needs to be priced according to similar properties in the area, but the fact is that if your home looks great, then buyers will choose your home over the unprepared house down the street. If your home IS unprepared, you can expect buyer to bring in lower offers or not even bother to out in an offer at all. www.bytheowner.com
Read more: Great

Top 100 Fastest Growing Canadian Companies: ByTheOwner.com is #90
2007-06-05 06:59:22
ByTheOwner.com is proud to announce that we have been listed at #90 on Canadian Business Magazine’s Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies ! Canadian Business is Canada’s top magazine for news, opinion and community for business leaders, entrepreneurs and investors. Each year they release a list of the fastest growing Canadian companies over the past 5 years. This is ByTheOwner.com’s first time on the list and it is an honor for us to be ranked amoung other great Canadian companies such as Research in Motion, WestJet, Workbrain Corp., Garda World Security, etc.. The top 100 list is ranked by calculating a company’s revenues in 2001 and in 2006 and then comparing the rate of growth. ByTheOwner.com had revenues of $306,555 in 2001 and revenues of $2,317,320 in 2006, for a growth rate of 656%. This ranks us as the 90th fastest growing company in Canada. ByTheOwner.com’s employees grew from 5 employees in 2001 to 46 employees in 2006. It is important to note th


CMHC Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corportation Offers Home Hunting Worksheet
2007-06-01 15:01:14
CMHC, Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corportation, has designed at worksheet to help buyers compare 3 different houses. The worksheet can be a great tool to make sure that, as a buyer, you did not overlook any aspect of the home(s) that you are considering purchasing. The worksheet can be found by clicking here The worksheet lets you examine the 1) Annual costs 2) Neighbourhood 3) Chattels incuded with the home 4) Exterior attributes 5) Interior attributes If buyers are using this form to compare potential homes, and you are looking at a home on ByTheOwner.com, be sure to write “OWNER” in the real estate rep section! www.bytheowner.com
Read more: Offers

Mesh Web Conference - ByTheOwner will be there!
2007-05-29 13:22:31
ByTheOwner.com will have 3 representatives at the 2007 Mesh Conference.   The Mesh Conference is Canada’s premier Web conference, and it is being held in Toronto on May 30th & 31st, 2007. It is a chance to connect with people who are excited about the potential of the Web– people who want to know more about how it is changing the way we live, work and interact with the world. We are looking forward to discussing the internet, ByTheOwner.com and finding ways to improve our business. You can check out Matthew Ingram’s blog for some highlights: http://www.mathewingram.com/work  www.bytheowner.com


RBC Royal Bank Mortgage Website Has Tips for FSBO
2007-05-29 13:02:34
The Royal Bank of Canada’s Mortgage website has tips for selling your own home. They do point out all the money that can be saved selling privately and they also mention “pitfalls” to selling your own home. ByTheOwner.com thinks it’s great that Canada’s Largest Bank has discussed selling privately on their website. However, we do have some suggestions on how they can improve this section of their site… 1) They mention that you “probably want to engage the expertise of a notary or real estate lawyer”. ByTheOwner would suggest that this is a “definite” as opposed to a “probably”. Calling a lawyer is the first step in our guide. 2) The Royal Bank’s second point is “Designing a real estate marketing plan” which links to a section about “Using a real estate agent”. While we agree that a Marketing Plan is very important, we know that you don’t need an agent to do this! More help on cr


Homes for sale by owner in Ontario - May Inventory
2007-05-29 08:52:12
ByTheOwner.com is Canada’s Largest FSBO website with an average of more than 150 000 weekly unique visitors in 2007. Below is our May 2007 inventory of our current active listings of for-sale-by-owner homes. These are homes for sale with no agents: Private sales Kitchener-Waterloo 65 Homes for sale Barrie 61 Homes for sale Brampton 61 Homes for sale London 60 Homes for sale Metro Toronto 59 Homes for sale Vaughan 35 Homes for sale Mississauga 31 Homes for sale Bracebridge 16 Homes for sale Oro-Medonte 15 Homes for sale Scarborough 15 Homes for sale Orillia 14 Homes for sale Richmond Hill 12 Homes for sale Grand Bend 11 Homes for sale Markham 11 Homes for sale Guelph 10 Homes for sale Parry Sound 9 Homes for sale Woodbridge 9 Homes for sale Aurora 8 Homes for sale Hamilton 8 Homes for sale Oshawa 8 Homes for sale Penetanguishene 8 Homes for sale Thornhill 8 Homes for sale Woodstock 8 Homes for sale Wyevale 8 Ho
Read more: Ontario , Inventory

