I just sold my house using a realtor. After about 3 months on the market, I posted here with a similar question, and got a lot of advice to continue using the realtor. The house ended up selling after about 4.5 months for near list price, but I walked away not entirely happy with the whole experience. I lost money on the house (bought at the wrong time in 2007, and lived there for 7 years) so the only people who made any money were the real estate agents.
If I were to do it over, I would either
1) Still use a realtor, but instead of contacting one and meeting with her and then ending up signing the contract that she prepared for 6% I would
- email a number of offices, and find someone who was willing to do it for a bargain price. Maybe 3-4% (I still am not sure why people say that you have to offer the buyers agent a full 3%. I know when I look for a house, I am looking online and telling the agent which houses I want to go to)
- Only do a 90 day contract, not a 180 day contract (a mistake since we didn't negotiate ahead of time, and then signed although uncomfortable when it was presented)
- Strike out any clause in the contract that says that after the contract expires the real estate agent gets the commission if the buyer found out about it from their advertising or efforts. This is known as the extender clause, and is intended so that if they find a buyer, you can't stall for a month to skip the commission. In that form it is legitimate. However 6 months of payment for anyone who saw it from their online MLS listing is ridiculous. If that clause had to be in there, I would insist on either 1 month OR that upon ending of the contract that the real estate agent needed to provide a list of specific people to whom the 6th month extender would apply, i.e. any one who had shown interest up to that point or actually toured the property, but not a blanket coverage of every single person who might have seen it on the internet
or
2) Try a FSBO for the first month for the initial flood of people touring and potentially offering, and if that didn't work and I couldn't invest any more time, go back to option 1
I agree however, that the work a realtor puts in to sell a 600K house instead of a 200K house is not worth the extra 24K in commission that you would have to pay