For Sale By Owner Statistics: 7 Honest Numbers for 2026

For sale by owner statistics say 5% of sellers went it alone in NAR’s latest survey, and their homes had a $360,000 median against $425,000 with an agent. Both numbers are true. Neither means what most pages claim. Below are the seven honest numbers, where they come from, what the price gap measures, and the commission math at today’s median.

The 7 for sale by owner statistics that matter

I keep seven numbers in front of me when a seller asks whether selling by owner still works. Each one changes a decision. None of them is decoration for a press release, and I’ve cut the ones that were.

1. 5% of home sales were for sale by owner in NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, below the previous record low of 7%.¹
2. 91% of sellers used a real estate agent, a record high in the same report.¹
3. 21% was the FSBO share in 1985, and it has sat mostly in single digits since 2010.¹
4. $360,000 was the median FSBO sale price, against $425,000 for agent-assisted sales.¹
5. 40% of FSBO sellers did not actively market their homes.¹
6. 6.69% was the average mortgage rate while NAR collected the data, from July 2024 to June 2025.²
7. $434,100 was the median existing-home price in July 2026, the number I use for commission math.⁴

The first five for sale by owner statistics come from NAR’s own write-up of its 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.¹ Number six sits on the report’s highlights page.² Number seven is NAR’s July 2026 Existing-Home Sales report, a monthly sales report rather than a survey of buyers.⁴ I’d treat any page that mixes the two without saying so as unreliable, because the Profile describes a market that closed in mid-2025 and the sales report describes this summer.

Where NAR’s FSBO numbers come from

Most for sale by owner statistics trace back to one mailed survey, not a count of every closing. In July 2025, NAR mailed a 120-question survey to 173,250 recent home buyers.³ It received 6,103 responses, an adjusted response rate of 3.5%.³ The results represent owner-occupants only, so investors and vacation homes are out.³ NAR mailed it to buyers, so the seller answers come from people who bought and sold in the same stretch.

NAR puts the confidence interval at plus or minus 1.25% for the full sample.³ That margin belongs to all buyers. The FSBO group is 5% of the sellers inside that sample, which makes it a small group, and the margin on any FSBO-only figure is wider than the headline suggests. NAR doesn’t publish that FSBO-only margin in the release, and I won’t invent one.

Dates matter more than most pages admit. The 2025 Profile covers transactions completed between July 2024 and June 2025.² Mortgage rates averaged 6.69% during data collection.² So a page labelled 2026 is describing a market that closed over a year ago. The report has been published since 1981, which is why the 1985 figure and the 2025 figure can sit in the same sentence.²

The all-seller numbers in the same release give you the backdrop. A typical seller had lived in the home for 11 years, an all-time high, and moved 30 miles.³ Half bought a newer home and 34% bought a larger one.³ Long tenure means equity, and equity is what a commission percentage comes out of.

My rule for quoting for sale by owner statistics is simple. I quote the Profile for behavior and the monthly sales report for prices. Mix them and you end up dividing a mid-2025 commission by a 2026 price, and the savings figure you show a seller is wrong before you start.

The $360,000 vs $425,000 gap, read properly

NAR reports the median FSBO sale at $360,000 over the past year, versus $425,000 for agent-assisted sales, and calls that an 18% gap in favor of agent-listed homes.¹ The 18% is measured against the FSBO median. The same $65,000 spread is about 15.3% of the $425,000 agent-assisted median, on my arithmetic. Pages that say FSBO homes “sell for 18% less” are repeating NAR’s framing, not reporting a like-for-like result.

NAR then tells you the two groups are not the same houses. The lower price point, it writes, “may reflect that FSBO homes tend to be more frequently lower-cost mobile homes or those located in rural areas.”¹ The most common reasons people sell by owner include selling to a friend or relative.¹ A sale to your brother at an agreed price counts as FSBO in this data. It never competed for a buyer.

So the two medians measure what sold, not how well it sold. A rural mobile home and a private family sale both sit inside the $360,000 figure. Neither is a marketed, competitive sale. That makes the gap a composition problem before it is a commission problem, and most for sale by owner statistics pages never ask the question.

The cleanest test I know of held the house mix closer to constant. Hendel, Nevo and Ortalo-Magné compared a Madison, Wisconsin FSBO platform with MLS sales in a 2009 American Economic Review paper. They found that “FSBO precommission prices are no lower.”⁵ Precommission means the sale price before any agent fee comes out, so it compares the houses rather than the fee structures.

One city, one platform, published in 2009. I treat it as evidence, not proof, and I’d be lying if I called it a national result. But it is the only peer-reviewed comparison I know of that controls for the house, and it points the opposite way from the raw medians. Treating two differently built groups as a test of the listing agreement is the error I see most in these survey tables.

The numbers that argue against selling by owner

Now the part a listing company isn’t supposed to lead with. The same Madison paper that clears FSBO on price convicts it on execution. FSBO was “less effective in terms of time to sell and probability of a sale.”⁵ A price that matches the MLS is worth nothing if the house never sells. A seller with a closing date on the next house cares about that far more than any median.

