Recently I watched this item on a family that thinks they saved $26,000 by selling their home themselves. First, I feel a little gypped that 60 minutes bothered posting this one minute and eight second long clip, and then made me sit through a 30 second commercial to see it. But I digress.

This couple seems to think that all a licensed real estate agent would have done for them is print some brochures for the sign in front of their place and held an open house. The fact is that a licensed real estate agent does a lot more.

First, the agent can get your house into the Multiple Listing Service. According to the NAR, 75% of home buyers in 2006 used a buyers agent and the MLS — this family limited themselves to one in four potential buyers at the outset. They got a small online listing, sure, but you only saw that listing through the Owner/Seller site they used. This site is used by a tiny minority of the people in any given time and place who are interested in buying a house.

Second, an agent has a rolodex full of trustworthy contractors he or she has done business with many times before. People like carpenters, painters, cleaning crews, electricians, plumbers, title companies, and even loan officers. These people want to do a good, fast, and reasonably priced job so they will be called back again. If you think your house is in perfect shape and you need no contractors, fine. But I bet you are wrong.

Third, because an agent is not you, they can get feedback you can’t about your house. People might be too polite to tell you your house is cluttered, or smells bad, or that the paint in your kid’s room is awful. But you want to know why people aren’t buying your house, don’t you?

Fourth, an agent knows how to do an accurate market comparison in an impartial fashion. It’s a lot more complicated than punching an address into Zillow. You might say “But the house on the next block sold for $30,000 more than that!” But the agent can say “Yes, and they have a pool, new carpet throughout, and 500 more square feet,” or “Yes, but that was 6 months ago and right now there’s a house in your floorplan 3 blocks away selling for even less.” The agent wants you to list for a fair selling price, because even though her pay is a percentage of the sales price, she doesn’t get paid until after it closes. In short, she wants it to be the highest price that it will sell for in a reasonable period of time. She doesn’t want your house to sit on the market for ten to twenty months any more than you do.

Fifth and most importantly, a licensed real estate agent will help you follow the law. Do you know whether you are required to give a statement about the dangers of lead paint? At what point you must give a disclosure about anything that might be wrong with the house? If there is a particular form you need to use for that? What the legal description of your house is? How to get a payoff amount from your mortgage company? How to fill out a sale agreement? What items must be notarized? The difference between owning property as “Joint Tenancy” or “Tenancy in Common”? What things you can and can’t put in your advertising from a Fair Housing Law standpoint? In short, she is paid to make sure things are done right.

And that’s just 5 of the biggest things. Sure, this couple thinks they’ve saved $26,000. But they haven’t figured out what their time is worth, nor do they know how much the home would have sold for marketed by a professional. You wouldn’t sell a hundred shares of stock without professional, unless of course you were a professional yourself; why would you sell your biggest investment that way?