What is Flat Fee MLS
1. What is the multiple listing service (MLS)?
In very simple terms the MLS allows you to market your home to real estate agents. The MLS is an exclusive real estate agent operated database that is used in a local area to share information about houses for sale.
2. What is flat fee MLS?
Flat fee MLS or flat fee realty is an expanding real estate service where the seller of a property pays a flat fee regardless of its value to have it listed and sold on the MLS. Traditionally a seller would pay a commission to the agent when the house was sold.
3. Why is the MLS important?
The most popular Internet sites used by the consumer to search for properties such as Realtor.com®, Move.com®, Trulia.com®, Google.com™, Zillow.com® etc. are uploaded from the MLS. (Realtor.com®, Move.com®, Trulia.com®, Google.com™, and Zillow.com® are trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective companies listed)
4. Is this really important?
In recent years most houses are sold from an MLS listing.
How Flat Fee Saves Money
1. How does flat fee MLS save money?
Flat fee is a low fixed cost paid up-front instead of paying a percentage of the selling price at closing.
2. What if the buyer of my house brings an agent?
Unless you try to sell your house independently and not on the MLS, you agree to pay buyer commission. An example would be 3%. In some markets, flat fee customers have control on how much commission they will pay to a buyer agent. This will enable 2 house selling strategies.
a. Set the buyers’ commission so low that agents will boycott showing the house. But private buyers without an agent will find the house on the Internet and may buy the house. This strategy takes longer to sell your house since you are cutting out a whole market of buyers.
b. Set the buyers’ commission higher than other competing properties on the market.
However the commission is set, the higher commission attracts more real estate agent traffic to your house and more offers to choose from. The lower the commission the odds are increased for a buyer without an agent which will save thousands of more dollars but take longer to sell.
Ava Terry Broker with Avar Realty and www.HuntsvilleFlatFeeMLS.com are Members of the Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Realtors and North Alabama MLS Service. We are the premier flat fee discount brokerage for Huntsville and North Alabama. For more information contact one of our flat fee agents. Sell your home with state of the art Flat Rate MLS marketing concepts.
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