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Bob Kramer knows what he’s got. It’s just that no one seems to want it.
At least not for the past three years, and not for the price, which grows monthly.
Kramer first listed his 4,900-square-foot house for sale by owner in the Cincinnati suburb of West Chester in 2019, for $459,000.
He said he received verbal offers that were closer to $430,000.
He didn’t budge.
The price is now $861,600. He plans to raise it again on Oct. 30 by another $3,600 if it doesn’t sell. And he’s not offering a buyer broker commission.
According to the Zillow listing, Kramer’s home has been continuously listed for 1,078 days, 17 days shy of three consecutive years.
The home is only listed on Zillow and not the other popular real estate portals viewed by millions of prospective buyers every month. (“If someone can’t find us via all the online tools then I don’t really need to waste my time talking to them,” he said.)
The only way he’d pay a buyer’s agent is if the buyer adds that amount onto the final offer, which Kramer expects would be about $25,000 (“or less if you negotiated better”).
Kramer’s listing offers a peek into the subset of sellers in the U.S. who believe the value of real estate agents and other professionals who facilitate home sale transactions have declined with the emergence of new technologies. They go it alone to show that they’re right.
He knows what his home is worth to the right buyer who wants to live outside of the city, near a golf course and with enough space to raise a family. He’s followed the emergence of artificial intelligence and sites like ChatGPT, which he said can be used to carry out his transaction and create document templates better than people can.
He’s even willing to wait for a buyer to come to show that he’s right.
“I had an offer last week from a guy who called from California,” Kramer said. “He was interested at $810,000. I said, ‘Look, the price isn’t going down, the price is going up.’”
Image via Zillow
‘No animus towards Realtors’
Kramer’s listing makes it clear that he has followed the antitrust litigation targeting the real estate industry even before a jury verdict last year upended the status quo for how agents are paid.
“No Co-op, since that’s illegal price fixing, as per Burnett et al v. NAR et al,” Kramer wrote in a previous version of the listing description earlier this year. “It’s unethical if your buyer agent promises Co-op (seller pays your agent’s fee by increasing price). On 15Mar2024, even NAR agreed.”
In the most recent description, Kramer opens by making it clear he won’t be paying any agent. He sends a message to listing agents who might look at the time on market and try to land him as a client.
“If you’re an agent hoping for a listing, we’re very comfortable with FSBO,” Kramer wrote in the description.
A custom-made sign is the listing’s second image. It includes the Zillow logo, the words “For Sale By Owner” and Kramer’s phone number. Below, the words “Will Co-Op” are crossed out with red tape.
Image via Zillow
The listing caught the attention of Tristan Bach, a real estate agent in Spokane, Washington, who posted screenshots of the listing in a Realtor group on Facebook. The post generated hundreds of comments from agents poking fun at Kramer.
“That seller should be embarrassed by how uneducated they sound,” one agent wrote.
“This person doesn’t want to sell their house,” wrote another.
For Bach, the listing raises questions more than anything.
“I wonder if at some point this guy feels like he got screwed over by an agent,” Bach told Inman. “He seems a bit bitter towards agents.”
Kramer said despite the apparent signs of resentment for those in the industry, that’s not actually the case. He said he has family members who are Realtors in the area. It’s just business and the advancement of technology that put him in a place to handle the transaction on his own.
“I don’t have any animus towards Realtors, just like I don’t have any animus toward all my good friends that used to provide me travel agent services,” Kramer said. “It’s not personal, it’s just IT.”
“Tech is a harvester of occupations and I never take the opposite side of that bet,” Kramer said.
“You do not want to be a cobbler today. You do not want to be a travel agent today. And soon you will not want to be a lawyer or a Realtor or an accountant,” Kramer said.
Selling the ‘breeding ranch’
By his own account, Kramer is better off now than he was when he first looked for buyers in 2019.
Would-be buyers at the time could have had the home for half of what he’s asking today and locked in the lowest mortgage rates in history.
“If anything history has taught us since 2019 every price I was offering 12 months ago looks really good in the rearview mirror,” Kramer said. “I can’t help people make a good decision.”
Property taxes are over $730 per month, but he’s raising the price of the listing by $3,600 each month. Plus, he said, inflation keeps the value of real estate climbing.
“I’ve had a number of Realtors and buyer agents and prospective buyers come out to look at the home,” Kramer said. “The only objection people have to the home is the price.”
Zillow estimates the home is worth closer to $686,300, down from $704,000 earlier this year. But that doesn’t reflect the true value of the home, Kramer said.
With five bedrooms and four baths, the home is a “breeding ranch,” that he no longer needs, Kramer said.
“My wife and I have lived here for 30 years. This is a breeding ranch,” Kramer said. “This is a home for five kids and a golden retriever and all that stuff. Her and I don’t need a 5,000-square-foot breeding ranch anymore.”
He recalls slipping out of the basement while his wife was upstairs with the children, hitting buckets of balls at the driving range across the street and returning home without anyone knowing he was gone.
Former U.S. House Speaker John Boehner lives in the neighborhood.
It’s a neighborhood that’s within the “fifth percentile,” by Kramer’s estimate. Within three years, he said, he expects the typical home in the neighborhood to sell for over $1 million.
“I priced the home where I’m going to be happy 12 months after closing,” he said. “That tends to be a little above where people want to be.”
Indeed, Cincinnati agent Jeffrey DiMario reached out to Kramer on behalf of a buyer client to see if Kramer would budge on the price.
“I told him I said I have a client that’s interested but not for that price and he’s like, ‘The price is going up next week,’” DiMario said. “He doesn’t seem abrasive or anything, he just seemed kind of out there.”
The price increases are to adjust for ongoing inflation and currency devaluation caused by Congress, Kramer said.
But by his calculation, the right buyer is out there and will see the value in buying his home.
“Most people in this neighborhood don’t have financial pressures. That’s why they live in Wetherington,” he said.
Kramer knows he’s in a good spot, and he’s prepared to keep waiting. Even if it takes the bulk of another presidential administration to see it through.
“No,” he said, “I’m not under pressure to sell it.”