Approximately one in five home sellers, or 20%, attempt to sell their home on their own and then only 4% are successful.

Many fail because they have little or no insight into the real estate industry or worse they have the wrong information. Wrong information leads to poor decisions, which can cause your home to remain on the market longer than you expect, as you won't be attracting or getting offers from qualified buyers.

Undoubtedly, this will cause undue stress and frustration and may prompt you to give up your dream of selling your home yourself. And keep in mind that before you put the for sale sign up, you'll need to spend considerable time researching the marketplace and carefully plan your selling strategy.

As a home seller, you've probably set the following objectives, you want to net the most amount of money when selling your home yourself, you want to save the commission and therefore expect to achieve a higher net sale, you want to sell in the shortest amount of time and of course you want to accomplish these goals with the least amount of inconvenience or hassle.

Cleaning, preparing open houses and showings are a lot of work and are very demanding of your time. You will want to price your home within a range of what homes similar to yours have sold for and are selling for right now in your area. Buyers will do their own research and will most likely have the help of a realtor.

You will want to make sure you get it right from the start. Knowing the approximate income of your potential buyers is important too. A good source for this information is a local mortgage lender who may also help you determine the most likely financing, cash requirements and income necessary for a buyer to purchase your home.

You do not want unqualified prospects traipsing through your home. This can potentially waste a lot of your time and unfortunately, unlike a seller who's working with a real estate agent, you won't have the ability to pre-qualify buyers.

If in the future you decide to use the services of a realtor, you would be putting yourself in a better position if you allowed them to present their marketing plan to you.

Best of luck in your home sale.