Julie,
Sorry, I missed your post; I have had an awful cold. Legally we can’t openly discuses commission as a set amount is violates anti-trust law. Hope all goes well and you have a successful sale.

Well, it's been two months and only seven potential buyers: 5 who saw the sign on Willow Lake Road, one who saw the ad in Craigs List and one who saw the ad in the Newspaper. We are ready to list with a Realtor and will be interviewing and choosing this week. Thus far I have two Real Estate Agencies who are willing to take only 4% if they sell to one of their own buyers (listing agent or partnership/team) and 5% to the entire agency's agents. Anyone interested in being interviewed tomorrow, Tuesday August 19 to Wednesday, August 20th, simply call (Julie or Peter) at 443-0412. Before you pull your comps we are as described on Zillow.com (type in 3150 Willow Drive 86301) not as described by county records which are being corrected as we speak. Also, we are steadily renting the attached M-I-L apt. and getting $200/week (yes, that's $800/month) for the completely separate living space! We will not start our listing below the $279 current asking price.

Julie,
I admire your gusto and commitment to selling your home. It is gutsy to give your email information to a forum of mostly Real Estate Agents. I have a different take on your predicament. I have at least 4 calls a week from prospective sellers wishing to sell there home. The question you have to ask yourself is ‘do I want or need to sell and why’. There are 1,000’s of great reasons to sell your home in this market. If you are going to buy another home this is one of the best reasons, you sell and buy cheap.

When you are going to look at home are you going to surf zillow.com or trulia.com or realtor.com or 113 more.

Probably not you’re going to call an agent. That is what your buyer is going to do and if you are not on the MLS you will miss that buyer. Prescott has 1 out of 100 selling right now… what will you do to make your home stand out?
Pictures, Marketing both web and paper are good, but then what?
In any marketing class your will be taught that 85% of all marketing is price. It is truer today in the real estate market than ever. The information is out there and as you can tell from zillow.com or trulia.com the information doesn’t need to be accurate to give your Buyer a perception of value. I am not saying that this information is not accurate but more that it doesn’t matter. Perception is more important than accuracy. So if the perceived value on zillow.com is 241,000 or ranged 192,800 - $255,460 with the market decreasing by -$12,500 every 30 days as of 07/02/2008 that is reality….

There is no real estate agent that will overcome that reality. It usually cost more to keep trying to sell than selling in a down market. Time is your enemy, the longer you try to sell the less your home is worth.
That being said if you want to sell. I mean really want or need to sell call a Realtor, get your price right and sell. If you are hoping to sell keep doing what you are doing, eventually it may work.

Now is a great time to sell your home for the right reasons. If I didn’t believe this I wouldn’t be in business.
Hope you do well in what ever you decide….
Brad Bergamini
Search on your own http://www.theprescottmls.com

It would be worth the investment to sign with a Realtor. There are currently 184 homes in the mls alone under 300k. That is alot of competittion for a home in the mls let alone a home on the FSBO martket with very minimal exposure. In this market you need all the exposure you can get and the Mls is all real estate agents biggest tool for finding their clients a home. Consider it. You may be missing out on the sale of your home by trying to do it yourself. Good luck to you, whatever you decide.

I just checked the records in the Prescott MLS and found that nothing in your immediate neighborhood has sold for that high a price. With the current soft market it is unlikely you will get that price. If you would like a market analysis of your property, with no strings attached, please contact me.

Besides providing assistance with correctly pricing your home (zillow is rarely correct) Realtor's have a great tool we call Multiple Listing Service. You see 80+% of Buyers are working with agents, those agents are looking on MLS for homes to sell their buyers, they do not check Zillow. If you check the National Association of Realtors info you can see some staggering statistics on unrepresented sellers. Buyers want to save money, sellers want to save money and then they sell for 20% less than they could have.

Anyway, the straight forward answer to your question is most likely not. Consult a Realtor in your area, then decide if you can afford not to hire one.

Good luck!