How to Sell Your Home Without a Realtor

0:00I got my real estate license because I wanted to become a real estate investor after my startup days. The people who are investors like me in the audience are going to laugh their butt off when they hear my rationale here. I wanted something that was lower stress. So I decided I'd be a real estate. What an idiot I am, right? I think I've said my I think I've called myself an idiot two times on this podcast. I'm going to go for a record here. But yeah, how what a what an insane thing to believe. But that just goes to show you from the outside looking in. Everybody's oh it's passive income. You know, you'll let your money do the work for you. What a what a fool.

0:31So, anyway, my first couple deals I I approached it just like I was I'm still in startup mode, right? So, I'm I'm I'm going in negotiating against Fortune 10 companies, sometimes winning, you know, and and it's really just four three guys working out of a closet and, you know, it's it's pure skill at this point. We're just going in pure hunger and and sometimes we win. So, I kind of have that mindset as I go into my investing and I'm doing all of the due diligence. I'm finding diamonds in the rough. These are amazing opportunities that nobody else is seeing and I ask an agent to go help me close a deal on the thing and they I mean they couldn't negotiate their way out of a paper bag.

1:08It was embarrassing. They they couldn't accurately portray the the theme of of what I was going for to these sellers and and they would somehow always end up saying the wrong thing or take too long or or not understand pacing. It it was just so frustrating. I was so frustrated with real estate agents. I decided to become one. Maybe this is why I call myself idiot myself an idiot the third time in this podcast because that was like I I was I was just like I'm done. But but I will say that was actually a genius move. If there if investors out there have run into this situation before where you are working through an intermediary and they're not actu accurately conveying what you want in a deal, man, go get your license.

1:46It took me a weekend. I mean, I'm here in Florida, but it was like a a weekend. I mean, maybe it was a little bit, maybe it was like four days, but I remember getting it done very quick, taking a test, and then I was able to do my own deals and that was just awesome. That was so cool. So being able to do that, but then, you know, people started asking me, "Hey, can you help me buy this next place? Hey, can you help me sell my place?" And I was doing things that came from the startup world that nobody would have ever done in the real estate world. And some of the guys, some of the veterans, they laughed at me. They were like, "You're going to do what?" And you know it turned out to be pretty successful.

2:20I mean our my list to sold price ratio over my entire career was 102.3% which means I got people above what they were even asking for. The rest of my market is at about 89%. And we Liz and I we were usually under contract with our clients the very first weekend we were on the market. There was a couple that that took a little bit longer but all of this was a result of understanding consumer psychology. How to spike scarcity, how to spike urgency, all those things I learned in the tech space from marketing that were never it hasn't for some reason made it into real estate where I still feel like we're operating in a 1980s mentality where we say really dumb things like price high with room to negotiate down and you know price at $4.99$9.99 not 500 it's like what are you selling shamwows this is ridiculous so yeah that that's that's kind of where where I came in

3:08I was a little bit different and that's kind of the system now that I teach directly to homeowners is is that same system that we use to get, you know, bidding war started, to get multiple offers to get homes moved quick. — Okay. Can can you give maybe an example of one of those things that you brought in from the the startup world that has been — something that's a little bit outside the box? — Absolutely. So, one of the and this is actually catching on and and I I would love to claim sole ownership of this idea, but this is obviously not my idea. This is this is inspired by a lot of much much smarter people who came ahead of me.

3:42One of the guys out there, Brennan Moren, he was he was my coach when I got into this guy's just genius. Oh, you do? — Wonderful guy. I can't say enough great things about him. And so he's the one that taught me so much about this space and one of the things that he loved talking about was strategic underpricing and I I use that so effectively and here's how this works. So I was just kind of making fun a little bit earlier about the whole 1980s mentally because that was the old smart way to do it which was start high and then negotiate down. That's because people didn't find 300 of homes just like yours on their computer that they're flipping through.7 seconds at a time.

4:19Well, nowadays, because we've been conditioned by every I mean, Amazon, we we comparison shop everything. So, the I don't care how nice your photos are. I don't care how beautiful your drone video is. If you are overpricing yourself out of the market, number one, the automated search filters are going to bypass you and they're not even going to surface you to your buyers. But number two, your buyer's going to take a quick look at it and if it doesn't immediately see, I don't know, a pool made of solid gold or a diamond encrusted toilet.

4:51They're like, "Okay, what is this guy on crack? We are not even going to look at this house. This guy's clearly unreasonable." So, what the move here for 2026 is to do your comparable search. Find out all of the homes already that have sold, not not active, by the way, not pending, because those are almost wishes that haven't been granted, but we want to look at numbers that somebody has written a check for. Those are concrete. Those are what the actual value is sitting around today. Find your comparables, then look at your competition, find out how far they're off, and underpric a good two to 3% below your lowest competitive seller out there.

5:26That is going to spike interest in your home immediately. The next time a weekend comes around, you guarantee you're going to have a packed open house. And that's another thing we do is we make sure we make it almost inconvenient to see the house in the sense of I compress the time down to two hours. I want fights in the driveway over parking. I want people rubbing elbows as they go through the kitchen because nothing spikes urgency and scarcity and value of an asset is seeing other people interested in it. — Yeah, that's a good point. — Yeah. — Yeah. Interesting. Okay.

