I'm just wondering if anyone has had any experience buying or selling a home FSBO? We are probably going to be transferred within the next year, and will have to either sell our house or rent it out. We would prefer to sell it, but given the market I'm not sure we could get much more than pay-off on it. We would like to sell it FSBO to avoid paying realtor fees. Does anyone have any tips/suggestions/advice?

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Liz-Proud wife of a US Airman and stay-at-home-mommy to two beautiful boys!

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The only thing off hand that I can say against selling a home FSBO is that it may not come off as serious to prospective buyers or from some of the prospective buyers that show up. An agent sign in the yard is one thing, but a for sale by owner reminds many people of a yard sale, selling a car, etc and that you may not truly be interested in selling. Maybe you're just teesting the waters before you really commit to putting it up for sale or not, testing prices, etc. On the flip side is that people will see that sign and go "yes, bargain", asuume you don't know what you're doing and try to get it from you at too low of a cost, or that where people just need to call you and schedule an appointment you can recieve lots of tire kickers or people just looking to kill an afternoon.

Plus sides, is that all commission is yours, not an agents, the home is shown at your convenience, you have more say in the selling process and negotiations vs being kept out of the loop, and can sell it more on your terms.

We are in the process of selling my Grandmothers house. We sold it on our own, BUT hired an agent to handle all the paperwork. She is charging us $1000, but it was still cheaper than if we would have listed with her. It put our minds at ease as well as the buyer. We have never sold a house before so we really didn't know nothing about all the paperwork involved. Plus it is an estate and there is more than one listed on the paperwork and not all involved are able to attend the closing so there was extra paperwork involved.

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~Missy~

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live !!!

I don't know if it just me but the first thought in my head is "What is wrong with the house that a agent wont take it?" I know that this is not true in all cases but this is still the first thought in my head. But just in casse tis thought comes to anyone elses head I would think doing a house inspection just to show people that this is not the case I don't think would hurt. I think that inspections are good for a certain amount of time so that the new owner would not have to have it redone if done within a certian time period.

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