Over the years, one of the most common questions we get from prospective customers is, what’s your success rate? Our pat answer has usually been that we can’t guarantee you will sell your home if you advertise through saskhouses.com, but we can guarantee you’ll be amazed by how many people see your home if you advertise it on our website. The rest is up to you.

But we’ve always believed the success rate of our customers is pretty similar to the success rate of sellers who choose to market their homes through the MLS system, and at the start of this year I decided to start gathering some empirical evidence to see if that belief was in fact true.
In January, I started keeping track of customers who were successful in selling privately, and those who ended up going with a real estate agent to help sell their homes. Here’s what I have found so far.
In the month of January 2012, we had a total of 102 listings. Of those, 59 sellers reported they were successful in selling privately – a success rate of 57.84 percent. 12 sellers ended up listing their homes with a real estate agent, and 31 sellers, or 30.39 percent of our sellers did not report they were able to sell their homes during the six month advertising period on saskhouses.com.

In the above image, the listings highlighted in yellow were successful private sales, the listings highlighted in red were either sold by agents, or listed by agents and taken off of saskhouses.com. The listings highlighted in blue were unsuccessful in selling, even though they had reduced their asking prices, and the listings in white were sellers who did not report selling their homes through their six month advertising period.

In February, 53.70 % of saskhouses.com customers were successful selling privately, in March the success rate was 57.86 %, in April it was 51.74 %, in May it was 62.94 %, and in June it was 57.04 %. The success rate of our July customers so far is 43.63 %, 43.75 % of our August customers have reported their houses sold so far, and the success rates for September and October customers so far are 37.03 %, and 12.14 % respectively. We expect the success rate in the months of July through October will continue to increase as more customers report that their listings have been sold.

Overall, from January through the end of October, 731 of our 1470 customers have reported they were able to sell their homes privately – a success rate of 49.72 percent. How does that compare with the success rate of sellers on the MLS system? The Saskatoon Regional Association of Realtors doesn’t keep track of their success rate quite the same way we do, but so far this year, from January through the end of October, a total of 9,490 properties have been listed through the MLS system in the Saskatoon Region, with 4,881 reported sales. That’s a success rate of 51.43 percent.

I think the success rate of our customers is pretty impressive, especially when you consider that we are not involved in setting the asking prices of the properties, or in the negotiation process with buyers. And it shows that private sellers are just as savvy, and just as successful as sellers who choose to have a third party involved in the sale of their home. And by selling commission free, they can do it for a fraction of the cost.