It's true that there's scope for an alternate MLS that's just for sale by owner listings. But as someone else mentioned, the buyer often uses an agent (I refuse to use the made-up word "realtor") and you'll have to pay that fee anyway. Unless, that is, your listings site provided handholding to do away with the buying agent. To handle the paperwork, a notary and/or a lawyer is necessary but the site could either provide those services for cheap or detailed instructions on how to proceed if you want to use your own notary/lawyer. It's simple enough. It turns out that the main function of a real estate agent is to simply ferry paperwork back and forth between the clients and the lawyers. You can just as easily do this yourself (we did and saved a lot).