Selling your own home seems so easy. You just plant a for-sale sign in the front yard, hold an open house, then sit back and wait for the purchase offers to come in. The fast-paced real estate market makes selling on your own seem even easier.

Appearances can be deceiving. Real estate agents know for-sale-by-owners ( FSBOs) rarely manage to sell their own homes. It's not that they don't understand the process many have been through one or more transactions. The difficulties lie in pricing the property to sell, executing a strong marketing plan and motivating interested buyers to take action.

FSBO Dorothy Harris is a case in point. She's had her Culver City condominium on the market at $318,000 for nearly a month, but she hasn't received a single offer. She's taken all the right steps from researching sales of comparable homes to placing advertisements in local newspapers, posting the home on several FSBO Web sites, holding two open houses and manning the telephone. She says the newspaper ads and open houses generated the most interest. The Web site postings resulted in quite a few calls, but they were all from people selling homeowner-related products.

Harris points to a variety of culprits that might be hurting her efforts. One possibility is buyers might be shy about submitting an opening offer directly to the seller. "My suspicion is that people at the open houses may have been reluctant to put in a beginning low bid dealing directly with the owner. There is no (agent) to soften the blow. People are intimidated by that prospect," she says. To encourage all offers, Harris has signaled her willingness to extend courtesy to brokers and to negotiate on price if the terms are favorable. "We asked a bit more than we expect to get for purposes of negotiation. We didn't want to be among the foolish for-sale-by-owner people who say this is how much I want and I'm not willing to negotiate," she says.

Harris also wonders whether agents deliberately avoid FSBOs even if they have a buyer who might be interested in the home. She says one agent told her FSBOs have a reputation for being difficult to work with and some agents don't want to do double duty when there is no listing agent to help the transaction through escrow.

Quite a few agents have stopped by to see Harris' home with the goal of convincing her to sign a listing agreement. "Most of them have been very pleasant," she notes. Agents know patience pays in such cases because most FSBOs ultimately decide to work with an agent.

Having had the home on the market for several weeks, is Harris still optimistic about selling it herself? "It varies by the hour!" she exclaims. "I think there is no question that we will sell the home, but it's a question of how fast. We had hoped to have the deal finished by August. Now we'll have to reevaluate whether we want to turn to a broker or take it off the market and (try again later this year)."

Stay tuned for a follow-up report in a few weeks.