Muskoka Home Sale - Owner sets a new record
2007-05-23 22:21:35
ByTheOwner .com set a new record today! We just had a $1,400,000 Lot in Muskoka sell privately in less than 1 month! This is the most expensive property that we have ever had sell on our website! And of course this sets a new record for the most commissions saved! Real Estate commissions in Muskoka vary, so lets look at how much this ByTheOwner.com customer saved at the different commission rates: At 7% commission - $98,000 Saved! At 6% commission - $84,000 Saved! At 5% commission - $70,000 Saved! Can you imagine how many years you would have to work to save that amount of money? Can you imagine what you could buy with that amount of money? Could you imagine if you had paid that amount of money to a real estate agent? Contratulations on selling privately and saving a lot of money! www.bytheowner.com


Selling A Home Can Be Affected By Higher Interest Rates
2007-06-14 13:24:15
The Globe and Mail reported today that interest rates in Canada have been on the rise lately. This can have an effect on the real estate market:  “On a $300,000 mortgage with an amortization period of 25 years, a home buyer with a 4.99-per-cent mortgage would make monthly payments of $1,743.11, according to RBC’s online mortgage calculator. This would add up to a total interest cost of $222,932 over the life of the mortgage. At a rate of 6.04 per cent, the monthly payments would increase by $183.45 to $1,926.56. The total interest cost rises by $55,035 to $277,967.” In this example provided in the article, the higher interest rates results in a higher monthly payment for the buyers. If the highest monthly payment a buyer could receive was $1,743.11 for a $300,000 home, then this means that the buyer can no longer afford a $300,000 home because it now cost $1926.56. A raise in interest rates means that buyers can afford less than they could at the lower rates and th
Read more: Higher , Interest , Rates

MLS vs FSBO - Study Proves For-Sale-By-Owner is Better
2007-06-12 08:38:29
What a great day for FSBO! On June 7th, 2007, Northwestern University released an independent, unbiased report (linked here) concluding that “MLS offers no advantage in the sale price ” At ByTheOwner .com, we have often heard agents claim that they will get you “more money” and that their commission is “worth it” because they can “put your home on mls”. We always knew these claims to be false, but now there is proof! The study took data from 1998-2004, and compared FSBOmadison.com (Madison, Wisconsin) to MLS. Many different factors (house characteristics, seller selection…) were considered and it is an incredibly detailed and thorough report. Some points from the study: -”The average sale price of homes that sell on FSBO is higher that the average price of homes that sell with a realtor.” -”We did not find that listing on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) helps sellers obtain a significantly higher sales price.
Read more: Study , Proves

Place your home on Facebook: ByTheOwner.com develops Facebook Application
2007-06-15 12:34:04
  ByTheOwner.com’s properties for sale can now take advantage of the 30 Million Facebook users! On June 14th, ByTheOwner.com released our exclusive Facebook application. The application was built by our programmers and it allows our properties (Front photo and info) to be uploaded to Facebook. Facebook is on it’s way to becoming the most visited website in the world. Currently there are 30 million users and there will be 50 million by the end of 2007. Here are the number of Facebook users in specific Canadian cities as of June 13th: Toronto, ON - 641,221 (about 15% of the population) Vancouver, BC - 281,030 (about 10% of the population) Barrie, ON - 50,515 (about 40% of the population) Kitchener, ON- 77,369 (about 20% of the population) London, ON - 90,734 (about 25% of the population) Ottawa, ON - 147,212 Hamilton, ON - 68,054 Kingston, ON - 35,285 Montreal, QC - 129,216 The ByTheOwner.com Facebook Application can be activated by clicking on the Facebook button in any li
Read more: Place

Real Estate Agents In Barrie Are On The Defensive
2007-06-18 14:21:13
It looks like the Barrie Real Estate board is trying to use billboard advertising to promote their services…or perhaps they are cross training to become doctors? Our Barrie rep, John Babic, thought this was quite funny so he took this photo for our blog. What do you think about this photo? www.bytheowner.com
Read more: Defensive , Real Estate

