Selling a US home without a listing agent: figures and federal rules

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A home in the United States can be sold by its owner with no listing agent at all. The trade calls it a for-sale-by-owner sale, or FSBO. The question that follows is always the same: how common is it, what does it do to the price, and which federal rules still apply when no licensed professional stands between the owner and the buyer?

This guide sets out the position as read in October 2026. It draws on the National Association of Realtors' 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, the latest edition published at that date, on the Environmental Protection Agency's page on lead disclosures, on the text of the Fair Housing Act in the United States Code, on the Texas statute that defines a broker, on an association article of 8 February 2005 about minimum-service laws and on the association's own material about its 2024 practice changes. It describes figures and federal rules only. It is not a complete guide to selling a home without an agent: state seller disclosure forms, the states where an attorney conducts the closing, and the tax reporting of a sale are not covered, and the last section lists what was left out. It does not say whether selling alone suits any particular owner.

National Association of Realtors, 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, as reported by the association on 4 and 11 November 2025. Transactions from July 2024 to June 2025.

How many owners sell without an agent

The National Association of Realtors, the trade body for agents and brokers, has surveyed recent buyers and sellers every year since 1981. In an article published on 11 November 2025, the association said its 2025 profile put for-sale-by-owner sales at 5 per cent of home sales, which it called a new record low. The same article said the share had been as high as 21 per cent in 1985.

The other side of the figure is agent use. The association's release of 4 November 2025 said 91 per cent of sellers used an agent, equal to the highest percentage on record. The article of 11 November added two satisfaction figures from the same survey: 86 per cent of sellers said their agent offered a broad range of services, and 87 per cent said they would be likely to recommend their agent.

The association's reading of those numbers is its own. Its deputy chief economist, Jessica Lautz, is quoted in the 11 November article as saying: "Real estate agents remain indispensable in today's complex housing market." The figures themselves say something narrower: among the owner-occupiers who answered the survey, about one seller in twenty sold without an agent in the twelve months to June 2025.

The article also gives the two reasons FSBO sellers cited most: they were selling to a friend or a relative, or they wanted to avoid paying an agent's commission. It gives no percentage for either.

What the survey measures, and what it does not

The release of 4 November 2025 describes the method. A questionnaire of 120 questions was posted in July 2025 to 173,250 recent home buyers. The association received 6,103 responses from buyers of a primary residence, an adjusted response rate of 3.5 per cent once undeliverable questionnaires were removed. The transactions covered ran from July 2024 to June 2025, and the sample was a random one, weighted to represent sales geographically. At the 95 per cent confidence level the association gives a margin of error of plus or minus 1.25 per cent.

Three points follow from that description, and each of them limits what the FSBO figure can carry.

The first is scope. The release states that results are representative of owner-occupants and do not include investors or vacation homes. A landlord selling a rental house without an agent, or the owner of a holiday home doing the same, is outside the survey. The 5 per cent is therefore a share of owner-occupier sales as the survey captures them, not of every residential sale in the country.

The second is the route by which sellers enter the sample. The methodology paragraph, as the association published it, describes recent buyers as the people who received the questionnaire. The release does not say how many of the 6,103 respondents had also sold a home in the period, so the number of sellers behind the seller figures, and the smaller number of FSBO sellers behind the FSBO figures, is not given there.

The third is the period. The association's highlights page notes that mortgage rates averaged 6.69 per cent while the data was collected, and the release reports a median of 11 years in the home before selling, which the association called an all-time high. A share measured in those twelve months is a reading of those twelve months.

The price gap, and why it is not like for like

The profile also compares prices. The association's article of 11 November 2025 gives a median FSBO sale price of US$360,000 and a median agent-assisted sale price of US$425,000 for the past year, and describes the gap as 18 per cent in favour of homes listed with an agent.

The difference between the two medians is US$65,000. Measured against the FSBO median, that is 18.1 per cent (65,000 divided by 360,000), which matches the 18 per cent in the article. Measured against the agent-assisted median, the same US$65,000 is 15.3 per cent (65,000 divided by 425,000). Both statements are true; they answer different questions, and a reader who sees "18 per cent" should know which base it uses.

What the two medians do not show is what one given home would have fetched each way. A median is the middle value of a group. The two groups here are made of different homes, in different places, in different condition, sold by owners with different aims. Nothing in the article or the release says the groups were matched by location, size, type or age of home. The comparison is between the middle FSBO sale and the middle agent-assisted sale, and no more than that.

The association's own figures point to reasons why the groups differ. Selling to a friend or relative is one of the two reasons FSBO sellers cited most, and 40 per cent of FSBO sellers did not actively market their homes, according to the same article. A home passed to a family member, or sold to a neighbour who asked first, never met the open market, and its price was not set by competing offers. Such sales sit inside the FSBO median next to the sales of owners who advertised widely and negotiated with strangers. The published figures do not separate the two kinds in the article read for this guide, so the US$360,000 figure cannot be read as the price an owner achieves by marketing a home without an agent.

