It’s like selling a car to a dealer or selling it yourself on Craigslist…more trouble but they think they will save some money, although for RE it’s hard to say…
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Also sometimes people want more discretion, ie don’t want relatives etc to know they are selling, or they are trying to pull a fast one on their siblings. I think as long as you are in a normal situation, finding a discount broker might be the way to go in Bay area. Then again I’ve never sold anything here yet, just bought 
HODLing!
I had a townhouse go vacant last May (15th), and was thinking this could be a good time to sell. The tenant had been there for 6 years, and the carpet was from 1999, when I had bought the place… also needed paint, fridge, d-washer and a dozen other smaller things. It was going to take minimum 2 weeks for everything. I spoke with another agent about the value and we both agreed on $775k.
Then some neighbors stopped by and informed me that one unit in the complex (in an inferior location) had recently sold for $700k. How recent? In January '17.
No way, I have alerts on the MLS for these units.
Oh yes.
The owner put a sign in the lawn in front of his house Saturday morning at 9am, a neighbor saw the sign and called his friend, the friend came over and by noon they had signed a contract for $700k. He got higher offers later that Saturday afternoon. Escrow closed and the sale is now a comp.
He had not even advertised it on Craigs List! Just a sign on the lawn, which is NOT VISIBLE from the public road!
He did not do too bad though. My unit is on a larger lot (corner unit), so he probably would have sold for $750k through MLS.
If you subtract the commission saved (5%?)… he would’ve gotten only $10k more. Without the hassle of staging, open houses etc.
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Last year I saw a listing online where the seller was also an agent. If the potential buyer went to the seller and had he/she perform the entire transaction (saving buyer’s commission fee), the buyer might have been able to have a slight edge, although it seemed riskier for the buyer.
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Ok. So to get to the title question:
It sounds like the answer is because people don’t care about getting more money or think they can pay less in commissions if they don’t use a realtor. Is that the summary?
It doesn’t sound easier since staging isn’t necessary.
staging has a huge effect on some people - some people just cannot imagine how a house would look with furniture, so a non-staged house literally has no appeal to them.
True, but, if you don’t want to bother you don’t have to.
The point is that the more people you have interested, the more $$ you can potentially make. The only question is whether it outweighs the realtor fees.
In the case of the hoarder house I saw–$85K realtor fees, $450K over ask.
I believe folks do it for 2 reasons:
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Overly smart: Those who believe they have a pretty good grip on the market and hence know the top $$$ they can get via MLS so decide to sell for that price while saving the 5% on commissions! Whether they actually save money or not is a different question. The motivation is that they believe they did save 5%
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Ignorant + lazy: Don’t want the hassle of cleaning/staging and ignorant of the extra $$$ that hassle will fetch
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