Success Stories: Christopher from Thrumster, NSW

“Don’t stress at the start. It’s all going to work out perfectly!”

Christopher sold his four-bedroom family home at 97 Capital Drive, Thrumster, just west of Port Macquarie, himself through PropertyNow. It went live on 4 June 2026 with a price guide of $965,000 to $995,000 and sold on 1 July for $975,000. Twenty-seven days, inside the range he set, no agent.

At the rates regional NSW agents commonly charge, 2.5% to 3.5%, the commission on a $975,000 sale would have been roughly $24,000 to $34,000 before GST and marketing. Christopher paid PropertyNow’s flat listing fee instead, so call it a saving of more than $23,000. Your own figure is a few seconds away on the commission savings calculator.

His answers to our questions were short, so rather than a full interview, this is his story with his words in it.

The worry: will buyers trust a private seller?

What made Christopher hesitate before listing was the buyers.

“I was hesitant that maybe people would be sceptical of buying a house from an owner seller.”

We hear this one a lot, and it’s a reasonable thing to wonder. The answer, in his case, came from watching the street. “However, after seeing the properties around me sell at lightning speed I figured there was nothing to lose.”

That’s a sound way to make the call. If similar homes near you are selling quickly, the buyers are already there and already looking. They’re searching realestate.com.au and Domain by suburb, price and bedrooms, and your listing sits in the same results as every agent’s. Christopher’s went up on 4 June and sold in under four weeks.

The hardest part: trusting his own price

Asked what was hardest, Christopher didn’t mention open homes or negotiation. His answer was about the number.

“Backing myself that the price put on my property was correct.”

You can’t outsource that one. An agent will hand you an appraisal, but you still have to decide whether to believe it, and plenty of sellers who use an agent end up second-guessing the number anyway. Selling yourself, you set the guide and then you hold your nerve.

He held it. A guide of $965,000 to $995,000 and a result of $975,000 is about as clean a match between asking and selling as you’ll see, which suggests the number was right. If that’s the bit you’re dreading, our guide to researching and setting your selling price walks through where the evidence comes from, mainly recent comparable sales, and how to read a guide range so it attracts the right buyers without leaving money behind.

What helped, and what it felt like

The two things he singled out from PropertyNow were practical rather than fancy: “The ability to edit my ad on the go and get my property on the popular sites.”

That’s the job in a sentence. A licensed agency puts your home on realestate.com.au and Domain, where the buyers are, and you keep control of the listing itself, so if you want to change a photo or reword the description on a Tuesday night, you just do it.

As for how it felt: “It felt great to be able to be in control the whole time.”

And the ending has a nice symmetry to it. “We have purchased another property who also sold privately. Saving on commission with both sales.” As he tells it, the home they bought was a private sale too, so the family’s move was agent-free on both sides.

Christopher’s advice

Asked what he’d tell himself before starting, he kept it to one line.

“Don’t stress at the start. It’s all going to work out perfectly!”

We’d add a little to that, because not every sale takes 27 days and we’d rather you went in with clear eyes. In a quieter market the same home might take two or three months and a price adjustment along the way. But the underlying point stands. The early days of a listing are when sellers are most tempted to panic. Research the price, present the place well, answer enquiries quickly, and let the buyers who are already looking find you.

The bottom line

Christopher’s story is the version most sellers will recognise, and that’s the point of it. A family home in a regional suburb, priced with care, sold in under four weeks for a figure inside the guide, with the commission staying in the family’s pocket. The worry he started with, that buyers might not trust a private seller, is the worry almost everyone starts with. Twenty-seven days later it was answered.

If you’re weighing up the same decision, our guide to selling your house privately covers the whole process, and there’s a five-step guide for NSW sellers with the state-specific bits, including the contract you’ll need prepared before you go to market.

Sell your home yourself, with a licensed agency behind you

Christopher listed on realestate.com.au and Domain, kept control of his ad, and sold in 27 days without paying commission. You can do the same.

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