Here are the two sides to it:

"Sell my House Privately"
Three Economy Professors at Northwestern University's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences found that in Madison, Wisconsin For Sale by Owner homes averaged $175,068 compared to $173,205 for homes sold by Realtors.

   Read the study (rather long pdf)


"Sell with a Real Estate Agent"
Realator.com states that by selling through an agent you will get, on average a 16% higher price.

   See their article

An About.com article with 10 reasons of "Why should we hire a real estate agent?"

About.com states "The Worst Home Selling Mistake a Seller Can Make" is to overprice your house... under is not so go either though.

"The question is how much money have those expired listings cost the sellers? The financial loss often exceeds the extra mortgage payments paid and goes beyond the uncompensated hassle factor of trying to keep a home spotless during showings..."

Thankfully there are some wonderful tools out there to answer the questions:

What are houses selling for in my area?
What did my neighbor's house sell for?
How much should I sell my house for?

Free Home Valuation Tools

Zillow - A database of over 70,000,00 homes are used to by formula estimate a value for your home. They do say on their site that it shouldn't be the only method, and has a margin of error around 10%. But it is free so nothing to loose. You can even publicly post your valuation.

HomeGain A* - Free home valuation that is based on 66 million property records. It also shows comparable sales on a map, with dates and property details. HomeGain also has a service where your can compare Realtors.

Trulia - Free real estate price and popularity trends.

Home Valuation with Cost

Electronic Appraiser A* - This is less formulaic, but instead gives you a print out of all the homes in your area that have sold recently, with the price that they sold for as well as property value averaged, tax data and trends. This one isn't free but at $30, not too painful either. This is the service that powers many of the sites where you can get a home valuation, like For Sale By Owner.

   It's no small task to sell your home privately, but the payouts can be thousands, and in some cases tens of thousands of dollars in savings.

   Start here: WikiHow's -- How to sell your own house

   There are many sources for advertising your home, and we'll talk more about that in Step 3, along with statistics to see where people are going to look for a new home.

   As for the technical aspects and to see if you are up for the task at hand, head over to ForSaleByOwner.com and download their free e-book that has the how's, why's and even the contracts that will need to be signed.

Home Thinking - Helps you to find real estate agents in your area by showing you what each real estate agent has done in the past and allows you to see client reviews and ratings.

HomeGain A* - Get real estate agents to compete for your business while remaining anonymous. They will send you offers on Home Gain with their fees, history, reviews and credentials.

Once you find a realtor with a good reputation, either from referrals by friends/family, or from a site like Home Thinking or Home Gain, be sure to take the time to interview the Realtor.

Interviewing your Realtor not only lets you know the commitment level of your Realtor, but also you can take a look at how they plan on getting people to look at and see your house.

• Find out how much they know about your neighborhood. What they can tell you about your neighborhood is what they can tell potential buyers.
• Find out how, where and when your house will be advertised. Are they just going to hope someone finds the house off of the MLS or do they have a plan to aggressively market your house (web and print)
• Can they provide you with professional looking photos? Will there be video? How will buyers find and see the pictures and video of your house? (Will they have the photographs beautified by us *wink*)
• How involved with the process will they be? Are they going to be there through signing and be available to answer all questions?
• What are their stats? How many homes are they currently listing? how many have they sold in the past 6 months? What have their past clients said about them? (A site like Home Thinking can be a big help for this)
• What about commission? How much? Can the commission be lowered? Can it be lowered if the buyer isn't using an agent?
  
  You'll also want to double check the numbers your Realtor gives you for your house pricing. New agents, or those desperate for a quick sale, may price your house too low, while a high volume agent may price your house too high (since he has the time to try and get a higher amount even if you don't). The point, Know your house value.
  

   That is the best place to start! Over 80% of those looking to buy a house begin their search on the Internet (According to The National Association of Realtors).

   If you have a good price, can get enough potential buyers to look at and then want to find out more about your house, there is going to be little standing in your way of completing the sale. This is why we feel the images that you post with your house are so important! It makes the difference between a buyer clicking on your listing or the one below it.

So take a closer look at our "Selling Online" page and when you are ready to post some beautiful images, let us help you!