mikeintopeka you are leaving money on the table.
I am aware. The very reason I never wanted to work with a realtor when I sold our home in Illinois. The margin was too tight back then, or I may have gone with one. Did interview some in our home but the numbers didn't work for me. We only walked away with 9k from our last home sale, and if memory serves I put 7k down, so we netted a whopping 2k from the sale. That was a different market and time in the world. Had we used a realtor we would've lost money, so I didn't bother.
This time I can do it "seamlessly". There are many spinning plates I won't get into for why I would I would leave money on the table. My buddy said the same as you are saying. He wanted me to use a realtor and I told him a buddy of mine's wife, has a billboard up, and I could call her anytime and she would help...but why? I could just do it myself. I also know the hassle of selling. The guy who bought our house in Illinois agreed to buy it THREE times. I was white knuckling it waiting for a call from my attorney that he actually went through with signing all the papers. The call came and all the attorney said was...DONE! One of the greatest moments of relief in my lifetime. I HATED Illinois with a burning passion and was so freaking happy we weren't tied to it anymore.
In this case, If I sacrifice 7% that is tolerable to me. Of course, I may decide to just do it myself. The house needs work. You have no idea what an autistic child with anger issues can mean for your home. Plus, there are things we'd want to upgrade after 15 years, too. I figure we're looking at 10-15k in improvements needed. The quicker we can get out, the happier I'd be. This is all on a clock and NOBODY knows when it's striking midnight. 20k in losses sounds bad, and it is, but if I get 150, I can live with it.
Tuesday will be a fun day.
EDIT: And if you're left with a question of WHY would you use Zillow and lose money when you just said you didn't want to use a realtor and lose money, that would be a great and fair question. The Zillow thing was a total lark. Wife hollered from bedroom about them having an offer thing on their site and asked if she should fill it out. I was thinking that it would give us some recon on what we'd be looking at if we wanted to sell it ourselves, so more than willing to take the knowledge from Zillow and use it. The text came from them seconds after wife hit ENTER or SEND and the call came within 5 minutes. Happened so very fast, but I ran that kid not the other way around. I can tell he's off Sunday and Mondays just by the way he was acting on the phone. So, so worried I was going to go with a realtor and freeze him out. Flat out told the guy...I understand what it is to be you on the other end of the line. Let me put your mind at ease. I'm not going to call a realtor before Tuesday or list it myself. Not how I do business. You're the ONLY person I'm talking to, but I want to be clear the offer will dictate my response. ---Felt it important to be totally transparent. If he comes with an offer I can't refuse then...good. If not, life goes on, and we make some improvements and do it ourselves...and pocket even more. Oh, and I also told him that I know most people would pit him against someone else, but I didn't like that kind of a thing even though that is standard business practice. In this case, if he can come through, I'm going with the young nervous kid who sees dollar signs.