5:57Yeah. So, when it comes to the cost of of a realtor then compared to what it is that you teach, like what what is it like? What's the typical cost that you see? Because I know it's not just the commission. I mean, there's other costs like, you know, like my friend who's who listed their house six months ago and then they had to take it off the market and now they're rehabbing it while they're paying the mortgage. Like, what do you see typically as the savings for somebody who who adopts this strategy? Yeah, this is this is why I get really excited talking to investors because they understand leverage.

6:31So not only are we talking about dollars we don't spend, we're talking about dollars we could put into our next project. So, let's just let's just do very back of the napkin math. Average home today is around $500,000. The there I I as a I have these really weird rules as a real a licensed real estate agent. I'm not allowed to say I I think I can't say like oh average commission is 6% because that's somehow colluding. I don't know dude whatever come arrest me whatever.

7:02But let's just pretend the hypothetically the average commission is 6%. So right there that just tells a simple math. That's $30,000. Now what we often miss and this is why again I love investors because they understand carrying costs which means every month we're sitting on that market we're spending let's say $2,500. So if it takes us another four months because we priced wrong or because we didn't present the right way, that's another 10 grand out the window. You will never see again. They also understand opportunity costs. You know, as investors, we're not just going to take that money we make on on the turnover of this asset and and and bury it in our backyard.

7:38We're probably going to put it into another appreciating asset. Well, every minute, every day that you're not in that appreciating asset, that is a cost and you should recognize that. So, not only we talking commissions, but we're also saying that subject matter experts are so important in sales. The one of the biggest predictors when I was in the startup space when I could tell if a sales guy was going to be good or not was number one, they had a high emotional IQ, which was they were able to empathize with the person they were selling to. And number two, they had subject matter expertise better than anybody else.

8:11Well, who knows more about a home than somebody who's woken up in the home, who's had coffee in the morning, who's watched Fourth of July fireworks in the backyard. I wouldn't want to I'll tell you, I would not want to sell against, as good as I am at selling, I would not want to sell against a homeowner selling their own home because they know so much more about it than I do after touring it for a half hour. So those are some of the costs we like to save. And here's where it gets better for investors. Every dollar we save, every dollar extra we're able to keep out of a deal, that's leveraged. So that's not just a dollar.

8:42Maybe it's 10 or even a $100 that we leverage into our next deal. So this is why I get super excited when I talk about let's just pretend there are no operating or carrying costs and opportunity costs. Let's just pretend you save just a flat 30 grand. Man, that is an insane amount of leverage that you're going to be able to put in your next deal that just would otherwise go away if you pick the default path. And like I said, sometimes though, we don't want to we don't want to be pennywise and pound foolish. If we just get fixated on what the commission costs us, sometimes we can lose the bigger picture because there are times where it makes far more sense to use a real estate agent than to try to do a DIY approach.

9:18— Yeah. What What are those times? — Well, so I think about anytime legal is involved. If you're in the middle of a divorce, if the home is subject to a judgment, if maybe it's in probate, something like that, write that real estate agent a check and laugh all the way to the bank because they're going to go through legal hell and back to try to get that house sold for you. I mean, they are going to do their work. The other thing I look at is let's pretend you're a cardiologist and you're making 30 grand a day saving people's lives at the hospital. I'm not going to tell you to take a week off work to come save, you know, 30k selling your house on your own.

9:51That's that's just silly. So there are absolutely instances where it makes so much sense to find a great real estate agent, list with them, and and let them earn their their commission because in the end, you're going to make more in the back end. But for other folks who do not mind doing it, I I almost don't like to call it DIY either, Kirby, because all I'm doing is I'm teaching homeowners not just my tactics around pricing, around presentation and marketing, but also I'm teaching them the people that I use.

10:21When I became a real estate agent, I I don't know how to go pull title insurance. I don't know how to do a title search. I I hire a title company for that. I don't know how to take professional photos. I hire a photographer for that. So, again, this is not purely DIY. A lot of you know, people who think about going this path, they're like, "Well, I don't know how to take photos." Good. Neither do I, and I was still awesome at this job. Let me teach you. So, this is a very this this path is it's it's almost done with you, I like to call it. — Got it. Yeah, that makes sense because I think it for most people like the stereotypical for sale by owner is like, you know, somebody who is just a cheapkate.

11:00They're going to way over price it. And so, you know, the realtor told them it's worth 500. They think it's worth six, so they're going to list it themselves to try to get that extra hundred,000. And then you walk in the property and it's like a shrine to their grandkids or whatever. And and you know, it's it's nice for them. Yeah. Exactly. Like, but nobody else cares about like, you know, your buyer, it turns off your buyer even though they're so proud of it. They're like, you know, this is what's going to sell this house. And and they just don't understand. So, I think I I love the fact that, you know, it's still for sale by owner, but it's following like proven systems that realtors use, especially, you know, successful realtors like yourself, to actually, you know, make it not feel like a for sale by owner.

