I haven't sold a home here yet but I can't imagine not trying FSBO before listing it with someone. There are tools and tips easily found online to help do it yourself and here there is even a website (probably more than 1) that you can post it on. If you are in a crunch and need to do all you can to sell it as fast as possible, then maybe consider listing it. All that said, while some get lucky and sell homes listed with brokers in hours or days, it doesn't always happen that way and agents put in more than a "few hours work" to try to sell your home. They have overhead, including advertising your home, and I have had many agents tell me that, by the time they get their cut of a commission, they have more than earned that money. However, sometimes it doesn't seem quite fair to pay the same percentage on a higher priced home that you would pay on a lower priced home when it may have taken the same amount of work and cost to sell both. So, say it takes 25 days to get a 200K home sold and the commission is 12K, and a highly desirable 500K home could sell in a week and the commission would be 30K.
I've had mixed experiences with FSBO prior to coming here. I bought my last home as a FSBO and sold the previous one as FSBO in 2 days. But 14 years later, I tried selling that same home FSBO for several months and barely got any interest, other than 1 party. So, I ended up listing it, and 8 months later it sold to the same person that was interested when it was FSBO but wouldn't pull the trigger. Fortunately, the Realtor was willing to negotiate on the commission since I had prior dealings with the same party.
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