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Problem is if you negotiate a lower fee percentage under 6%, there will be less agents willing to list your house. And there will be less agents willing to show your house to their buyers. Once you negotiate a fee under 4% I can almost guarantee you that no sales agent will show your house to their buyers because those agents would only earn 2%. You will have to depend solely on the listing agent to find you a buyer, which then means your agent is representing both he seller and the buyer...which brings up conflict of interest issues. And if you negotiate a fee under 3%, I doubt any agent will agree to include an MLS (multiple listing service) listing with that.
So what do you do if you want to negotiate a low fee? Pay for the MLS listing upfront (I think it is around $400 depending on area), and in the MLS listing say that you will offer a 3% fee to any agent who brings you a buyer.
Or skip the agent all together and use one of the free online real estate websites like Redfin.com or Trulia.com. But beware, if you list your house for sale there, you will get tons of interested buyers requesting a "rent-to-own" deal because the either have no down payment, or can't get a loan from the bank, or both. You will also get a lot of window shoppers who realistically cannot afford your house, but still want to take a look anyway in hopes of convincing you to lower your price drastically.
So in the end, I think it is preferable to use a real estate agent...even though I generally despise them. It is very easy to handle all the administrative requirements to sell a house between two private parties, but over the past decades real estate agents have developed a system in which people feel like they are required for a house sale. So if you as a seller avoid the real estate agents, you are also limiting the number of potential buyers...many of who still rely on agents.
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