Man trying to sell house without an agent takes a $400,000 haircut

When Brett D’Souza first listed his home for sale without an agent, he was defiant. “I don’t understand why real estate agents are necessary,” he said at the time. Now more than a year later, he’s struck a different tune.

D’Souza listed his Melbourne home for sale with a single price of $1.8 million in May 2023. This week, he sold it for $1.39 million through a real estate agent.

“I think I made a few mistakes along the way, clearly,” he said.

D’Souza said he had at times lost focus on the sale of 6 Walton Street, Brunswick, and instead spent more energy on his DIY marketing campaign-slash-showreel, a YouTube series named Private Sale.

The series was designed to show off his directing and writing skills, which he felt had not been nurtured by his time working in advertising. It included stunts, such as hiring a mobile billboard to advertise at auctions and planning to purchase billboards in New York and London.

“I made some mistakes because I was trying to do my secondary objective, which was to highlight my filmmaking skills,” D’Souza said. “I think that’s where I went wrong. You obviously need legitimacy.”

Brett D’Souza’s DIY sales campaign didn’t go exactly as planned. Credit: Photograph by Chris Hopkins

The series caused a problem he hadn’t considered: many potential buyers didn’t think it was really for sale at all.

D’Souza said his commitment to the series also meant he skimped on the actual leg work of selling a property, such as taking details from prospective buyers and following up to get a deal done.

At one stage, he was verbally offered $1.65 million. He didn’t follow it up. “I was like, ‘$1.65 million down from $1.8 million? Hell no’ ... I made some mistakes.”

Price aside, D’Souza was happy with his artistic output and the public support he received.

D’Souza said he was still happy with the sale price despite having to wind back his expectations. Credit: Photograph by Chris Hopkins

“I think it went well. I think the films are funny. I think the films are cool,” he said. “I got billboards for free … I did some stuff. But did it work? I don’t know, how long is a piece of string? And sometimes you cut up your own piece of string to make it shorter … Who knows? I had a crack.”

D’Souza said he had timed the campaign wrong, and should have instead sold before the Reserve Bank began hiking interest rates and when prices were closer to their peak. Melbourne’s median house price was $1,069,000 in the June quarter, 2.3 per cent below the December 2021 peak, according to Domain data.

D’Souza eventually engaged the “most hipster agent [he] could find” to get the sale done, Collings director Christian Gravias. Gravias said D’Souza’s anti-real estate agent comments and skits didn’t bother him.

“I understood exactly where he was coming from, I really did. I just think his ideal wasn’t wrong, I just think ... to actually execute, it is a bit of a skill,” he said. “Properties can really sell themselves and I understand what he was trying to do marketing-wise, but sometimes when you’re trying to sell your own house as a vendor you’re too close to the property which can blindside you in certain situations.”

Gravias said the final sale price was close to the actual value of the home. “It’s something where you do a breakdown of comparable sales, and you compare what things were selling for, this is what the property was worth.”

Morrell and Koren prestige buyers’ agent David Morrell has been a long-time advocate for selling without a sales agent, when possible. He said getting the right price for a property was the most important factor in securing a deal.

“The more you go closer to the city the harder it is [to price a home] because it’s unique,” he said. “Each property has its own DNA and that’s part of the problem [vendors] have [when pricing]. And then how do they access the clients?”

Morrell said D’Souza’s goal price could have been achievable with a traditional auction campaign.

Despite accepting Gravias’ help to sell his home, D’Souza still stands by his earlier remarks and maintains that a home owner can sell their own house.

“It’s a weird job and I still find it a weird job,” he said. “Don’t be a dickhead like me, obviously, anyone can do that. It’s easy to sell your house, but make sure you do all the grunt work.”