I mentioned at the beginning that by selling your house yourself you are likely to sell it quicker and get more money for it. If it isn’t already patently clear why this is so, let me explain. Let’s say that you want to get $320,000 in your hand for the sale of your house. To sell it through an agency you would need to put it on the market for about $338,000 to test the market and allow for a bit of negotiation.

If the agency were to come along with an offer of $330,000, you wouldn’t want to accept it because their commission (in New Zealand) would likely be over fourteen thousand dollars (including GST) and you wouldn’t get more than $316,000 in your hand; whereas you would happily accept an offer of $321,000 selling it privately. I have known of many an offer falling through simply because there was a couple of thousand dollars difference between what the vendor was prepared to accept and the maximum the prospective purchaser was prepared, or could afford, to pay.

It stands to reason, that the cheaper a house is, the quicker it is likely to sell because it falls within the affordable range of more people. But unless you are desperate to sell, don’t be suckered in to selling your property below its market value just because you don't have to pay a real estate commission. The fact that the other person is buying it privately doesn’t mean that he, or she, is doing you a favour. You are the one who has put the time and money into selling it, not the buyer. If a real estate salesperson would be entitled to a commission for selling your property, why shouldn’t you be entitled to one for selling it yourself?

In addition to your advertising costs, which should only be a few hundred dollars, you will have to pay your solicitor. But you would also have to pay this bill as an extra if you employed an agency to sell on your behalf.

I hope by now that I’ve convinced you that selling your own house is at least worth a try. Unless there is a great urgency to sell, one should at least try to sell privately for a couple of months. It won’t be a waste of time, even if you don’t sell it. At least you will have tested the market and got some feedback on its true value. But don’t make the silly mistake of trying to get $350,000 for a house that is only worth $325,000 and then put it in the hands of an agency for twenty to twenty-five thousand less than you tried to get privately. Believe me, I’ve known people that have done this. They reach too high in the beginning, get frustrated because the property doesn’t sell and then take any offer that comes along from an agency just so that they can get the property off their hands.