So I’m thinking about selling my house. I don’t need to sell it but if the right offer comes along I won’t complain too much and I’ll pack my things and leave. Here’s what’s been bouncing around in my brain for the past few days, enjoy!!

Let’s just say I get $185,000 for the house. If I use a traditional seller’s agent then I’m looking at a total of 6% in commissions on the sale for a total of $11,100. That reduces my overall take on the property to $173,900. That’s not too shabby but I still owe some money on my mortgage and every dollar would really help me out to pay off some existing debts…I’m currently rocking the Dave Ramsey plan.

If I go FSBO then I’m only out 3% in commissions for a total of $5,550.

Here’s the big question….Is a seller’s agent worth $5,550 to me????????

I know that a real estate agent might take offense to this next statment but real estate agents are not lawyers. In such a complicated transaction as buying a house I want legal representation. The first time I bought a house I didn’t have a lawyer review my side of the transaction and I got lucky because nothing went wrong.

Yes, I could hire a lawyer to review the work being done by my real estate agent but that is going to cost me extra money. Since selling real estate follows a pretty set pattern I know that I can secure the services of a lawyer up front and reasonably budget for that cost. In the worst-case scenario I’m guessing that I can secure legal representation for no more than $2,500. In addition to saving money I have the peace of mind that comes with knowing exactly what the legal ramifications are of each paper I’m signing. Sure, a good agent can tell me that too but they are not lawyers and I don’t expect them to give me the same advice as somebody with a law degree.

Maybe I’m putting too much faith in lawyers but if something goes wrong with my real estate transaction I want a lawyer involved from the first step who can react quickly and appropriately to any issue that arises.

What about “comps” and marketing my house? The Internet is obviously the great equalizer here. Zillow lets anybody look at rough comps. Realtor.com let’s you see what others are offering locally. Walking into a series of open houses on any given Sunday will yield a wealth of information about how your house compares to your local competition.

What about marketing? I can easily build a custom web site, put ads in the paper and on Craigslist, and it appears that I can even pay to have my house added to my local MLS for a very reasonable fee thanks to some online companies**. I can’t imagine the total of these efforts costing more than a few hundred dollars.

In the end, my house is pretty cheap and this may still not work out to be financially feasible for me…but, what if my house was worth $300,000 or $400,000 dollars? All of the items I listed above are fairly fixed cost items and the ROI increases quickly as your home’s value increases.

I think FSBO still has a big stigma attached to it in the eye of many home buyers but I think that is beginning to change in the current housing market. I don’t know what this means for you if you are a real estate agent but I don’t mean any harm by thinking through this process out loud. I hope I haven’t offended anybody.

**Of course I’ll let my lawyer help me out so this is all legal and legitimate since I’m not familiar with any of these companies and they could possibly be scams. You can Google this on your own if you want more information.