The allure of selling your home on your own, without hiring a real estate professional, is indeed a tempting one. After all, who doesn’t want to put thousands of dollars more into their pockets by foregoing that hefty 5% to 6% commission?

But only a relative handful of sellers actually go it alone. And those who do often end up incurring many headaches along the way and obtaining less for their places than had they sold in the traditional manner.

For Sale by Owners, or FSBOs for short, make up anywhere from 6% to 10% of the market, depending on the source. But the National Association of Realtors, which represents agents and brokers, says FSBO houses sell at a median of $380,000, far less than the $435,000 median for agent-represented houses.

A study by Clever Real Estate, an agent-client matching service, found that FSBOs earned $79,000 less than sellers who chose the traditional route. That amount is “substantially more” than the typical real estate agent’s fee, the report noted. It’s no wonder, then, that over half wouldn’t recommend going it alone to their friends or family.

One FSBO I know wouldn’t recommend it. Yet he sold his parent’s home in a highly sought-after area in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., for $100,000 over the asking price without an agent. Not only that, but the place sold within 18 days of putting it on the market. And it needed major work.

It was his and his sister’s childhood home, but it hadn’t been maintained. Among numerous things, he told me, “It had 40-year-old paint and needed an updated kitchen and baths.”

But he is licensed in another state, not Maryland, so he had to figure out a way to get the place listed on the local multiple listing service, which is where most buyers and agents search for houses for sale that meet their criteria.

It never was listed, but the house sold anyway.

At first, he tried hiring a discount broker who, for $300-$400, would list the house on his behalf but he, not the agent, would do all the work. After deciding that was “not worth the cost,” he contacted a local brokerage to find an agent to list the house without taking a referral fee from him.

After several attempts at dealing with the agent, him telling her exactly what he wanted and expected to pay, and her coming back time and again with a listing agreement that failed to follow his directions, he had enough. “At that point,” he told me, “we decided to sell it ourselves.”

This FSBO “would like to see more people” sell on their own. But he also believes it takes more work than most want to put into it.

“For me, this stuff comes naturally,” he says. “But most people don’t want to put (in) the effort. They don’t want to pay a commission, but it takes work on their part, and they don’t want to do it.”

Here, in a nutshell, is how he did it: First, he and his sister cleaned out the place from top to bottom so it was entirely empty. Next, they hired a cleaning crew to follow up behind them. Then he hired a professional to photograph the house, inside and out. And then he used the pictures to create a website.

The site looked exactly like a listing from the MLS, with all the information the MLS contains, right down to the year the house was built and the size of the lot. But where the listing agent’s name would have gone, he put his and his sister’s email addresses and his phone number.

He then placed the entire website on Zillow, a popular listing site that shows houses from all over the country. The listing was free, but it is under a FSBO tab, separate from the regular listings.

Of course, he also priced the house properly — something most FSBOs fail to do, he says. Because it needed so much work, he priced it below market value. Almost immediately, he started receiving offers over the asking price of $990,000. The eventual buyer, who found the house on Zillow, paid $1.1 million.

There are other key details, too. For example, because the place had just one owner over more than 60 years, the buyer was assured he didn’t need his own title insurance policy. The lender still required title coverage, but a policy covering the buyer was not necessary. On the seller’s advice and that of a real estate friend, the buyer decided to forego his own policy, a savings of more than $1,000.

Overall, this FSBO says the buyer saved something on the order of $40,000 because he did not use an agent, buy title insurance or pay other charges. “It was absolutely a golden deal all the way around,” he says. “Everybody was happy, and not one real estate agent was involved.”

Well, that’s not true. As I said above, the seller was an agent.

Unfortunately, most people don’t sell their homes the way he did. But even if others had the ability to stage their homes, pay for professional cleaning and photography, build a website and place it on listing sites, he says they likely would still fall short.

“When they have to start answering buyer’s questions and (negotiating) details, that’s when they freeze up,” he says. “And don’t even start without having a real estate attorney waiting in the wings.”

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(Lew Sichelman has been covering real estate for more than 50 years. He is a regular contributor to numerous shelter magazines and housing and housing-finance industry publications. Readers can contact him at lsichelman@aol.com.)

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