11:49It it is it is not easy. Look, look, let me I'll I'll put this right out right now. There's a difference between simple and easy. Running a marathon is simple. It's it's putting one foot in front of the other. 26.2 2 miles at a time, but it is not easy. There's nothing easy about it. And same as as listing a house, I give you a blueprint and and there's steps in there, but it's you're eating a whole elephant. You're just doing it one bite at a time. So there there is a process to it. And like you said, Kirby, that's where the magic is. It's being able to commit to a process. And if you hit the market and think, "Oh, imagine getting on an airplane and the you hear the pilot say, I've never done this before, but I watched a few YouTube videos.

12:27We're good, man. And I'm getting off that freaking airplane. I don't know about you, but people take the most valuable asset in their portfolio and they're just like, "Yeah, I watched some YouTube videos. I'll figure it out." I'm sorry you won't. The the real estate agents today in 2026, the ones that are left, the ones that survived the Great Purge, they're really good at what they do. And and so you have to compete against them. And now you can and you can win just like I did. But if you go out and try to figure it out on your own, you're going to have a real real tough road to hoe. — Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So I think one of the challenges that a lot of people bring up when they're they're thinking about listing themselves is, well, how do I get my property in front of people?

13:06Like, how do I get it on the MLS or on Realtor.com or on Zillow? Is that all part of this system? Like, what how do you make sure that the exposure is high enough that that people actually see it and show up to the the open house? — So, one one of my favorite hacks for this, it's twofold. Number one, the online stuff is easy. Online stuff. Go find a a $95 flat fee real estate agent who will list your home by owner on the MLS and it will propagate out to all of the various websites out there, Zillow, Red Fin, whatever. That that's the easiest step is to make sure you get syndicated.

13:39They'll put your name on there. They'll put your phone number on there, your email address. I I know at least in most states, I think I've heard there's a few states where they don't allow that. But most states now are totally fine with that. Where one of my favorite hacks is to make sure two things. Number one, we're also listing on Facebook Marketplace. We're also going hyper local on Craigslist. We're on nextdoor.com. Hit those as well because you'd be amazed how many people are still on those websites and and it will pop up. And and Facebook, they're big brother, man.

14:12They they know what you're thinking before you even think it. And if your cousin Larry says, "Dude, I want to come out and live with you one day or or out in your town. Your town sounds amazing." All of a sudden, you're on Facebook and a Facebook marketplace ad pops up for a home in your neighborhood that you never would have even known about. You call Cousin Larry. Chances are Cousin Larry is unrepresented by a buyer agent. So, you get now an inbound lead from somebody that isn't going to ask for a commission and you're keeping the whole thing. I mean, it's great. But what I also love doing, speaking of hyper local, it's in venue. In venue marketing is incredible.

14:44And let me explain what I mean by this. You can let me So there's something I like to call a neighborhood only openhouse. It's an invite open only openhouse on Thursday. The Thursday before you go live Thursday evening you host a going away slashopenhouse neighborhood only open invite only open house at your home and you serve or derves. You serve drinks but what you do is you go and door knockock your neighbors. Get like at least 40 or 50. And if you can't door knock or you're too shy, give them a call.

15:16But you're just basically saying, "Hey, Kirby, I'm Tim. I live over on 123 Maine. We've run across each other a few times leaving for work in the morning. Listen, you were in this neighborhood far before I was. And therefore, you know a ton more about it than I do. I just got this amazing job opportunity out in Denver. I'm moving and I'm having a little going away party on Thursday night. And in line with that, I would love for you to come over. Give me some advice on my home. What do you think I should do to make it more palatable to buyers? What do you think I should do to make this thing more interesting? So, that's going to do a couple of things in Kirby's mind.

15:48Now, not you, Kirby, but our little friend Kirby in the neighborhood. It's it's gonna it's going to one immediately when you when you flatter a stranger and you call them an expert, they naturally want to rise to that occasion. So, now they're going to think, "Wow, I have expertise. I have something to offer here." You're going to go there to that event. You're going to probably have a great time. You're going to give some advice, but now you've psychologically enlisted in their little war to sell that house. You are now a foot soldier in that effort because whether whether you even know it or not, you want to see a good outcome for a couple of reasons.

16:21One, it's it's the cognitive thing. You now are part of this effort. You want to see them do well. But two, who cares more about who moves into that house? The person selling or their neighbor who's going to have to stay there and live with whoever moves in there. And number three, you want whoever buys that home to pay top dollar for it because that positively affects your property value. You do not want to see a fire sale. So now you have 40 people who came to your home. They had a great time. You had good rapport. They now go out to their network on the ground, boots on the ground, and they're thinking, gosh, who do I know at my church?

16:54Gosh, who do I know at my gym? Gosh, who do I know at my kids school who've said they've wanted to live in my neighborhood? And that right there is just it's icing on the it's the chef's kiss. I I love that strategy right there because that's when you get the unrepresented buyers coming looking at your home, dealing directly with you.