You can certainly sell your home yourself, saving the commission on both ends (buyer and seller).

Of course, since the buyers are also doing without the services of an agent, or paying the agent themselves, they’ll expect to get the house for at least that much less, so you really aren’t saving the "selling side" of the commission. That’s normally half.

Marketing a house isn’t easy or cheap. You can get yours into the Multiple Listing Service using one of the "flat fee" outfits, and that will be somewhere between $500-$1,000. That also usually gets your home on the major internet sites.

Good color flyers will cost you a bit less than a buck each (I can get them much cheaper, because I do lots of color printing.) A picture ad in the local paper will cost you a couple hundred. I don’t really recommend that, but you can’t get your house into the real estate magazines that I use, and the newspaper is better than nothing (I think).

Be careful writing that ad. It’s really easy to find yourself in violation of the equal housing laws. For example, "Perfect for growing family" or "perfect for two" would be violations. (I have a page full of "fair housing violation flag words" that I have to be extremely careful when using.)

In some areas, there are strong "For Sale By Owner" markets, where buyers routinely go out looking for houses, and stop when they see a "For Sale" sign in front of an interesting house.

Mind you, folks casing properties for burglary or home invasion can also read "For Sale" signs. We agents routinely require new clients to meet us at our office and give us a copy of a valid photo ID. Even so, getting robbed and beaten up is an occupational hazard for us. In the case of a "FSBO", you don’t get that screening, and you get to show these strangers around your home.

Also, unless you’re either a real estate agent, or a lawyer that specializes in real estate law, you’ll need to hire a good real estate attorney to review any offers. Count on spending at least a chunk of what you save on commissions for that lawyer.

Of course, the lawyer won’t really be able to help you evaluate an offer. Would it be better to take the offer at 5% under your asking price, or the full-price offer that is contingent on the buyers selling their current house? What happens when you make a counter offer to both of them, and they both agree?

Remember that whenever there are large sums of money involved, there are some sharp operators trying to cheat folks. These are often the folks that seem to be the nicest, most trustworthy people. They’ll ask about your church, and your social groups, and you’ll find that you have "so much in common". Real estate contracts are required to be in writing for a reason.

Oh, do you know what you are required to disclose (to any potential buyer) about your property?

Arranging for title and escrow isn’t that hard, and it isn’t any cheaper if I do it than if you do it, but remember that I work with these folks all the time, so I know who does a good job, and who to talk to when they occasionally mess up, and also remember that if they annoy you, they lose one customer, but if they annoy me, they could lose hundreds of customers.

So, if you’re willing to deal with all of the above, and take on the possible liability if you get something wrong (my errors and omissions insurance is expensive, even though I’ve never had a claim) then have at it.

Any money you save, you will have earned.

Good luck!

I am not a realtor, even though I did work for one and got my license 15 years ago while in college (I never used it-got a job in my field after all). I agree that there are sharks out there, I was badly burned 3 years ago- bought a house out of state since my husband got a new job. But realize that realtors do not get 6% themselves-each agent and broker gets 1.5% for a total of 6% commission so it is divided 4 ways, unless the same agent deals with the buyer and seller. Only a realtor knows the laws involved though, and there is a lot of work you do not see. Plus do you really want to deal with unqualified dirtbags that can’t buy your home anyway? The buying agents will screen these people. From experience in the office I did work in, buying agents do not work with FSBOs (For sale by Owners), they do not even bother to show those houses to buyers since they are too hard to deal with and too much work for them, the seller pays the commission and no commission so why bother?

You’re smart to ask, and believe me you’re not the first to question the huge fees that real estate agents get.

You have to first ask yourself what the real estate agent brings to the table, and whether or not you should and could duplicate some of those things yourself.

One big thing that a RE agent brings is a simple listing into the MLS. You can’t do that yourself, because you have to be a licensed (by the state) RE agent plus be working for a RE Broker (also separately licensed by the state) in order to have a listing in the MLS. Most people looking for a home are searching…you guessed it, they are searching the MLS, either themselves (via web access portals), and also their agent is searching the MLS for them. Remember that to a buyer, the services of a RE agent are free (seller pays commission).

So that’s a tough hurdle to overcome. Help-U-Sell and Buy-Owner are two broker companies that will let you do more of the work in exchange for a lower listing fee. However, if you are serious about selling your house, you’re going to have to offer a selling commission of some sort, otherwise your pool of buyers is going to be drastically reduced.

Remember, if you choose a discount broker as outlined above, you will be given very little if any selling preparation advice, and you will have to show the house to buyers yourself, generally at times convenient for the buyers. You can rent a sign from these discount companies, either as an extra charge or it may be included in the listing fee.

Edit – Buy-Owner I don’t believe has access to the MLS. Instead they use their own web site. This is a greatly reduced listing of properties, all offered by people using the Buy-Owner service.