More info on ByTheOwner.com and Canada’s Top 100 can be Found at Yahoo Finance
2007-06-18 13:48:42
This is the link to the article that accompanied the Profit 100 Fastest Growing Companies. Here is the section about ByTheOwner.com… “…Another success story, Charny, Que.-based DuProprio.com/ByTheOwner.com (No. 90), offers a different lesson in responding to opportunity: decide fast, then get on with it. The for-sale-by-owner real estate website, with five-year revenue growth of 656%, to $2.3 million in 2006, says it is No. 1 in Canada in its market segment for traffic and sales. Yet Nicolas Bouchard, the firm’s CEO, says his family didn’t even craft a business plan when the firm saw the opportunity in 1997: “We did no research on the market—none at all.” Even last year, when it considered expanding beyond its flourishing Quebec and Ontario base into B.C., it didn’t conduct a thorough analysis. Instead, Bouchard met with his brother and sister over a family dinner, at which they decided to plunge in. Yet the conclusion here isn&rsq
Read more: Yahoo

3000 For Sale By Owner (FSBO) Sales in Ontario
2007-06-22 08:59:35
ByTheOwner .com reached 3000 sales in Ontario ! This is a great accomplishment. You can see our growth below. Every year has been better than the last. Our average house for sale price in Ontario is approximately $310,000, which means that the average home sold on our site saves more than $16,000 in commissions and GST. (assuming 5% commission plus GST). Our 3,000 results in approximately $48 million dollars in commissions saved in Ontario. 2004 - 669 For Sale By Owner Homes SOLD 2005 - 766 For Sale By Owner Homes SOLD 2006 - 975 For Sale By Owner Homes SOLD 2007 - 517 For Sale By Owner Homes SOLD (on pace to sell 1100 homes in Ontario in 2007) Since the launch of our new website platform in 2005, we have more than 800 testimonials from our customers Thanks to all our customers for helping us reach this milestone! www.bytheowner.com    
Read more: Sales

ByTheOwner.com Forums are a Big Hit with our customers
2007-07-12 13:06:52
ByTheOwner.com recently launched our new Forum so that our customers can easliy communicate with each other. Each person selling a home with ByTheOwner.com can post questions and answers to any topic they choose. The forum can only be used by sellers. Since this service was launched at the beginning of July, There have been 20 different topics launched and more than 90 different comments and suggestions posted by our sellers. The current topics incude:   Open House lots of hits but no calls Advertising Suggestions Realtor who wants to buy… wrong buyer This is what happened when I went with an agent FEED BACK renter in my house upgrading how much should i do selling privately How to improve your Google ranking How to deal with agents calling Welcome to the new ByTheOwner forums! Selling a Condo Renter/Boarder? One sided Real Estate commission renter in your home… It's great to see our sellers helping other sellers. The posts are filled with gr
Read more: Forums

Home Staging the outside – it counts too !
2007-07-11 15:23:01
When we discuss Home Staging , we usually talk about the property’s interior and what needs to be done to make it look its best. What is sometimes neglected is the outside which also needs to be decluttered, cleaned and decorated. After all, the buyer’s first impression will be of the outside and the landscaping of the property – the curb appeal ! Without spending a lot of money on professional landscaping services, some basic improvements can make a big difference. The lawn (front and backyard), the hedges, and the flower beds must be trimmed and the leaves and the grass trimmings raked. If in season, plant some annuals – a quick and inexpensive way to brighten up the outside. Keep the walkway and the front entrance clean, neat and clutter free – pick up all toys/bicycles/garbage/tools/construction materials and anything else lying around the property (front, side and back) and store them away. The front door and the windows must be visible and free


Interest Rates for Mortgages Increase
2007-07-10 14:55:55
Today the Bank of Canada increased their key interest rates to 4.5 per cent and they predict more increases in the near future. Higher interest rates result in buyers not being able to afford higher priced homes. For example, a 10 year fixed rate at ING Direct was 6.05% before the interest rate hike, and now it is 6.15%. At the 6.05% rate the monthly payments on a $200,000 mortgage were $1407.01 and now they are $1419.40 at the 6.15% rate.  For more information on the interest rate hike, please click here www.bytheowner.com
Read more: Interest , Rates , Interest Rates

