<prompt> Human: My wife and I bought our first house x years ago and we plan to sell it and move in the next year or two. We bought the house for about 75k mortgage through our local credit union and I think I can sell it for more than 85k if Im patient. And to squeeze even more money out of it, I was wondering about the possibility of selling it myself instead of going through a realtor and paying them, if its not too much of a complicated thing to do..  <response>: Ive sold and bought houses without a realtor and its certainly doable. However your market conditions will dictate the amount of work you will be required to put in. As others have already stated you can put up a sign, list on craigslist and pay a service to list on the MLS for you. In a hot market this might be enough to find the buyer who wants to pay what you want. In a slower market it may not be. Part 1 is obviously finding a buyer.The local regulations and paperwork for most states are daunting and I have paid either a realtor or a title company a small fee 500 to guide me through the paperwork so I have all the right forms lead disclosure etc to ensure that the transaction goes smoothly. The money is generally well worth it.Especially in a hot market, its easy to wonder why you pay realtors so much money. Additionally, Realtors are not incentivized to get you the most money, they want to close the sale and move on to the next one. Any change in your asking price has only a 3 impact on them, so their time is best spent closing another house. They and the buying realtor both want to shake hands and move on so they will push both you and the buyer to get the deal done. They are not like hiring attorneys, they dont fight in your corner. They may present it that way, but at the end of the day, they dont get paid for holding out for a higher price. They get paid for a sale so they will do whatever they can to get that. They will sell both the buyer and they will sell you on the price the buyer is willing to pay.That being said, where a realtor brings value is they are not bringing emotions to the table. They dont know or care how much work and love went into your home or what it looked like before. They will pull comps and give you a realistic idea of what your house can be sold for. We get attached to our houses and we have numbers in our head about what we paid for it and what we put into it and we base our selling price on those numbers and feelings. The market does not care about either. A realtor can get you an accurate number. Sometimes higher, sometimes lower. You can pull some rough numbers by looking in your MLS data base for homes in your neighborhood that have sold recently with similar square footage and trim levels. This is essentially what pulling a comp is. For a very very rough number you can use zillow. Its accurate about 50 of the time, due to its limitations.Also in the vein of not bringing emotions to the table, a realtor can negotiate for you without getting upset that the buyer thinks your kitchen is horribly outdated. If you dont have the personality to listen to people critique your home or try to talk the value of your property down, consider a realtor. Unless you are in a very hot market, the buyer is going to try to talk you down. They will most likely do that by pointing out flaws. If you cannot absorb this kind of negative energy then you should consider a realtor. If you are easily frustrated or insulted or take things personally then a realtor may be worth the money to save you that frustration.There are some scenarios in which a realtor may actually help you get more then you would get selling it yourself even after their commission but it is highly market dependent. Where I am, the market is so hot, the listing agents are setting a time limit for offers and asking for peoples best and final offers up front and taking highest bidder. Its almost like ebay. The house across the street from me which needed a lot of work went for 10k over asking price, 2 days after it was listed. In some cases, it is possible to negotiate the realtor fee down for both buying and selling agents. It can be harder to do that at bigger firms, but even then it can be possible. Sometimes to get a deal done, you may find both the buying and selling realtor taking cuts in their commission equally. For example, if the buyer and seller are 4k apart and wont budge you may find the agents agree to take 2k cuts to get it done. Once again it depends on the market. You may elect to be the listing agent but still pay the buying agents commission. Theres a lot of ways to do it. However you choose to do it, a fair amount of research will be required and youre going to have to learn at least the basics; like the difference between pre approved and a financing contingency. Its good knowledge to have and may help you negotiate a stronger deal when you buy your next house and its not hard to learn. To get started I would figure out how to search your local MLS. In our area, its a website called realtracs. Pull your own comps to find your house value. Try to find very similar houses to yours that sold recently. Then list it on craigslist to see how much activity you get. In our market, I listed a house for rent and I had 22 interested parties in about 3 days. We had the contracts done in a week. If you listed the house properly with some nice photos you should know pretty quickly if you have enough interest to sell it yourself for the price you want. If you dont get a lot of activity, you can always call a realtor.Best of luck. 