Both medians are also sale prices. Neither is the amount the seller kept after the costs of selling, and the article gives no figure for net proceeds on either side.

The association reports the difficulties FSBO sellers named most: setting the price, preparing the home for sale and selling within the time they wanted. It gives no percentages for these.

Two medians set side by side compare two groups of homes. They do not show what one home would have sold for by each route.

Why an owner needs no licence to sell

Licensing law in the United States is state law, and each state defines for itself who needs a licence. Texas offers a clear example of how the definition is built. Section 1101.002 of the Texas Occupations Code defines a broker as a person who, for a commission or other valuable consideration, or expecting one, performs listed acts for another person. The acts include selling, listing and negotiating real estate.

Two elements carry the definition: the work is done for someone else, and it is done for pay. An owner who sells a home that belongs to that owner is acting on the owner's own account, not for another person, and so stands outside the definition as Texas writes it. The same chapter also places attorneys licensed in Texas outside its scope, in section 1101.005. This is the Texas wording only; another state's statute may be drawn differently, and the definition would need to be read there.

Federal law takes the unassisted sale for granted too. The Fair Housing Act, discussed below, contains an exemption written around the house sold by its owner without a broker. And it says in terms that the exemption does not stop an owner using attorneys, escrow agents, abstractors, title companies and similar professional help needed to perfect or transfer the title.

Lead-based paint: the federal duty that stays with the seller

The disclosure that applies most widely to an owner selling alone is federal and concerns lead-based paint. The Environmental Protection Agency's page on real estate disclosures, last updated on 27 May 2026, describes the rule made under section 1018 of Title X. It covers most housing built before 1978. Housing built after 1977 is exempt.

The duties are placed on sellers and landlords themselves. Where an agent is involved, the agency says the agent must tell the seller about the obligations and shares responsibility for compliance, unless the seller withheld lead information from the agent. Where there is no agent, nothing on the page moves the duties elsewhere: they rest on the seller alone.

Several details shape how this works in an owner-led sale. The Lead Warning Statement may be an attachment or wording inserted into the contract, and the agency publishes sample forms that may be used. The 10-day period is a default: the parties may lengthen or shorten it in writing, and the buyer may waive it altogether.

The rule is a disclosure rule. The agency's page does not require a seller to test for lead or to remove it; the right to arrange an inspection belongs to the buyer. What the seller must do is tell what is known and pass on what exists.

The paperwork outlives the sale. According to the agency, signed copies of the disclosure are kept for three years after the sale is completed. Without an agent, the copy is the owner's to keep.

The page lists exemptions. Among those relevant to sales are foreclosure sales, and housing whose painted surfaces have been tested by a certified inspector or risk assessor and found free of lead-based paint. Others, such as leases of 100 days or less with no renewal possible, concern rentals.

Fair housing: the exemption that ends at the advertisement

The Fair Housing Act is the federal law against discrimination in housing. Its section on the sale and rental of housing, section 3604 of Title 42 of the United States Code, read here in the 2023 edition of the Code, makes it unlawful to refuse to sell or to negotiate, or to discriminate in the terms of a sale, on the listed grounds.

Section 3603(b)(1) then carves out an exemption for a single-family house sold or rented by its owner. The conditions, as the Code sets them out, are these:

1. The owner does not own more than three such single-family houses at any one time.
2. If the owner was not living in the house at the time of the sale, the exemption covers one such sale within any 24-month period.
3. The sale is made without using, in any manner, the sales facilities or sales services of a real estate broker.
4. The sale is made without publishing, posting or mailing, after notice, any advertisement that breaches section 3604(c).

The third condition is why this exemption belongs in a guide about FSBO sales: it is written for the owner who sells alone, and it falls away once a broker's services are used. The second can be shown with a worked example. Assume an owner who has moved out sells one house under the exemption on 1 March 2026. The 24-month period for that kind of sale would then run to 1 March 2028, and a second sale of a house the owner did not live in, made inside that period, would not have the exemption.

The exemption has a hard edge, and it is the advertisement. Section 3603(b) applies the exemption to section 3604 "other than subsection (c)". Subsection (c) makes it unlawful to make, print or publish, or to cause to be made, printed or published, any notice, statement or advertisement for the sale of a dwelling that indicates a preference, limitation or discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin.

The Act also sets a clock for complaints. Under section 3610, a person who believes they were harmed may file a complaint not later than one year after the alleged discriminatory housing practice occurred or ended. State and local fair housing laws may list further protected grounds; they were not read for this guide.

Limited-service listings and minimum-service laws, as reported in 2005

Between a full-service listing and a sale with no agent sits a middle ground: the owner pays a broker for less than the full service. The National Association of Realtors described this arrangement, as it stood at the time, in an article by its associate counsel published on 8 February 2005. It defined a limited-service listing agreement as one in which the listing broker offers no services other than placing the listing in the multiple listing service. The article noted that such a broker might charge a flat fee or a commission.

