Well, the reason I offered the scenario is because my former business partner recently sold his home in orange county by going with a flat fee broker and putting his house in the mls. He priced it at about 3% lower than the (all over-priced) comp houses in his neighborhood up for sale(same models on similar lots), and ended up finding a buyer who was not represented. He had pretty good traffic too because everybody interested in the neighborhood who saw ads for the other houses stopped by his house also when they saw his sign. He made up a good flyer too.

He knocked off another 2% (he signed up for 2.5% to buyers agent) during negotiations. It is about an $800k (current comps) neighborhood, so the buyer felt good that negotiations basically started at $775, and ended up at a sale price of slightly under $760. The seller was happy because he cleared this amount (less escrow/title costs etc), and actually got a QUICK sale. In other words, he netted what he wanted, and what the owners of the over-priced other homes in the neighborhood would net after paying brokers, IF they could actually get a full price sale. Of course the former neighbors w/ houses for sale ain’t so happy. Again though, this guy did some work and had familiarity with the Calif. RE transaction process. Anyway, he is on the sidelines now living a condo looking for future bargains. However, for many folks, I recognize this would be a bit much to orchestrate.

Granted, his risk was that there could be a 2006 summer bounce and the other houses could go for more, but that does not seem likely at this moment.