I am not a real estate agent, but I have sold a few houses of mine over the years through agents.
Throwing it out there on Zillow as a FSBO does not give the the highest probability of the highest price. Sure, you got someone interested and you might sell it. But if you had put it out there in the system where there are a bunch of hungry agents talking buyers into buying your house so that they can feed their family it would be exposed to more buyers and perhaps higher bids. Use their greed to your advantage. You don’t have to like the MLS system or the way its set up but you can work it to your advantage. You would get maximum exposure and you might have three bids by now.
Why go half-assed to a limited market to save 5%. The truth is that for most houses you can’t really even estimate the price to within 5% (at least that is my experience when selling my personal and rental properties over the years) until you put it out there on the market. (Unless its a fairly recent tract where the houses are still all the same)
As for waiting for the Spring to place it with an agent if it doesn’t sell as a FSBO … in my opinion the optimal time to put it on the market under the current conditions is the first week or two of February.
Here’s why :
There isn’t that much inventory right now. People are “waiting until Spring” or fixing up a few things before they put their houses on the market. They want to list in April, but Spring Break rolls around, so they put it off a few weeks. Then it’s May and they finally get it out there. Pretty soon its June and all of a sudden you have tons of properties coming on the market, your competition gets harder.
Just my 2 cents.
P.S. – Don’t know your reason for selling, but I wouldn’t be selling in this market unless you are moving up or out and need the cash from the sale to do so.