For Sale By Owner Partnership: ByTheOwner.com and Saskhouses.com
2007-07-18 08:39:27
                 AND                   ByTheOwner .com has just formed a strategic partnership with Saskhouses.com. All Saskhouses.com listings (Approximately 360 active homes), we be listed on ByTheOwner.com. ByTheOwner.com’s 150,000 visitors per week will be able to view all of Saskhouses.com’s properties. This will provide national exposure for all Saskhouses’ listings. All homes listed on Saskhouses will automatically be listed on ByTheOwner.com. Anyone looking to list their home on ByTheOwner.com in Saskatchewan, can subscribe directly with Saskhouses.com. If anyone is looking to buy a home or sell a home in Saskatchewan, Saskhouses.com is the place to do it! Saskhouses.com has been in business since 1999. In 2006, they helped sell 1057 properties in Saskatchewan and they listed more than $278 million dollars in real estate. So far in 2007, Saskhouses has sold 607 properties privately and listed more than $250 million dolla


ByTheOwner.com’s Google Search Results
2007-07-24 11:32:27
Excellent search engine results usually take a lot of work and a lot of time. At ByTheOwner.com, we think our recent results are very impressive! 3 months ago, as soon as we realized that we were almost invisible on Google .ca while our french website, DuProprio.com, was doing very well, we decided to brainstorm and establish a plan to improve our search engine ranking. 3 months later, we can easily say “mission accomplished” because, on Google.ca, while we were almost never on the first page, we are now ranked* : - 1st when I look for “owner” - 1st when I look for “homes for sale ontario” - 2nd when I look for “homes for sale ontario” - 1st when I look FSBO - 3rd when I look for “For sale by owner” - 4th when I look for “homes for sale” - 3rd when I look for “houses for sale” - 2th when I look for “house for sale” - 5th when I look for “home for sale” This is excellent news for t
Read more: Search , Google Search

Toronto Star Article on the Bidding wars in Toronto
2007-07-23 14:01:05
There was a very interesting article in the Toronto Star this weekend about the process buying a home with a real estate agent in a hot market. Here is an excerpt from the article and a link … “The process is conducted in the dark by real estate agents working on commission and with a vested interest in the highest possible price.” “It seems designed to boost uncertainty for potential buyers, inflate housing prices (not to mention commissions) and reduce overall transparency.” “A hot sellers’ market is partly the cause. But there seems to be more quality control and consumer protection when buying a car or a litre of milk than when making the biggest purchase in most people’s lives.” The entire story can be read at : http://www.thestar.com/article/238280 www.bytheowner.com
Read more: Article

July For Sale By Owner Stats:Listings and Sold Properties
2007-08-02 12:05:50
Here are ByTheOwner .com’s housing and listing stats for July 2007: New listings increased 35% from 717 new listing in July 2006, to 968 new listings in July 2007 Sold properties increased 45% from 302 sold properties in July 2006, to 439 sold properties in July 2007. Total active listings increased 23% from 3,900 active homes for sale in July 2006, to 4828 active homes for sale in July 2007. www.bytheowner.com
Read more: Stats , Properties

For Sale By Owner July 2007 Webstats - Visitors Increase 92%
2007-08-02 10:27:17
ByTheOwner .com’s website statistics for the month of July 2007: Website visitors increased from 339,286 unique visitors in July 2006, to 651,086 in July 2007. This is a 94% increase in unique website visitors from July 2006 to 2007. Pageviews increased from 3.7 million page views in July 2006, to 5.8 million pageviews in July 2007. This is 54% increase in pageviews from July 2006 to 2007. Unique visitors and pageviews are the two most useful statistics when it comes to measuring the exposure you will receive from a For Sale By Owner website. Unique visitors is the number of individual people coming to look for properties on the site. Pageviews is the number of pages that those visitors look at. On ByTheOwner.com in July 2007 we had 651,086 unique visitors and they looked at 5.8 million pages. This means each visitor looked at approximately 9 pages. Some websites claim to have a certain number of “Hits”. This is not a valid measure of website activity, because a &ld
Read more: Visitors

