Selling your house yourself and what it really costs you

Run the arithmetic first, because everything else follows from it. Take a $400,000 sale as an illustrative example. A total commission of 6 percent is $24,000. Cut the listing side out and you keep roughly $12,000. That's the prize. It's real money, and anybody who tells you it isn't has a dog in the fight.

Now the part that gets glossed over at the kitchen table: the other $12,000 doesn't vanish. Since the 2024 changes to how buyer-agent compensation is handled, that number isn't advertised through the MLS the way it used to be, and buyers now sign a written agreement with their agent up front spelling out what that agent gets paid. Which means one of three things happens. You offer to pay it as a concession. The buyer pays it out of pocket and shoves the cost into a lower offer. Or the buyer shows up without an agent at all.

Plan for offering something. If you refuse on principle, a chunk of the buyer pool quietly stops booking showings, and you'll never know it happened.

What you're actually taking on

Strip away the marketing and a listing agent does five jobs. Prices the house. Gets it in front of buyers. Runs showings and screens who walks in. Negotiates the offer and the repair fight after the inspection. Keeps the contract calendar so nothing blows a deadline.

You can do all five. People do it every week. But notice that three of those jobs require you to be available at 6:15 on a Tuesday, and one of them requires you to be emotionally cold about a house you raised kids in.

That's the honest trade. You're not buying back $12,000 for free. You're buying it back with about forty to eighty hours of your own time, spread across six to ten weeks, plus a few hundred dollars in hard costs.

Price it before you love it

Pricing is where most FSBO sales die, and they die in the first two weeks.

Get three to five closed sales from the last 90 days within a mile, same bed and bath count, similar square footage and age. Closed sales. Not what your neighbor is asking. Ask price is a wish; closed price is a fact. Your county assessor's site and the public records on the big portals will get you most of the way.

If you want a number you can defend, hire an independent appraiser and pay for a pre-listing appraisal. It's a few hundred dollars in most markets, and it does something else useful: when the buyer's appraisal comes back low, you've already seen the comps the appraiser is likely to use.

The failure pattern is boring and predictable. You list 8 percent high because you'll "come down." Week three, showings stop. Week six, you cut. Week nine, you cut again, and now the listing looks stale and buyers assume something's wrong with the foundation. You end up below where a correct price would have landed you, minus two months of mortgage payments.

If you get no showings in ten days, it's the price. If you get showings and no offers, it's the condition or the photos.

Exposure, and the flat-fee shortcut

Sticking a sign in the yard and posting to Facebook Marketplace isn't a marketing plan. Most buyers are working with an agent, and those agents are pulling listings out of the MLS.

Use a flat-fee MLS service. You pay a set price instead of a percentage, you get a listing number, and your house shows up in the same feed as everything else. Ask exactly what's included: how many photos, whether you can edit the listing yourself, how long it runs, and whether open house dates get posted. Get the price in writing.

Then pay for real photos. Not your phone. A daytime shoot with a wide lens and the lights on, twenty-plus images, and if the yard is the selling point, a drone shot. The first photo determines whether anybody clicks.

The paperwork nobody warns you about

This is where an attorney earns their fee, and where FSBO sellers get hurt months after closing.

Seller's disclosure. Nearly every state has a required form. Known defects, past leaks, roof age, permits pulled or not pulled, that time the basement took water. The temptation is to stay vague. Don't. The lawsuit that shows up in year two is almost always a disclosure lawsuit, and "I forgot" is a poor defense when the neighbor remembers the restoration truck.

Lead-based paint. Federal law. If the house was built before 1978, you owe the buyer the disclosure and the EPA pamphlet, and the buyer gets a window to test. Non-negotiable, no matter which state you're in.

Purchase agreement. Use your state's standard form, the one the local association publishes, and have a real estate attorney read the executed contract before you're bound. In a good portion of the country, especially the Northeast, an attorney runs the closing anyway.

Earnest money. It goes to a title company, escrow company, or closing attorney. It doesn't go into your checking account. Ever. Get the receipt.

HOA documents. If there's an association, order the resale package early. It can take a week or more, and it holds up closings constantly.

Screening buyers instead of collecting them

Before anybody walks through your front door on a private showing, ask for a lender preapproval letter or proof of funds. Not a prequalification text message. A letter from a loan officer with a name and a phone number on it.

Call that loan officer once the offer comes in. Ask whether the file's been through underwriting, what the loan type is, and whether there's a home sale contingency buried anywhere. An FHA or VA loan isn't a problem, but it comes with appraisal standards that a peeling porch rail can flunk.

For showings, work in pairs. Somebody else in the house, valuables and prescriptions put away, and a sign-in sheet with a photo of a driver's license. That's not paranoia. It's the same thing agents do.

Under contract is when the work starts

Build a calendar the day you sign, with every deadline on it. Inspection period. Financing contingency. Appraisal. Title commitment review. Final walkthrough. Closing.

The inspection report will find things. It always does. Expect a repair request, decide in advance what you'll do and what you won't, and answer in writing before the deadline. Silence can be a default.

If the appraisal comes in under contract price on a financed deal, the lender funds off the appraised number. Your choices are to drop the price, meet in the middle, or let the buyer bring cash to cover the gap. Know which one you'll accept before the call comes.

At closing, you'll get a settlement statement showing prorated taxes, the payoff on your existing loan, transfer taxes where they apply, and title fees. Read it line by line the day before, not at the table. The closing agent will also issue you a 1099-S for the sale.

When not to do this

Skip FSBO if you're selling from out of state, settling an estate, unwinding a divorce, or if the house needs work and you don't have the stomach to hear strangers say so. Skip it if you can't answer your phone during business hours.

Do it if you already have a buyer. A tenant, a neighbor, a cousin, the guy who's asked twice. That's the cleanest FSBO there is, and it's where the full savings actually show up.

And there's a middle path worth naming: flat-fee MLS for exposure, a real estate attorney billed hourly for the contract and the closing, and a buyer-agent concession baked into your price. You give up a slice of the $12,000 and keep the rest, with a licensed professional reading the fine print.

Laws, required disclosures, transfer taxes, and who runs the closing all change by state and sometimes by county. Talk to a licensed real estate attorney before you sign anything, and a CPA about the tax side of your gain, including whether the primary-residence exclusion applies to you.

The sign in the yard is the easy part. The calendar is the job.