Responding to a wave of aggressive advertising campaigns by lenders and companies that urge homeowners to sell their homes without the services of a real estate agent, local Realtors are stepping up efforts to woo home sellers who believe they can do the job themselves.

In upcoming months, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors will be hosting meetings across the state to teach members how they can turn for-sale-by-owner properties, commonly referred to as FSBOs (pronounced like fizz-bows), into business for themselves.

The regional meetings are part of an action plan developed by MAR after members approached the industry group’s leaders to express their frustrations over advertisements that essentially dismiss the value of using a Realtor in a home sale transaction and tout the thousands of dollars in real estate commission that homeowners can save if they sell on their own. Realtors met with MAR leaders last summer and asked them to come up with a strategy to deal with the growing FSBO market.

“They [MAR members] felt that only half the story was being told to the consumer, so they wanted to get the whole story out there,” said MAR President Judy Moore.

Massachusetts has a lower percentage of FSBO activity than many other states, according to Moore, who cited information from a buyer and seller profile conducted by the National Association of Realtors for MAR last year. Some 9.7 percent of Bay State home sellers reported selling their home on their own during the first quarter of last year, as opposed to about 14 percent who pursue the do-it-yourself route nationwide. The national rate is slightly higher than it was in 2001, when 13 percent of homeowners said they sold their home on their own, but lower than 1999, when 16 percent reported selling without the help of a real estate agent.

Three percent of the Massachusetts homeowners surveyed last year reported that they tried to sell their home by themselves but ultimately ended up using an agent.

“FSBOs in Massachusetts do not make up that much of the market share,” said Inez Steele, executive director of The Realty Guild, an organization of independent real estate firms that expressed its concerns about FSBOs to MAR. “And the number of FSBOs on Web sites at any given time is very misleading. Most are outdated and many listings that start out as FSBOs end up being sold with the assistance of a Realtor.”

Moore, the MAR president, also pointed out that sellers who use a Realtor get a higher selling price, earning over 20 percent more in a transaction than those who choose to sell on their own.

Still, discount brokers who offer limited services for lower and fixed fees and lenders like East/West Mortgage have been running ad campaigns during the last few years and operate special Web sites to attract homeowners who are thinking about selling their homes. Their basic pitch to sellers is that they can save on the traditional 5 percent to 7 percent real estate commission – which can translate to $25,000 or more in Massachusetts where the average selling price for a single-family home in November was $367,350.

However, Steele pointed out that “most FSBO sites are actually trying to get the home seller or buyer to purchase another service or product.”

“They only use the FSBO angle to get attention,” she said.

Peabody-based East/West Mortgage, for example, tries to sell mortgages by requiring prospective buyers to be pre-approved for a loan before putting them in touch with the owners of homes featured on the Web site it operates, ISoldMyHouse.com. If prospective buyers are not pre-approved, they get referred to a loan officer.

Bay State Realtors are concerned enough about these tactics to address it head-on this year. As part of its strategy, MAR will be hosting seminars led by Joeann Fossland, a certified behavioral coach and national real estate trainer from Arizona, on how to convert FSBOs into Realtor listings. The sessions will take place from March 31 through April 2, and MAR has tentatively selected the communities of Lynnfield, Marlborough, Pembroke, Springfield and West Yarmouth as seminar locations.

In addition to the meetings, MAR created an “agent toolbox” which offers talking points and statistics that real estate agents can utilize in their listing presentations as they try to capture the for-sale-by-owner market. Early last week, MAR also mailed Realtor marketing kits to broker-owners and principals of real estate firms. The kits include informational brochures that can be distributed to consumers and Web banner ads that promote the value of using a Realtor.

Call for Help

But perhaps even more telling is that MAR urged its influential parent organization NAR to more effectively target FSBOs in its ad campaigns.

In a letter sent to the chairman of the NAR Communications Committee last July, MAR Communications Director John Dulczewski wrote about the group’s desire for new and more hard-hitting radio and television ads targeting sellers and potential FSBOs.

“[T]he existing ad provides a rather soft ‘sell’ to consumers who are considering selling their homes themselves. Our members are demanding more powerful messages that demonstrate the true value – in terms of sales price, listing time, reduced risk to sell, etc. – to the public,” wrote Dulczewski.

“Notably, throughout New England, and especially in Massachusetts, our industry is feeling the effects of an aggressive multi-media ad campaign by a regional mortgage lender that for three years has been urging homeowners to save thousands of dollars in real estate agent commissions by selling their homes themselves,” Dulczewski wrote in the letter to NAR. “Our members’ desire for harder-hitting ads is the direct result of this messaging and related promotion of the lender’s Web site – ISoldMyHouse.com – which seeks to diminish the role of Realtors … Although it’s difficult to assess just how much of a financial impact this one entity is having on Realtors’ bottom line, what is clear is that the frequency with which their ads are appearing in the electronic and print media is significant, and largely unchallenged. Simply stated, our association lacks the financial resources to compete against this lender’s ad budget. That’s why we are turning to the National Association of Realtors to ask for new ads and more frequent placement of commercial spots targeting FSBOs in the public awareness campaign.”

In response, NAR created a new FSBO ad – scheduled to air this spring – that more clearly distinguishes the benefits of using a Realtor.

While groups like MAR and The Realty Guild promote the benefits of using a Realtor – routinely emphasizing that real estate professionals have the expertise to sell a home faster and at a higher price and can help consumers navigate the intricacies and complications that arise during real estate transactions – there are some who believe homeowners can successfully sell their home by themselves.

John Nolan, a retired real estate broker and auctioneer in Weymouth, said first-time sellers might need the advice and expertise of a real estate professional. But Nolan believes repeat sellers can successfully sell their home with the help of newspaper ads, the Internet and a good real estate attorney and home inspector.

According to Nolan, NAR commissioned a study in 2000, which indicated that 40 percent of all residential sales in the nation would be conducted owners by 2005.

Homeowners can easily obtain a lot of the same information that real estate agents provide about comparable home sales in their neighborhood by searching the Internet, said Nolan.

“It’s almost impossible for them not to sell their own home,” he said. “Put the ad in the paper and the buyers will come.”

In addition to advertising in the newspaper and using a Web site, another inexpensive option open to sellers is an auction, according to Nolan.

“Auctions are now available to the homeowners. A homeowner can auction their own home on the Internet,” he said.

And sellers can also get their homes listed on multiple listing services by paying a flat fee or minimal fee to a real estate licensee or broker to post the home. Multiple Listing Service-Property Information Network, the largest listing service in New England, refers to such listings as “entry-only listings” and requires that the broker’s name and contact information is posted with the listing. Agents who want to show the property to their buyer clients must contact the broker in order to get the seller’s name.

But MLS-PIN does not accept listings from sellers who are not members of the service and refers callers to real estate brokers.

Despite what promoters of FSBOs are saying, others are pleased that MAR is trying to help agents convert them into new business for Realtors.

“We’ve needed this for a long time and it’s great that someone has taken the initiative to create a program like this,” said Donna L. Chase, broker-owner of The Chase Realty Team in Norwell.