Real Estate Lawyer Offers Great Advice
2007-07-31 09:03:27
Here is a link to a recent Toronto Star article. The author offers some great advice on always having a real estate lawyer review the offer to purchase contract before signing, even if you are using an agent. http://www.thestar.com/article/239955 Agents often advertise that they are able to deal with the legal aspects of the offer-to-purchase and that this is one of the reasons to use an agent. In the Toronto Star article, the author gives an example of a person using a real estate agent where things went wrong. In ByTheOwner.com’s guide to selling privately, our 1st step in selling is to call a real estate lawyer. Real estate lawyers are required to have a university degree, law degree, and get called to the bar. This process takes about 7-8 years to complete. Real estate agents need to be 18 years or older and are required to complete 3 courses which takes about 6 months to complete. Who would you rather have ensuring your protection when buying and selling a home? www.bythe
Read more: Estate , Lawyer , Offers , Great , Real Estate

ByTheOwner.com Reaches $200 Million in Commissions Saved
2007-08-08 09:39:07
ByTheOwner.com recently passed $200 million in commissions saved. This represents the commission that was not paid to a real estate agent. ByTheOwner.com’s clients save between 5-7% of their home’s value by not using agents. We have helped close to 15,000 owner’s sell their home privately with no agents and no commissions. Congratulations to all our customers who sold and saved! www.bytheowner.com
Read more: Commissions

Home Staging really does work – check the numbers!
2007-08-15 09:11:45
How do you know that Staging a Home for sale will bring you tangible (meaning $$$) benefits ? There are few statistics available on the subject and every marketplace being different, it’s hard to measure the exact impact Home Staging has on a sale. But, based on 2003 statistics provided by StagedHomes.com, a price increase of between 2% and 10% is a very realistic (and even conservative) estimate. Another measure is the time it takes to sell a property and translate that time into money. The longer the house stays on the market, the more it costs you in house payments and other expenses, diminishing your potential profit. As an example, let’s assume that a house has been on the market for three months and your mortgage payments are $1,000 a month, so you have put an extra $3,000 into it (plus insurance, electricity and heating and other incidental expenses). At the end of that period, you’ll probably lower the price to attract buyers. If the house was originally listed at $30


ByTheOwner.com reaches 15,000 SOLD properties
2007-08-15 08:26:41
ByTheOwner.com recently passed 15,000 sold properties! Since we started in 1997, we have consistently sold more properties each year: 1998 - 35 Sold Properties 1999 - 105 Sold Properties 2000 - 220 Sold Properties 2001 - 614 Sold Properties 2002 - 1059 Sold Properties 2003 - 1528 Sold Properties 2004 - 2269 Sold Properties 2005 - 2544 Sold Properties 2006 - 3510 Sold Properties 2007 - 3202 Sold Properties (As of Aug. 15th, 2007!) These results do not include the sold properties from our Canadian Partner FSBO websites. OKhomeseller.com has helped sell 1735 properties since 2002 and Saskhouses.com has helped 735 properties sell so far in 2007 and they helped 1057 properties sell in 2006! These numbers show that For-Sale-By-Owner in Canada is growing in popularity. Thanks to everyone selling without an agent! www.bytheowner.com


ByTheOwner.com Reaches 5,000 Active For-Sale-By-Owner Properties For Sale
2007-08-20 13:36:20
ByTheOwner .com, Canada’s largest For-Sale-By-Owner website, recently reached 5,000 active homes for sale. This is a feat that we are very proud of, especially considering we passed 4,000 homes for sale only a few months ago on June 8, 2007. We pride ourselves on being the best and the biggest FSBO website in Canada. We know that having thousands of homes for sale, as well thousands of new listings, will results in more buyers searching on our site for their next home for sale. Our 5,000 active listings include approximately 4100 activate properties for sale put online by our ByTheOwner.com staff, another 400 properties provided by our British Columbia partner (OKhomeseller.com) and and additional 500 properties provided by our Saskatchewan partner (Saskhouses.com). Thank you to everyone selling privately across Canada! www.bytheowner.com
Read more: Active , Properties

Guide To Building Your Own Home
2007-08-28 15:09:28
You dream about building your own home but don’t know where to start? ByTheOwner.com lauched today a new section on newhomes.bytheowner.com : Build your own house! From the house plan to the end of your project, “Build your own house” gives information about every step you need to go throught to get a house plan and to realize your dreams. Please visit Build your own house on newhomes.bytheowner.com »
Read more: Guide , Building

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