That article is more than twenty years old, and it is used here for the history it records, not as a statement of the law in 2026. The history is the arrival of minimum-service measures: state rules saying that a broker who takes an exclusive listing must provide at least a stated set of services, whatever fee is charged.

The Illinois statute, as the 2005 article describes it, obliged the sponsoring broker under an exclusive brokerage agreement to keep assisting the client until a contract is signed and its contingencies are satisfied or waived, and treated a failure to provide the listed services as a breach of the state's licence law. The Texas proposal, as reported in February 2005, went further on one point: it would bar a broker with an exclusive agreement from letting another broker negotiate directly with the seller. The other broker could deliver an offer, but only without discussing its terms with the seller and with the consent of the seller's broker.

All of this is the position of February 2005. Where such a law applies, a broker who takes an exclusive listing is required to do more than enter it in the listing service. Whether that is so in a given state in 2026, and whether a seller may waive the minimum services in writing, depends on that state's current statute or commission rule. The rule as finally adopted in Texas was not read for this guide and is not described here.

The buyer's broker after 17 August 2024

An offer of compensation, in the words of the association's consumer guide of 11 September 2024, is a payment by the seller or the seller's agent to another agent who brings a buyer that closes the purchase. The association's page on the settlement, updated on 24 May 2024, says it reached an agreement with plaintiffs "on March 15", without giving the year, to end litigation brought on behalf of home sellers over broker commissions, and that the practice changes that came with it took effect on 17 August 2024.

Two changes matter to a seller. Offers of compensation to buyers' brokers are no longer allowed on multiple listing service platforms. And a buyer working with an agent who uses a multiple listing service must sign a written agreement before touring a home, in person or by live virtual tour. The association says that agreement must state the amount or rate of the agent's compensation, or how it will be determined, in terms that are objective and not open-ended; must bar the agent from receiving more than that amount from any source; and must state conspicuously that broker fees and commissions are fully negotiable and not set by law.

The consumer guide describes two forms the payment can take: a flat fee paid directly to the buyer's agent, or a share of the listing agent's own compensation. Where a listing agent is involved, that agent may offer or pay compensation only with the seller's written approval of the amount. It distinguishes a concession, which it defines as the seller covering certain costs of the buyer's purchase, such as transaction costs or repairs.

The guide is written for sellers who have an agent, and it does not address an owner selling alone. On this guide's reading, an owner with no listing agent has no listing commission to share, so only the first form, a sum paid to the buyer's agent, is in play, along with concessions. The rules described are those of an association and of multiple listing services; the pages do not say how they reach an owner who never enters one.

The buyer's written agreement fixes what the buyer's agent is to receive, and the consumer guide says an offer may be negotiated in the purchase agreement. On the association's wording the decision to pay is the seller's, the amount is not set by law, and the guide adds that practices may vary with state and local law.

Where a seller's statements create exposure

The federal sources read for this guide show three places where those statements, or the lack of them, carry consequences.

The first is lead. The Environmental Protection Agency says sellers, landlords, agents and property managers who do not comply with the disclosure rule may be subject to penalties. Its page gives no amounts. The page is also clear about what is to be disclosed: known lead-based paint and hazards, and all available records. The duty is tied to what the seller knows and holds, which is why the three-year file of signed disclosures matters as evidence of what was given.

The second is the advertisement. A discriminatory notice or advertisement breaches section 3604(c) of the Fair Housing Act whether or not the owner qualifies for the single-family exemption, and a complaint may be filed within one year under section 3610.

The third is the loss of a shared responsibility. Under the lead rule, an agent shares responsibility with the seller for compliance. In an owner-led sale there is no agent to share it.

Beyond these federal points, liability for a false or incomplete statement about a home's condition is a matter of state law: each state's disclosure statute, its consumer protection law and its courts' decisions on misrepresentation. None of those was read for this guide, and no state remedy is described here.

What this guide leaves out

The sources read in October 2026 support the figures and the federal rules above. They do not cover everything an owner-led sale involves, and an owner should not treat this guide as a full account of the steps or duties of a sale. The section on minimum-service laws describes February 2005 only.

• State seller disclosure statements. The forms a state requires a seller to give about the condition of the home, their timing and their remedies were not read here.
• Who conducts the closing. Whether a state requires an attorney to conduct or supervise the closing was not verified for this guide. The Fair Housing Act wording quoted above shows only that using attorneys, escrow agents and title companies does not affect the owner's exemption.
• Tax reporting of the sale. The federal reporting of sale proceeds at closing, and the tax treatment of any gain, were not read for this guide.
• The full 2025 profile. The figures here come from the association's release, its article and its highlights page. The full report, which the association sells and provides free to members, may break the FSBO figures down further, for example by whether the seller knew the buyer.
• The 2026 profile. The release for the 2025 edition was dated 4 November 2025. No later edition had been read when this guide was written.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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