I am in the middle of selling my home FSBO right now. This will be our third home purchase and first sale by FSBO ( one previous buy FSBO but the seller was an agent). I have a RE attorney ( used in previous sales). My dh and I work at home so we didn't see a lot of benefit from a realtor overall.
I had a realtor frien come and give me a listing price and look over my house on issues and staging. Though my friend didn't want payment I gave her a $100 amazon gift card. I didn't want any 'obligations ' between us and wanted to thank her. I think she was being very nice also with the hope that I would list with her if I decided to list.
I am pretty savvy about RE and the noodle prices. I have the nicest house in the nhood also. This makes it slightly difficult because I want top dollar but the nhood isn't as nice as you would expect. Nhood is fine but its harder for the nicest most expensive house. On the other hand my nhood is super hot right now.
I started by creating a simple but great website with address as name. Ie
www.123SMain.com. We also did a great job staging home. My dh had been getting home ready for sale over the last year to prepare, but our home shows great. I
Last Nov we listed on CL and I got a two week free trial on FSBO.com. I immediately got an offer from CL, nothing serious from FSBO.com. Offer was from a lawyer. We ended up doing appraisal first and had a lot of problems with it. Deal fell thru, though ultimately it was because buyer wanted out. But we were ok with it because she was a major PIA. She was a hardcore negotiator and wanted a deal. I felt she thought she could strong arm me because I was FSBO. So, we decided to wait until after Easter to relist. This time I just did CL for the first week and then put on zillow for free a week later. Got another lawyer that came and looked a couple of times the first week and then an offer from a buyer with a realtor the second week. I was paying the buyer commission - but only with a full price offer. I was upfront with realtors when they asked. After the first experience I wasn't playing any games. I knew what I wanted and wasn't taking less. I told the realtor not to give me an offer for less. So now we have just agreed on inspections remedies and are waiting for appraisal to come back this week. I will say that this realtor tried to strong arm me with inspection request and ended up pissing me off highly but ultimately buyers accepted my response. I won't adjust for appraisal regardless. My nhood is super hot and I have an awesome house ( I really do ) and I have no set timeline for moving.
I have received many a phone call from realtors wanting my listing and trying to trick info out of me. My contact cell is an out of state number so I get several calls from realtors in that city that had obviously never seen my listing. They got mean Bobbi after the first two calls and eventually they stopped.
For me CL and zillow worked fine. I used google analytics to see my traffic. Always more traffic on days when I refreshed my listing on CL. My website had all info in order to cut down calls. I had pics, floor plan, propriety disclosure, lead disclosure, termite contract, flyer, house details,etc. it worked so that I only received serious calls ( except for azzhat realtors ). Three showings , two offers.
This is my experience so far. If you aren't comfortable with negotiating than FSBO isn't for you IME.