NAR’s own survey backs that up. Forty percent of FSBO sellers didn’t actively market their homes.¹ FSBO sellers most often said they struggled with pricing the home, preparing it for sale, and selling within their desired timeframe.¹ Sellers who used an agent said they did it to market the home to a wider pool of buyers and price it more competitively.¹ Eighty-six percent said their agent provided a broad range of services, and 87% would likely recommend them.¹

Then there is the market share. FSBO fell from 21% of sales in 1985 to 5% now, while 91% of sellers used an agent, equal to the highest share on record.¹ The slide continued even as technology entered more of the transaction, in NAR’s words.¹ Whatever the price evidence says, most sellers keep voting for an agent with their own money. Those are the for sale by owner statistics that should worry a DIY seller, and they are about exposure and time, not price.

So here is what I tell sellers, and it costs me listings. A flat fee MLS listing fixes exactly one problem: exposure. It puts the house on the MLS and the portals buyers already search. It doesn’t price the home, write the disclosures, or negotiate the inspection credit. If you want those handled, hire a professional and pay them. I’d rather lose the listing than pretend a $95 MLS entry replaces a negotiator.

Nor does the paperwork shrink. The paperwork for selling a house by owner is the same stack whether or not an agent is in the room. Those 40% who never marketed their home are a warning about what happens when nobody owns that job.

What a listing costs at the $434,100 median

Sellers stare at a percentage and rarely multiply it, so I do the multiplication with NAR’s current number. The July 2026 median existing-home price was $434,100, up 2.0% from $425,700 a year earlier.⁴ Unsold inventory sat at a 4.6-month supply, unchanged from a year ago.⁴ That is a normal market, so the math below isn’t a boom-time trick.

At that price, a 3% listing-side fee is $13,023 and a 2.5% fee is $10,852.50. The HomeRise Essentials plan is a $95 listing fee plus $495 at closing, charged only if you sell, so $590 in total.⁶ The listing-side difference is $12,433 at 3% and $10,262.50 at 2.5%.

That gap is the listing side only. A buyer’s agent commission, if you offer one, is separate and still yours to pay. The rest of what it costs to sell a house sits outside this column too. A for sale by owner sale means you run the showings and the negotiation, and the steps for selling a house by owner don’t shrink because the yard sign has your number on it.

The MLS side works the same from state to state. A flat fee MLS listing in Texas puts a Houston house in front of the same buyers a full-commission listing reaches, for the same $590. What changes by state is the disclosure form and the closing custom, not the exposure.

The survey measures who sold, not how well they sold. Exposure and execution decide the outcome, and only one of those is for sale at $95.

So decide honestly. Want pricing, disclosures, and negotiation handled? Hire someone and pay what the work is worth. Confident you can do that part yourself? Then exposure is the only thing you’re missing, and the MLS entry buys it without 3% of your equity leaving at closing. I’d put the $12,433 toward the next house before I’d put it toward a listing presentation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What percentage of homes are sold for sale by owner?

For sale by owner statistics from NAR’s 2025 Profile put the share at 5% of home sales, below the previous record low of 7%. A record 91% of sellers used an agent. The data covers transactions completed between July 2024 and June 2025.

Do FSBO homes really sell for less than agent-listed homes?

The raw for sale by owner statistics say $360,000 versus $425,000, which NAR frames as an 18% gap. NAR also says the lower FSBO price may reflect more lower-cost mobile homes and rural properties, so it isn’t a like-for-like test. The one peer-reviewed study that controlled for the house found FSBO precommission prices were no lower.

Why has the FSBO share fallen so far?

The for sale by owner statistics show a slide from 21% of sales in 1985 to mostly single digits since 2010, and 5% in the latest survey. NAR says the slide continued even as technology entered more of the transaction. Part of the remaining 5% is sales to friends and relatives that were never going to be listed with anyone.

How reliable are for sale by owner statistics?

NAR’s Profile drew 6,103 responses from a 173,250-piece mailing, a 3.5% response rate, with a margin of plus or minus 1.25% for the full sample. The FSBO slice is a small part of that sample, so its margin is wider. I treat FSBO-only figures as directional, not precise.

Is selling for sale by owner a good idea in 2026?

It depends on whether you will expose the house and execute the sale. The for sale by owner statistics that should worry you are about marketing and time to sell, not price. A flat fee MLS listing buys the exposure, while pricing, paperwork, and negotiation stay with you.

How much does an agent cost compared with a flat fee listing?

At NAR’s July 2026 median of $434,100, a 3% listing-side fee is $13,023. A $95 flat fee listing plus $495 at closing is $590, so the listing-side difference is $12,433. A buyer’s agent fee, if you offer one, is separate.

Sources

1. National Association of REALTORS, “FSBOs Reach All-Time Low, More Sellers Rely on Agents,” November 11, 2025
2. National Association of REALTORS, Highlights From the 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers
3. National Association of REALTORS, news release on the 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, November 4, 2025 (methodology)
4. National Association of REALTORS, Existing-Home Sales Report, August 11, 2026
5. Hendel, Nevo and Ortalo-Magné, “The Relative Performance of Real Estate Marketing Platforms: MLS versus FSBOMadison.com,” American Economic Review 99(5), December 2009
6. HomeRise pricing: $95 listing fee plus $495 at closing