Selling By Owner

Selling it yourself is a real plan. Here is the real job.

You know your house better than any agent ever will, and you would rather keep the commission than pay for things you can do. Fair enough. We will not talk you out of it. We will hand you the whole job description, the honest numbers, and a flat-fee backstop for any piece you decide you would rather not carry alone.

See the honest math What the job takes

Every step

of the sale, mapped in writing

One flat fee

only for the parts you hand us

Zero guilt

if you finish it entirely yourself

The job description nobody posts

Six pieces of work stand between your yard sign and your closing table.

None of them are secrets and none of them require a license to do well. They do require time, a thick skin, and good information. Here is what each one actually involves, so you can decide which pieces are yours and which are worth handing off.

Price it like an appraiser, not like a neighbor

Zestimates and the number your brother-in-law heard at a barbecue are not comps. Pull the last six months of sales for homes of similar size, age, and condition within a mile, then adjust for what yours has and lacks. Overpricing is the single most expensive FSBO mistake, because the first two weeks of buyer attention never come back.

Prep and photos carry the listing

Buyers decide in seconds, on a phone screen, at night. A deep clean, a decluttered garage, fresh mulch, and professional photos taken in good light routinely change what people offer. This is a few hundred dollars and a hard weekend, and it earns more per hour than almost anything else on this page.

Exposure is a numbers game

Most buyers find their home through the MLS and the portals it feeds. A flat-fee MLS listing puts your house in front of them without hiring a listing agent. The sign in the yard still matters, and so does answering your phone, because a missed call at lunch is a buyer who books someone else's showing.

Showings, strangers, and staying safe

You will be opening your door to people you have never met. Require names and phone numbers in advance, keep valuables and prescriptions out of sight, show with a second adult when you can, and let a neighbor know your schedule. Real buyers do not mind these rules. The people who mind them are the reason the rules exist.

Negotiation is where the money moves

The list price starts the conversation, and the inspection response usually decides it. Buyers with an agent bring a professional negotiator to that table, and repair credits, closing cost requests, and appraisal gaps are where owners quietly give back thousands. Decide your walk-away numbers before the offer arrives, not during the phone call.

The paperwork is the legal part

Purchase agreements, required disclosures, contingency deadlines, earnest money, title, and escrow. Miss a required disclosure and you can be hearing about it in court years after closing. A real estate attorney for a flat fee is the cheapest insurance in the entire transaction, whatever you decide about the rest.

The honest math band

What selling by owner actually saves, with nothing left out.

A sample $400,000 home, sold by owner, done properly. Illustration only, and every line moves with your market, your state, and your choices. Title, escrow, and transfer costs are left out below because you pay those on either path.

Flat-fee MLS listing and lockbox	$450
Professional photos and a floor plan	$400
Yard sign, flyers, and open house materials	$150
Real estate attorney, contract review through closing	$1,400
Buyer's agent compensation offered at 2.5 percent, so agents bring their buyers	$10,000
Your own hours: pricing, prep, calls, showings, negotiation	40 to 60 hrs
Cash cost of the FSBO path	about $12,400

Against a $20,000 full-service listing, that is about $7,600 kept.

Real money, and it is yours to go earn. Now the part most FSBO websites skip. If doing it alone prices the home 2 percent low, or an inspection negotiation gives back 2 percent in credits, that is $8,000, and the saving is gone with interest. National surveys have long shown by-owner homes selling below agented medians. Some of that gap is the mix of properties, and some of it is pricing and negotiation done under pressure, without data.

So here is the plain truth: the $7,600 is real only if the pricing, the prep, and the negotiation get done at a professional level. Plenty of owners clear that bar. This page, and a flat fee for exactly the pieces you want covered, exist so you can be one of them.

A tidy single family home with a front lawn ready for showings

Three ways to use us

Take the whole job, hand us a piece, or hand us the keys.

Every path below ends with your home sold. The only question is how much of the work you want to own, and you can change your answer at any point without a lecture.

1Do it all yourself

Take our free by-owner toolkit: the pricing worksheet, the disclosure checklist, the showing safety rules, and the week-by-week plan. No account, no drip emails, no strings. If you never call us, the toolkit still did its job.

2Flat-fee backup on the hard parts

One flat fee, agreed in writing before we start, for the pieces you pick: the comp-based pricing report, the MLS listing, offer review, or a negotiator on your side for the inspection response. You stay the seller. We stay on call.

3Hand it off, whenever you say

Some owners run the first month themselves and then decide their weekends are worth more. If that day comes, we take the file as it stands and finish the sale, and everything you already did counts. No told-you-so, ever.

Our promise

One flat fee. Your sale, your call. A person who answers.

No nickel-and-diming

The fee we quote is the fee you pay, in writing, before any work starts. No add-on charges for the second phone call, the revised comp report, or the offer that fell through.

No poaching, no pressure

Asking us a question does not put you on a call list. We will not phone you every Tuesday asking if you are ready to list. You know our number, and that arrangement points in one direction: yours.

A real person

Call the number at the top and a human who knows your file picks up. Bring the questions you think are too basic. They never are, and answering them is the whole point of the backup.