I personally think selling without a realtor is a bad idea, especially if you don't have much experience selling homes. It can be a good idea if you're really close to the bone, trying to get out from under a mortgage that's so close to the value of the house that you just don't have room for a commission, but generally I think it's one of those "penny wise and pound foolish" things.
In addition to the legwork/hassle of showing the house and hosting open houses, a **good, experienced** seller's agent does some critical things that you, realistically, probably can't do nearly as well:
- Sets the price. Sounds simple but it's not; this is based on knowing what comparable houses sold for in the last 1-3 months, how long they took to sell vs. how long you're willing to wait, why (in your realtor's opinion) this or that comparable house sold quickly or slowly or not at all... One of the things our seller's agent did for us last time we sold was tell us, when we wanted to set the price at $330k in order to hopefully get $320k, that in that price range buyers tended to use $25k increments to search (under $300k, under $325, under $350...), whereas at higher prices the buyers use $50k increments. In other words, said the realtor, if you set it at $330k a lot of perfectly good buyers won't even see it, because they're literally putting "$325k" as their max number when they search. So we put it at $325k in order to ensure that those buyers saw it... and it sold for $323k in a matter of days!
- Evaluates offers. This is HUGE. Realtors (by which i mean good, experienced ones) know which banks (i.e., banks that the buyer is preapproved by) take forever to close and which ones close quickly, which preapprovals look normal vs. which look suspect, which requests for contingencies or repairs are normal vs. which ones you should push back on, etc.
- Negotiates. Again, huge. A good realtor is able to talk with the buyer's agent in a way that you can't; they're both coming from the same knowledge base and neither of them has any EMOTIONAL investment in the sale, so they're just better negotiators, most likely, than you would be. They know how far they can push things, whereas you don't.
So my advice would be, don't do it FSBO unless, like I said, you're really close to the bone. Instead, take a couple of hours to do online research on and talk to realtors in your area, so that you can pick one who's really good and really experienced in this type of sale (your neighborhood, your price range).
Best of luck!