One thing homeowners may fail to consider when they decide to sell a home by owner
is the fact that their buyers will more than likely need to obtain financing. This sounds pretty obvious, but it is part of the process of selling a home that can easily be overlooked in the midst of your busy marketing efforts. When you sell by owner and you are spending time posting on craigslist.com and other online forums, running newspaper and shopper ads and placing flyers or posters around the neighborhood you might not be thinking about what happens once your find your buyer. That can actually be the time when the adventure begins in earnest.
While it may sound like I'm exaggerating to some extent, I am not. I have been buying and selling homes for over thirty years and I've never seen a period in history when buyers had more difficulty obtaining financing. I am not commenting on the quality of the buyers themselves, but on the mortgage lending market practices. It's difficult for everyone who wants to purchase a home and doesn't have all the cash to pay for it. The process of applying for a mortgage and sequentially providing all the additional documentation that all lenders seem to suddenly require somewhere along the line can be taxing to any buyer. In the midst of this process a good real estate agent is truly an asset. Homeowners who try to sell a house by owner to an unrepresented buyer, meaning the buyer hasn't hired a buyer's agent, will find that the process may move along much more slowly and possibly stall out without the parties' knowledge. Agents stay on top of the financing timeline but inexperienced buyers frequently do not really know what's going on day-by-day.
For myself, a good real estate agent comes is very handy and is worth the money I pay her at the closing table when my buyer gets through the financing maze successfully and my home is sold. I certainly don't have the time to shepherd the documents or the people myself, or oversee inspections and appraisals and deal with the resulting reports. Issues invariably pop up and most of the time I'm too busy to take care of all the details required of a seller who isn't employing an agent. I generally encourage homeowners who sell by owner to hire an agent to help them close the sale. This comes from years of experience, not because I have any ties to real estate agents myself.