We have a realtor we like and have used to look at 3-4 houses maybe 3-4 months ago. After looking at location and what we could get for our budget (under 200k), we decided to wait, save up more and bump up our price range and consider building.
We were on vacation in mid August when we got an alert (Trulia, Zillow, don't remember). A house in the area we wanted, 6 years old, built the way we wanted, and on our budget. For sale by owner. We did research, looked at the house twice, and have conducted all business with the owner.
We now have loan pre-approval. Our plan is to make an offer, close, move out of our current house, and place it up for sale in spring. We will probably use the realtor we used 3-4 months ago for the sale of our current house even though the house is slightly out of his area.
We are struggling with whether to include him in the offer / close process. That is, do we bring him in now to help the offer process go smoothly, and he is compensated at perhaps a slightly lower rate, or do we try to conduct the offer / closing process ourselves? I have to admit, I am almost completely ignorant on how to move forward. I can get a generic offer / contract proposal online but I don't want to leave anything to chance. I don't know if the realtor would be helpful here or just be an expensive mistake. I feel like it might be a slap in the face to do it ourselves and then want him to sell our current house, which again is a little out of his area, and only worth maybe 90k so lower commission.
Thoughts? Want to do the right thing but also limit expenses and limit exposure to risk.