Paint Exterior - tough to call...you could do it yourself quickly, or pay someone to do it, or you could wait to see what your buyer is like and have it as a condition of sale. Everything is a point of negotiation. They could want you to have it done, you could give them an allowance so they could do it themselves.
Selling By Owner - I did this on my last house and purchase a FSBO on my own without a realitor too. It is very doable. Especially if your move is local. If you are staying local, you don't need a realitor to tell you about market values and school districts. It helps to have friends who know the market too. One of my friends was an appraisor and lived on my street. I had him pull three comps, sales within the past 6 months, from out neighborhood so I knew what to do on pricing.
If you are selling by owner, you should be open to excepting offers from buyers that are using an agent. If that is the case, you need to be prepaired to negotiate the commision amount and have your selling price ready to go. Every state has different laws and things vary. Here, full commision on a house is about 7%. If two agents are involved, they split it, 3.5% each. So, if you sell to an buyer with an agent, I would only offer a half commision. In fact, I sold my house to an out of town couple with an agent for only 3%. If you set your price thinking that you would sell to an agent, then you automatically have a bit of a cushion if a buyer comes to you without an agent. Meaning, you could come down on your price about 3% and still net the same amount to your bottom line.
Other people may think differently, but open houses are something of a waste of time. We did our by appt. and were ready to show the house at anytime within 15 minutes. Also, if you are going to sell by owner, you should look into getting an ad on a For Sale By Owner web site. They will build a nice listing for you with about 15 digital pics. If you house is the type that will appeal to first time buyers, this is the place to be, they do much of their priliminary shopping on the web.
Find a good closing attorney. Before you start this whole thing. One thing you will have to do if you sell and/or buy by owner, is know how to put together the contract. There are contract templates that you can download in PDF form from the internet. Also, your local board of real estate agents will have a standard contract that would be helpful to you if you can get your hands on it. Anyway, the closing attorny really represents the mortgage companies, not you, BUT they can be a great resource to you anyway. If you write a contract between you the seller and person X the buyer, take it to the attorney and have them proof it. You don't want to show up at close and find out that there's an issue with the verbage. They may charge you for this service, but it's worth it to know that you have every detail spelled out.
One thing that was cool; when I bought my house, they were selling by owner and my wife and I didn't use and agent. So, our negotiation was smooth and easy and fair. After we determined price and dates, we just went over to their house and sat down at the kitchen table. We had a great conversation about the little details. She wanted to keep this and we were like OK. She asked: "do you want the swing set?" "If you don't want to move it, our toddler would play with it." "Ok that's yours." Then they asked, "do you want the hot tub?" And I was like, "Hell ya I want the hot tub." They said, "Ok we were going to get a new one anyway at our old house."
Basically, this experiecne comes down to the people involved. If you are selling to A$$holes, it's probably better to have an agent as a buffer. If the people are reasonable, it's not difficult to work through. I've done it twice now, and my friend has bought and sold 5 houses on his own in the last 6 years. He was a great resource to me.
Hope this helps.
Tim