How We Quickly Abandoned “For Sale By Owner”

We love to DIY, so of course we wanted to try to DIY sell our condo. Combine that with the fact that we had the potential to save 6% – about $10k – and we were all about it. At first.

There’s someone in our complex who owns several condos and always said that he would buy ours when we went to sell. We told him when we were ready to sell and he was eager to view our condo. However, he offered us about $20k under the market value. Now, he was offering cash and a quick close, and Sean was really tempted by this offer, but I’m such a spreadsheet geek, hyper aware of the markets, I really don’t want to give the condo away. So, I told him no. I walked away from a cash offer that would have given us a $30k profit! Am I crazy? Possibly. Sean seems to think so.

We really didn’t try much to sell it otherwise – I emailed a few property managers in the area to put out feelers but didn’t get any bites. That combines with the annoyance I felt dealing with the back and forths with the potential cash vendor, and I just decided that it would be worth it to list it with our realtor. Even at a loss of $10,000 in realtor fees, I feel confident that he can get us significantly more than our cash investor offered us, and we are so excited for it to hit the market this weekend!

So, these DIYers quit trying to DIY sell our home. Have you sold a home by owner? Are we dumb for giving up so easily?