If you've ever sold or bought a house, then you know enlisting the help of a real estate agent comes with a steep price. As a buyer, you might find your dream home quicker, but you'll ultimately ante up for the agent's huffing and puffing. But the blow isn't quite as direct as it is for the guy on the other end of the transaction.

As a seller, you might be paying for analysis, marketing, a waiting line of potential buyers, and hopefully a swift sale. But in the end, the triumph might not be so, well, salable. Sell a house for 200 grand, and you're likely to pay $12,000 in real estate commissions. Cuts into the profit, now doesn't it? And after the fact, you might be thinking, "Gee, I could have done all that myself and saved a few thou."

There's got to be a cheaper way. Of course, there's certainly no law against selling your house by yourself. Stake a sign in the front yard and hope for the best, right? But that may be all you've got is hope, because real estate agents are the ones who have the buyers--or at least the bulk of the buyers.

Most buyers hear about your house for sale through the MLS, or the multiple listing service. It's what Realtors use to advertise homes for sale. But here's where you're stuck between a dog and a fire hydrant as a seller: to get your house in that listing, you basically have to list it with an agent, which means agreeing to pay about a 3 percent commission just for that privilege. So, if your home sells for $120,000, presumably the MLS listing would be worth a $3,600 slice out of your bottom line. Doesn't matter if the buyer never even saw the MLS listing for your house, you still pay that commission.

Things are changing, however. Savvy real estate companies are sales professionals who know that just a sliver of the pie is better than no pie at all. So, instead of excluding solo sellers from the MLS, they're selling MLS listings for one-time, non-refundable flat fees.

The typical fee for getting your house listed in the MLS is $500 charged by local and national real estate services such as:

• Gallery of Homes
  
• FSBO Advertising Service
  
• Buy Owner
  
• Flat Fee Realty
  
• Sale By Owner Realty

These are a sampling of the MLS listing services nationally. If you're leaning toward the flat-fee listing idea when you start to sell your home, you might want to check with your local Realtors to see if they offer the same thing.

"Flat-Fee" is Misleading
The flat-fee listing is definitely an affordable and cost-effective service for sellers selling on their own. There's no doubt that having your home listed in the MLS is going to bring more potential buyers to the door than a classified ad and a For Sale sign would. But be careful what you sign up for. The terms of these MLS listing agreements vary from company to company, but often the seller has to agree to put up a 2-3 percent commission if a real estate agent is representing the buyers. So, the "flat-fee" sales pitch is misleading. And some of these agencies will tack on administrative or service fees to the cost of your MLS listing.

And don't forget, these flat-fee real estate companies are in the business of making as much money as possible. And $500 per listing is not going to cut it for them. What they really want to sell you are their selling services--a la carte, or bundled up into $3,000 packages that serve the same purpose as if the seller had hired an agent:

• Bringing in qualified buyers
  
• Determining your home's fair market value
  
• Advertising
  
• For Sale Signs
  
• Open houses
  
• Lock boxes
  
• Negotiations

The whole kit and kaboodle. Here again, though, you have that 3% commission looming overhead. If you think not too hard about it, the packaged services involve an agent, and an agent who will want to claim success and that 3 percent upon sale of the house.

Oh, it's absolutely a certainty you'll save thousands going this route. Example: if we purchased the MLS listing for $500 and say another $500 in a la carte realty services, and then the buyer's agent took his or her 3 percent on the sale of our $120,000 house, we would be spending only $4,600. That's a whole lot better than a full $7,200 commission had we hired an agent to do the selling for us.

Bottom line? As a seller, the $500 expense on the MLS listing is indeed worth your while. But in order to avoid any other sales expenses, you're going to have to hustle like crazy to make the sale before a Realtor does, or at the least find buyers who aren't represented.

The for-sale-by-owner idea has surpassed the trend stage and become real estate reality and commissioned agents know it. They've basically responded to outcries against high commissions by slicing those commissions in half and trying to recoup the other half with products and services to assist the do-it-yourselfer.

When it's all said and done, no matter how you slice it, it's sales ingenuity at its finest: If you can't beat 'em, then at least make it look like you're joining them.