by: Sameer S Panjwani

Should you sell your home yourself? Yes and no. Yes, you should leave the option of selling on your own open and no, you shouldn't rule out using the services of an agent to help you sell. There are a considerable number of advantages of using an agent to sell your home but their services do come at a price – up to 6% commission on the sale price! That's quite a sum, a precious $6,000 for every $100,000 your home is worth. Agents are not indispensable. With the advent of the Internet, a fairly sizeable number of owners have been able to successfully sell on their own. Statistics have it that 80% of home buyers begin their search for a home online. So, putting your home details on the Internet is one effective medium of advertising your home and reaching out to a large number of buyers.

So now, how would you go about doing the ‘yes and no' at the same time? Well, agents may not tell you about this but there is a type of listing arrangement you can have with them, known as an ‘Exclusive Agency Listing'. Under the terms of this listing, they would be the exclusive agents handling the marketing of your property and should they or another agent find a buyer for your place, your listing agent would be entitled to a full commission. This type of listing would also have the agent put your property on the MLS (Multiple Listing Service). The other side to this listing arrangement is that, if you find a buyer yourself, you don't have to pay any commission to your agent! So, the answer to yes and no lies in going for an Exclusive Agency Listing. You would be keeping the option open of finding a buyer yourself, through the Internet listings of your home, while on the other hand, should your listing agent find you a buyer, you would have to pay the commission but you're getting your home sold in the process.

So where should you advertise and list your home? There are plenty of websites which offer to list your property. Two well-known and frequently visited sites are ChoiceOfHomes.com and ForSaleByOwner.com. I suggest not listing on only one but listing on at least a couple of these sites, if not more. It doesn't cost much and especially when you consider the money you'd save in commissions from finding a buyer through these sources.

Happy Home Selling!