For Sale By Owner

I am about to sell my house and move to Boston, in the middle of a *huuuuuuuge* housing slump (according to the papers).

I spoke yesterday to a real estate professional who assures me that I’m going to lose money overall (i.e: not get my down payment back after I pay off the mortgage) and that I need to hurryhurryhurry to get listed and on the market RightTheHeckNow before Things Get Even Worse. Like, get my shit out of the house this coming week if possible. Oh yeah, all that and she gets 5% of the gross from the sale.

I’m busy, redmed is busy, my garden is in full bloom, there are baby birds in the birdhouse, and we hadn’t planned to move until October. Hurry hurry hurry.

I, personally, am tired of being hurried on multi $100K decisions. I am tired of being “sold” to, and I have no desire to play any sort of market games. I am also a control freak.

Therefore, I am seriously considering going “for sale by owner,” on this one. In the course of this process, realtor or no, ‘ll end up paying thousands of dollars to lawyers, escrow companies, and whoever else. I already *know* these professionals. I *have* a lawyer. The question is whether I’m willing to put in the work that the realtor would otherwise do. This is a considerable amount of work, including document preparation, advertising, and actually being around to show the house. Plus, I’ll be directly involved in negotiations with people who will be pointing out flaws in the work I’ve done to try to justify their lowball offers.

For 5% of the cost of my house (and the ineffable value of scratching the control-freak itch) I’m willing to look into it. That 5%, by the way, is about what I’m gonna lose because the market sucks so bad.

So:

1) Have any of you out there on the internet self-listed and managed the sale of your own home before? What did you think? If not, why not? If so, would you do it again?

2) The question (as put so eloquently by _earthshine_) is not “am I on crack,” but “what KIND of crack am I on? I put the question to you: What kind of crack am I on?

Also:

* Has anyone used the “PODS” storage units? I think they might be a good moving solution.
* Anyone want to rent me an apartment / sell me a house?