Ok, I've posted about how we have our house for sale. We put it on originally for $349,000 and about 2 weeks ago, lowered it to $325,000. Our contract with the realtor expires next week and we are going ahead and withdrawing the listing now (our realtor says it looks better on the MLS system as a withdrawal instead of an expired listing). At $325,000, the 6% commission fee would have been $19,500 that we would've had to pay out...and we were only willing to negotiate the price down to $320,000 bottom line. We didn't feel like our realtor was doing much to push our house so we are actually glad to get out of this contract...but rather than going with another realtor...we are now considering whether or not to keep the house on the market as a FSBO (for sale by owner). We could lower the price of the house to $305,000 and still make the same amount of money as we would have with the $325,000 realtor price. If we offered a 3% buyer's commission fee, it would mean that we could put it on at $315,000 for the same payout.

We've never sold a house ourselves before without a realtor. Does anyone have any advice as to whether or not we should try to sell it ourselves? Here are the options:

Option 1 - FSBO
List price of $319,000 (willing to negotiate down to $305,000 if need be)
No MLS exposure
Out of pocket expense for advertising, etc = xxx??
Pros: we control everything
Cons: we don't know anything

Option 2 - FSBO flat-rate listing service
List price of $325,000 (willing to negotiate down to $315,000 if need be)
MLS exposure
Out of pocket expense for listing service = $499 for 6 months
Pros: agent will help with the paperwork, MLS listing will provide realtor exposure
Cons: immediate cash out of $499, 3% buyer commission

We've had 2 houses sell in our neighborhood within the past 2 years. One sold for $318,000 and the other sold for $305,000. However, the $318,000 was much more of a comparable than the $305,000 due to size, style, etc. Therefore, we don't feel our pricing is asking for too much at all.

Has anyone had success (or failure) at selling your home yourself? What should our next step be? I've already created a website highlighting our house (in case we go this FSBO route) and we are willing to do much more to advertise our house. We just need to know we can actually do it ourselves!