Should You Use a Realtor or Sell Your Home Yourself?

When you’re selling your home you want to try and get as much money as possible.  You also want to minimize your expenses, which means you may be tempted to sell your home without the aid of a realtor and his 6 percent commission.  After all, if the house sells for $300,000 giving up $18,000 in realtor commissions can feel like a kick in the butt.

Nevertheless, the decision to exclude an experienced realtor should not be taken lightly.  Personally, when we put our house on the market, we wanted to time the transaction so we could move over the summer because we didn’t want to pull the kids out of school.  But even though I wanted to sell my house quick, I never even considered selling it on my own because I just didn’t have the time or expertise to do it properly.

Before you make a decision, let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of selling your home without a realtor.

Advantages

As we mentioned above, the biggest advantage of selling your home on your own is that you don’t have to cough up the standard 6 percent commission to the realtor.  Of course, you won’t get off totally free.  If you expect other agents to show your home to potential buyers you will have to offer them their 3 percent.

The other big advantage is that you will have total control over the process.  You get to dictate when people can or can’t view the house, you take your own pictures, and you have total control of all advertising and signage.

Disadvantages

All of that control comes at a cost as you will spend countless hours showing your home to multiple buyers.

An experienced realtor can probably negotiate a higher selling price for your home, so going solo might not save you as much as you’d think.

Selling a home is a complicated transaction full of paperwork and legalities.  Without the experience and knowledge of a realtor to fall back on you could end up making a costly mistake.

Some brokers don’t like to show homes that are for sale by owner.  They don’t want to deal with potential headaches and complications of dealing with a non-professional.