Eleven Weekends and $9,499 in Costs to Skip a $19,080 Commission

Thirty-two showings. That was the final tally on the legal pad I kept hooked by the front door, and I was adding number 28 to it at 5:50 on a Sunday evenin', July 19, in my own kitchen in Wichita, Kansas, with a couple from Tulsa still measuring the garage and my daughter's gerbil cage sitting out there cuz the weekend's traffic had evicted it from the laundry room.

The stakes were a calendar as much as a number. I had accepted a job in Omaha starting October 5, my all-in cost on this house ran $1,704 a month with taxes and insurance, and every month it sat burned real money while my family lived around a house we could not use normally. The full-service agent I interviewed in April quoted 6 percent. On the price the house finally brought, that quote was worth $19,080.

The math that made me go anyway is one subtraction, and the eleven weekends are the part the subtraction leaves out. There is one specific receipt, $399 from a flat-fee listing company in Overland Park, that explains how the whole thing held together legally, and there is a stack of costs that receipt does not cover. I have all of them.

the neighbor's sign next door

Tom two doors down listed the mirror image of my floor plan on May 9 at $324,900 with a full-service agent and a lockbox, and I watched the whole thing from my porch. His sold July 20 at $312,000. Six percent of that is $18,720, which means his check before other costs was $293,280, and he never once answered a showing request at 7:40 in the mornin'. Both of those facts are true at the same time, and any honest FSBO story carries both.

the $399 receipt from Overland Park

The receipt is from a flat-fee company that, for $399, put my listing on the MLS and into Zillow with a documents vault, which is what makes the arrangement legal under the local rules, cuz the MLS requires a licensed brokerage on every listing. What $399 does not buy: showings, negotiation, pricing strategy, or anyone to call when a buyer's agent asks for a repair credit at 9 p.m. Around it I paid Quentin $250 for 43 photos with HDR, and a real estate attorney named Dana $900 to review the contract and run title. That was the whole crew. Me, Quentin, Dana, and a yard sign.

thirty-two showings, one legal pad

The listing went live June 13 at $318,500, priced under the agent's April market analysis on purpose, cuz I wanted traffic more than I wanted room to negotiate. The first open house brought 14 groups through in three hours. After that it was Saturdays and Sundays to the end of July: 32 showings on the legal pad, 11 weekends, a house held at toy-scale clean for eleven straight weeks with a 7-year-old in it. One man asked if the basement had ever flooded. One woman opened my dishwasher and looked at my dishes. I logged every showing with a time and a tick mark, and the pad is still in a drawer.

the Tulsa couple who stayed 50 minutes

Showing number 28 was the one. They walked the house for 50 minutes on July 19, measured the garage with a tape, asked about the roof, and I handed them the folder: full replacement in 2022, $11,800, permit and receipt, plus paperwork on the water heater and the furnace service. Their agent called Tuesday with an offer. The couple, Priya and Sam, wrote a letter about the porch that I am keeping, cuz whatev else this process was, two people liked this house enough to write a letter about it.

my counter at $319,500

Their offer came in July 21 at $314,000 with the buyer's agent taking 2.5 percent and a 21-day close, and I countered at $319,500 the same night, on the phone, no theater: just the roof folder and the eleven-weekend record of traffic. We settled July 23 at $318,000, no repair credits, and they bought their own refrigerator. My net before the mortgage payoff was $308,501, against Tom's $293,280, a difference of $15,221 in the same month on the same floor plan. Mine brought $6,000 more than his, which I put down to the 2022 roof receipts and to nobody in the transaction needing to protect a commission.

the wire on August 28

Closing happened August 28 at Dana's office, 37 minutes start to finish, and the wire hit my checking account at 4:02 that afternoon: $308,501. Priya and Sam took a photo on the porch on their way out, and I took one of the empty kitchen where the legal pad had lived all summer. The pad went into the Omaha box with its last page showing 32 tick marks and nothing else. The house I sold without an agent made me about $15,221 more than the full-service route next door, and it cost me eleven weekends of my daughter's last summer in Kansas. Both of those are the price.

both signs down on Overlook

Tom's sign came down July 20 and mine came down August 30, two days after closing, and I drove past both bare posts on my last weekend in Wichita. The legal pad sits in the box with number 28 circled, the Sunday evening I stood in my kitchen adding a tally while the Tulsa couple measured my garage. Eleven weekends, $9,499 in costs, $15,221 of difference, one subtraction that held. That is the whole scoreboard.