"I couldn’t take the personal interaction of people walking in my house and making nasty comments."

That's how one Madison home seller justified paying a realtor's commission, but traditionally people have accepted the argument that the realtor will get you a higher price, and you'll actually come out ahead. But there's a front-page NYT article reporting on a new study, based on house sales in Madison, showing that the for-sale-by-owner -- FSBO, pronounced FIZZ-bo -- approach puts the seller ahead.

Now, Madison is kind of special:

FSBOMadison.com, the subject of a January 2006 article in The New York Times, charges $150 for an ad on the site and a yard sign. Taking advantage of antiestablishment sentiment in Madison, which has a highly educated and liberal population, it quickly grabbed a market share of roughly 20 percent. That made it among the most successful challengers in the country to real estate agent domination of home sales.

That scale, along with the cooperation of the site’s owners and of the local Realtor group, made the economists’ study possible. “We don’t have national data,” Mr. Nevo, one of the authors, said. “FSBOMadison is unique.”

So Madison is special -- don't we know? -- because of FSBOMadison.com and because of our "highly educates and liberal" "antiestablishment" culture. Does that make us resist professional help and think we can do better? Personally, I just can't picture myself interacting with all manner of strangers and ushering them around my house.