When a Realtor Sells Their Own Home
Selling a Home · From Moving Fort Wayne
When a Realtor Sells Their Own Home
Brock has a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath two-story in southwest Fort Wayne with a three-car garage, a fenced yard, and a pond view. He sells homes for a living. And right now, his own home is sitting on the market, waiting.
That gap between knowing the process and living it is the whole subject of this episode. On Moving Fort Wayne, host Brad Noll of The Noll Team sits down with Brock to talk about what a realtor selling their own home actually experiences: the pricing conversations, the two-hour showing scrambles, the questions from a spouse who doesn't watch the market every day.
If you're thinking about listing in Fort Wayne, this one is for you. Not because Brock has a shortcut, but because he doesn't. The process is the same. What changes is how it feels from the inside.
Why a Realtor Selling Their Own Home Becomes a Better Agent
Brad has a standing belief he shares with his team: agents should be buying or selling roughly every five years, if it's financially reasonable for them.
"It's really good for realtors to go through this because I think we learn a lot and it helps us become not just more educated but have more empathy," Brad says. "I think we can understand what our sellers are going through."
Brock is beating that timeline. He and his wife Ashley have been in their home four years.
The reasoning is straightforward. Market conditions change. Brad points out that earlier in his 23-plus-year career, homes took about four months to sell on average. The advice you give in that market is not the advice you give when homes move in days. Right now in Fort Wayne, the average is roughly 35 to 40 days. An agent who hasn't personally transacted in a decade is coaching from memory, not from the current market.
“Listing our own home personally makes me put in perspective how important it is to always have communication with the sellers that we work with on a daily basis.”
Brock Noye
The Real Reason to Move: Lifestyle Change and the Great Equity Grab
Brock gives two reasons he and Ashley decided now was their time, and neither one is the interest rate.
The house stopped fitting the family
"We have three awesome kids that have just outspaced us," Brock says. "It's just another one of those pieces of a lifestyle change that you're like, hey, everything feels on top of us."
Brad recognized it immediately. Three kids, every birthday, every Christmas, more stuff arriving and nothing leaving. The toys don't get smaller. Neither do the kids. It's the same squeeze a large share of Fort Wayne move-up buyers are feeling right now.
Repurposing equity instead of waiting on rates
The second reason is financial, and it's the one more homeowners should be running the numbers on. Brock and Ashley are taking the equity they've built and redirecting it: paying down debt and moving into a home they can call a forever home, without changing their financial position for the worse.
Brad calls this the great equity grab. After the artificially low rate environment, plenty of people who've owned four or five years or more are sitting on real equity.
"A lot of people right now think that they're stuck in their low interest rate," Brad says, "but what they really are is they're stuck with all this equity and don't know what to do."
The move isn't a rate play. It's an equity play tied to a lifestyle need.
Selling Your Own House: Does the Process Actually Change?
Brad asked the question directly. When it's your house, do you still take your own advice on pricing, marketing, and price adjustments? Or are there secrets you keep for yourself?
"Never," Brock says. "The process of doing this personally is going to be the same exact way that I would go through it with a seller of my own."
That includes running a real listing appointment with his own wife. Why are we selling? What are we doing this for? Where do we price this and how? What needs to happen to get the house ready? Same questions, same order, same discipline.
Brock and Ashley also did what The Noll Team asks every seller to do: identify the buyer. They bought the home as a growing family, and they believe the next owner looks a lot like they did, a first-time buyer stepping up into more space, drawn to the pond view and the fenced yard they added when they got a dog and planned for kids.
Staging and Living in a Home That's on the Market
The advice is easy to give. Declutter. Depersonalize. Remove things. Living it while three kids are in the house is a different exercise.
Brock brought in Lindsey with Noll Team Interiors to build the plan: what furniture stays, what piece of decor comes down, how each room gets into its best condition. "Always got to give a shout out to Lindsey," he says. "She rocks."
Then there's the daily reality. Fewer toys in the playroom. No clothes on the dresser. And the notification.
"Once that notification comes through, we drop everything and we got to go into cleaning mode," Brock says. "Vacuum lines in the carpet, here we go. Baseboards."
Brad raised a practical tip for sellers whose schedules make this harder: eating out more to keep the kitchen clean, working from a coffee shop to keep the house showing-ready. Brock notes he's fortunate that Ashley is home during the day. For dual-working households, that pressure is real, right down to hesitating on a meal that takes three hours and fills the house with smell.
Why Communication Matters More Than Anything Else in a Home Sale
This is where the episode lands, and it's the part worth reading twice.
Bring your spouse inside the process
Brock put Ashley on the showing notifications and the feedback from day one, the same way he would set up any seller. She still asks the questions any homeowner asks, like why a listing four doors down shows different save counts on Zillow. Those questions are normal. They deserve answers, not deflection.
Brad has watched this dynamic for two decades: in a couple, one person is often emotional about the home where the kids came home or where Thanksgiving happened, and the other is focused on the numbers.
"Do not lose this opportunity to improve your communication," Brad says. Both of those personalities can exist in the same house at the same time.
Come back to why you're selling
When the market gets quiet, Brock's reset is to return to the original conversation. "Let's just remember, like, why we're doing this," he says. That anchor keeps a slow week from turning into a panic decision.
Proactive updates, not daily noise
Brad's standard is specific. Sellers don't need to talk every day, but they should always know where things stand.
"I always like to talk about DoorDash or Uber," Brad says. "I always know where my order's at, I always know where my driver's at. And I believe sellers need that. They need that confidence."
Brock's biggest takeaway from listing his own home is the same idea from the other chair: "I always want to know what I can do better. So I can just imagine that's what our sellers are thinking as well."
FAQ
How long does it take to sell a house in Fort Wayne right now?
Brad notes the current average is roughly 35 to 40 days. That number moves with the market. Earlier in his career, four months was normal, and the coaching that fits a four-month market is very different from the coaching that fits a four-day market.
Why isn't my house getting showings in late summer?
Timing plays a large role. Families are finishing vacations and getting kids back into school routines. Brad cites a Housing Wire stat showing mortgage applications dropped over a 30-day stretch in early to mid-August, then began rising again. Once routines settle after Labor Day, showings tend to pick back up.
Do realtors get a better deal selling their own homes?
No. As Brock puts it, the process he runs for himself is the same one he runs for clients, from the listing conversation to pricing to staging. Brad's framing: "Just because we're in the business doesn't mean it's going to sell in a day."
How often should my agent communicate while my home is listed?
Enough that you always know where the transaction stands. Brad recommends proactive check-ins, including a weekly pull of the stats and numbers so you can look at the listing from 30,000 feet instead of reacting emotionally week to week.
▶ Listen to the full episode
Growing into the Next Chapter with Brock Noye, on Moving Fort Wayne.
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