If you have sold your home recently how did you sell it...listed through a realtor or by yourself? We are going to put our house on the market in about six weeks and we are not sure which way to go - realtor or doing it ourself.

Thanks! :)

Sue.
1st of all I am a Realtor.
The biggest problem that FISBO's (for sale by owner),have in selling their own home is making sure they have all the right paper work, forms documents, and requirements taken care of so down the road they don't find themselves in a legal problem with the buyers if something should happen to go wrong.
Of course your home will be advertised to a much broader market than what a FISBO can do.
National staticics show that the average FISBO homes will receive less after all expenses including commision because buyers take advantage of sellers selling on their own.
I could go on but these are probalby some of the
high points.

Sue, we have done it both ways and luckily, we had no problem with selling our first house on our own. We went to Staples to get the forms and had our attorney look through them after we had an offer to make sure the transaction looked ok.
Having said that, we used an agent for our second house and not worrying about the paper work was nice. If you are in no hurry, try both ways, do a month by owner on your own and if you get no results, list with an agent.
It also depends on how fast you want to sell your house, as Jim said. With a realtor you will get a much wider audience.

We've always used a realtor. It's just nice to put it in their hands and not have to worry about the details. I'm not sure how your market is, but in some of the tougher markets the realtors are lowering their commissions to be more competitive. We've used both a full service realtor (Century 21) and a discounted one (Assist 2 Sell).

If you go through a realtor, be sure to ask them if they will agree to lower their commission if they end up being the buyer's agent. We lucked out with our Florida home - the buyers (from Canada) called our agent directly when they saw our home online, and she ended up acting as both the buyer's and seller's agent. Since she didn't have to split the commission with a buyer's realtor, she discounted the commission we had to pay (and STILL came out with a higher commission than she would have otherwise) - it is a win-win situation, IMO.

Best of luck, Sue! I know how much work you have done to your beautiful home, and I am sure it will sell quickly!

I've always used a real estate agent. They are professionals, and know what documents you need, what you must tell the buyers, etc.

They can make flyers, web sites, hold open houses, and do it in a non-prejudiced manner. I would hate to show someone my house and have them criticize the wall color, or the decor. Some people don't mind doing it, but I won't.

The last place I sold was 5% commission if he had to split, or 4% if he sold it himself.

Commissions are negotiable, and in the area we were in, they were taking 5% because the sales price was over $450,000. California in the boom days.

Good luck to you.

Thanks much to all of you for your great input! After talking it over a bit more today we feel like we will leave it to the experts and go with a realtor. We seem to have a lot of extra stress lately, both good and bad, and I told Tom this will be one less thing to deal with as we have no idea how to go about selling our home on our own.

Our log home is no where near finished, but we feel like homes in our area are selling right now and we'd like to not have to worry about waiting until winter to first put it on the market. If our house sells before the log home is finished we will put all our things in storage and rent a furnished chalet near our log home property.

Our son's wedding is Sept. 20 and he wants it in our backyard, so we are keeping our fingers crossed if we get an offer they will not want to close until late Sept! :eek:

Sue,
We sold our house 2 months ago after having it on the market for 2 years, and we used a realtor. It is a very difficult market here in the Miami area and we felt we should avail ourselves of the best help possible. That said, our choice was spot on as only one other home has sold on our island in the past year+. We are moving on Tuesday and the stress level around here has hit an all time high......all will be great come Wednesday morning! Good luck, and please keep us in the know.

Thinking of you Doris and I know how happy you'll be once you are settled in and stress free!!!

I think you and Tom will be happy with your decision, Sue. And don't worry about the closing date - you are the ones who dictate that. If someone really wants to close on it before September, you can always rent it back from the new owners until a mutually decided upon date. We did that when we bought our very first home in Milwaukee.

Doris, I know what a long ride you have had - thank God the end is near! What a relief it will be to have that last piece of the puzzle out of the way.

Doris I think we are making the right decision, too. I know you are so happy to be moving - please post pics once you are settled!

Kristin I never even thought about our renting from the new owners should they want to close before the wedding - thanks much! ;)

Doris, Miami isn't the only difficult market, and that's why I think a realtor is the best bet as well. Those agents really work for their commissions, as they only make money when they have a settlement/closing!

Sue, like Kristen said, you determine closing date. September not that far off. I wouldn't get into the renting thing if you don't have to. Opens up pandora's box of troubles.

My son and DIL are in process of upgrading from a TH to single family, and today their agent called them here with an offer that interested them! (My son swears it it because before he left, he vacuumed the carpet like it was a golf course with stripes!) Nice thing about their realtor, the buyer's agent is also their selling agent on their other home, and realtor agents are both in same office! Contingenies like this make the agents work even harder to make it all come together.

Sue, hope everything goes well. Our house closed in May. But we sold it empty, we'd been out for over 2 months. So we had the luxury of cleaning it up a bit (new carpets, light fixtures, paint). Then we had it staged--in our case that included renting furniture, but in your case it would be de-cluttering mostly, and probably rearranging the furniture. It really paid off, we got considerably over asking (our market is healthy still.) And we used an agent, a wonderful guy--we sold in 6 days.

Wendy; thanks much! I am going to work on the de-cluttering the next 4 weeks.