Bucks County Real Estate Web Resource

Should I Sell My Own Home in Bucks County

You are ready to sell your house and you want to know if selling your home on your own is the best solution. The truth to this question can come with a bias, so I will give you both sides.

If you do sell your own home (known as FSBO – for sale by owner), you’re taking on a lot of responsibility, but can save tremendous amounts of money. Generally the seller pays a fee between 5-8 percent of the sale, to the agents. If you are a FSBO in Bucks County looking to sell to someone without an agent, you can save that 5-8 percent. Although majority of buyers have an agent, so this means you will have to cover the 2-3 percent for the buyers agent, which means you save around 2-3 percent on average. This is around $4,000 - $6,000 dollars on a $200,000 home. You can only speak to buyers that do not have an agent, but then you are limiting your potential customer base quickly. If you do find an unrepresented buyer though, immediately your savings go up dramatically! This is the juicy part of being a FSBO, but lets look closely at the reality of selling your own home.

First and foremost, lets stand in the corner of common sense. A lot of money can be saved being a FSBO when selling your home in Bucks County. Therefore if this approach was worth the money, then why do only a very small percentage of FSBO’s exist? There are many reasons, lets look at them.

If you sell your home, you are then responsible for learning everything. Learning is only the first stage, now you have to do everything! This means you are responsible for marketing your home. This is good though, because the marketing classes you took in college will now pay off. The downside here though is that it cost a lot of money to advertise. On top of that, you are also competing against other ads being ran by experienced agents that know how to catch the attention of buyers. To get around this issue, I suggest you mimic ads that catch your eyes and learn from their experience. Depending on the market, you could easily spend anywhere between $100- $200 a week advertising in Bucks County.

A note to remember is that when advertising, there are certain state laws you have to abide by. Be sure to speak with a Bucks County attorney or an experienced Bucks County agent that is willing to give you free assistance.

Lets not jump the gun here though. First you need to price your home. You can do this with a pre-appraisal or you can do it by paying for a Bucks County Comparative Market Analysis, called a CMA. Although the CMA will not give you the exact amount you should charge, it will give you a ballpark price. We always suggest starting slightly above your ideal target, because the buyer will try to negotiate and get you to back off your asking price.

Here is where an agent can practically pay for themselves. Agents have access to key data for identifying market trends and they have the experience at pricing your home properly. Overpricing or under pricing can have a devastating affect on your result as a FSBO. This reason alone is why most people use an agent and those who fail to often times end up getting less then they could (even after commissions) if they used an agent.

As a Bucks County FSBO though, you will find that you will get less walk throughs of your home. Especially if you have not paid to be included in your local Bucks County MLS (multiple listing service). You can do this for a inclusion fee, which will vary from MLS to MLS. The fee will range between $300-$500.

If you fail to get good results from the MLS and the advertising, you now run the risk of lack of potential buyers. This means your odds of getting a strong asking price are reduced. If you have a Bucks County agent, the agent will do the majority of negotiating for you. This is where there experience comes into play. They know how to deal with the other buyer’s agent and any concerns arising from the transaction. If you are a Bucks County FSBO, you have to deal with this process and we warn you, a seasoned agent might take advantage of your lack of knowledge and pressure you into doing more than you need to.

To combat this, hire an attorney. Let him look over the paperwork and ask for his presence at the closing. Without an attorney, you are really taking the risk of missing something. Therefore if you sidestep an agent, make sure your attorney becomes your friend. Depending on their involvement, their cost will run a couple hundred dollars to look over the contract, to a thousand dollars to be involved during each step and closing. Be careful that if you take the FSBO approach in Bucks County, you at minimal get an attorney to look over the documents.

Another aspect you will need as a FSBO is flexible time. When someone wants to come see your home, you need to be ready to show it and be there! This means you need to be able to meet the buyer’s needs. Whereas working with an agent, he or she will take care of this and will work with the buyer’s agent, reducing your involvement dramatically.

Once again we run into another legal issue. When you show your home and work with the buyer, by law you are required to take certain steps and provide the buyer with specific disclosers. Once again, we recommend to find and hire a good Bucks County real estate attorney to tell you what things by law have to be disclosed to the buyer prior to a sale, look over any contracts, and ensure you do not inadvertently discriminate against potential buyers.

These are some plus and minuses to entering the FSBO world. Although we are obviously biased to using a Bucks County agent, there have been many successful FSBO’s transactions. Therefore if you do take this approach, just be sure to hire legal advice to keep you on the right track.

If you are going to sell your own home, still feel free to contact my office so I can assist you in some areas. Here are some other facts about FSBO’s to take into consideration.

For Sale By Owner (FSBO) Statistics

Did you know?
The typical FSBO home sold for $145,000, compared to $175,000 for agent-assisted home sales.


FSBO Methods Used to Market Home
Yard sign 72%
Friends/neighbors 27%
Newspaper ad 61%
Open House 41%
Internet 20%


Most Difficult Tasks for FSBO Sellers
Getting the right price 19%
Understanding paperwork 30%
Preparing / fixing up home for sale 26%
Attracting potential buyers 7%
Having enough time to devote to all aspects of the sale