Abilene home sales took a dip during the month of June compared to June of 2011.
That may be part of the reason why more homeowners are choosing to sell their homes themselves.

After five years of home ownership and plenty of upgrades, Brittany Brown and her husband Zach are ready to sell.  But instead of listing the three-bed, two-bath house with a Realtor, they decided to try and sell it themselves.  Brown said it comes down to money and keeping as much as possible in this buyer's market.

"We have spent a lot of money on our house. It's an older home, and we've a lot of money ourselves into it and we already know we're not going to get what we want, but at least selling it ourselves we'll get a little bit more," Brown said.

We noticed more homes recently for sale by owner and wondered if it's a trend in our area.  While no one keeps an official tally on that sort of thing, we did talk to Andy McCall at First Texas Title.  He said they have seen an uptick of homeowners at the closing table without a Realtor.  But he also added For Sale by Owners had dropped off during the recession.  The increase now, may be sellers coming back around as the housing market picks back up.

On average, Realtors will take a 6 percent total commission on a home sale.  For the Browns, selling themselves could mean an extra $7,000 in their pockets.

"We had one open house so far and we had like 16 different couples come through several interest, so doing it ourselves I think we're doing a pretty good job," said Brown.

According to the Abilene Board of Realtors, the majority of homes that sold this June with the help of a Realtor, spent no more than a month on the market.

The average home is spending about 76 days on the market before selling.