This is an excerpt from a page on a flat fee site in CT. This is someone in our profession saying this in an attempt to generate business for themselves.

Here are 10 things agents don’t want you to know about selling homes in today’s real estate market:

1. Technology has reduced the advertising costs agents incur when listing a home. Most agents don’t spend very much money in print advertising because of the Internet. Buyers find homes online, so print ads are almost obsolete!

2. Open houses rarely, if ever, bring a qualified buyer to the table for your home. Agents love to use open houses to find buyers to work with that are not already working with agents.

3. Some sources estimate the MLS is responsible for 85%-95% of all home sales. What many people don’t realize is that they can have the benefits of the MLS and pay half the traditional commission.

4. Realtor.com offers enhanced listing services to agents that pay for it. Many Realtors don’t tell you that and want you to pay them a full commission even when your home will not be showcased on Realtor.com. We are licensed brokers in CT and subscribe to Realtor.com’s enhanced listing package, therefore we have the ability to showcase your home better then many “traditional” agents.

5. It’s just more convenient for you to set up showings for your home directly with the buyers agent. Why do you need to pay the listing agent to call you?

6. Who better than you, can tell someone all the great features of your home, so when it comes to showing it to buyers, there is nothing better than having you there. Note: just don’t be too aggressive or pushy and let the buyers agent lead the tour through your home.

7. You don’t need a Realtor to negotiate a contract in your favor. Most folks know what their bottom line is and don’t need any help making decisions about their home sale.

8. Agents can not give legal advice so we recommend using a good real estate attorney if you decide to use our service. They will guide you through the contract process and make sure your best interests are being considered.

9. Over 95% of the time, the listing agent is NOT the person who brings the buyer. Today’s real estate work different than 10-20 years ago! Don’t be fooled into believing that you need to list with an agent that sells a lot of homes. It’s really all about the “Buyers” agent. With our MLS Flat Fee service, your listing will look the same as any other Realtor listing and the buyers agent will still earn the same commission!

10. Homeowners listed with our MLS service make more net profit than FSBO’s because they have greater exposure and harness the power of the Internet to get the word out! The MLS data distribution channels can’t be beat. Your listing will be displayed on dozens of major websites and thousands of broker/agent sites just by listing with our MLS Flat Fee service. DO NOT PAY 6% TO DO THIS!!!

Alot of it is true. But I disagree with 5, 6, 7, some of 8 and some of 9. 10 is just advertising.

"7. You don’t need a Realtor to negotiate a contract in your favor. Most folks know what their bottom line is and don’t need any help making decisions about their home sale."

This is an absolute LIE....

A survey was conducted saying about 80 percent of clients named help in negotiating and filling out the contract as the number one thing they couldn't do on there own.Negotiating terms are just as important as price.

"8. Agents can not give legal advice so we recommend using a good real estate attorney if you decide to use our service. They will guide you through the contract process and make sure your best interests are being considered."

Often times attonries will be less familiar with these contracts than we are and will charge by the hour.They will also make it MORE difficult than it needs to be to close a transaction and protect both parties.


"9. Over 95% of the time, the listing agent is NOT the person who brings the buyer. Today’s real estate work different than 10-20 years ago! Don’t be fooled into believing that you need to list with an agent that sells a lot of homes. It’s really all about the “Buyers” agent. With our MLS Flat Fee service, your listing will look the same as any other Realtor listing and the buyers agent will still earn the same commission!"

Again another falsehood! While buyers agents do sell homes it's not 95 percent.Many top producers have buyers agents/brokers on there teams or have a network of hundreds of buyers to show the property they list to. Buyers brokers/agents avoid flat fee MLS listings like the plague.The listing agencies make there fee and could care less.Getting ahold of them is an act of congress.Sure the co-op fee might be the same but it's a bigger PITA that brokers/agents avoid.

You can espouse ethics and fiduciary duty to your client crap all day long.The long and short of it is alot of buyer agents/brokers are new and they want to make the quickest buck possible.

When I used to list houses I went up against discounters all the time.I would chew them up and spit them out in my presentation.It's all about how you can slant things to look better in your favor.

So whats the point of the post? I think its your add, and comments from this post is used in your adds. Most of the points while techically true, not accurate though.

I do not think many Realtors beat their seller up to hold an open house. Thats usually stated in the beginning that an Open House will not sell the property.

When I show a house and seller is present, I love it. Sellers talk alot! My sellers need to stay away.

Advertising costs comes in different forms. It can be print or internet, it still aint free.

Obviously CT is not a minimum service state. A number of points made, would not apply here as ColoBroker pointed out.
I had talked to a min. service agent from the east coast, all she did was input the listing into the MLS and charge for a sign and lockbox. The listing price was set by an appraiser and everything was handled by an attorney and paid for by the seller, most of it in advance. What a rip-off.

FSBO's on average sell for 16% less vs agent listed homes.

Hardly. I spend hours customizing ads, photographs, and virtual tours - and then finding the portals to list them so that they're not just another "feed.." so that they stand out. It may not cost much in dollars but it is very labor intensive. Every one of my listings has dozens of photos taken, and the best ones are picked, optimized, and sorted - I try to use different pictures on the MLS than I use on my virtual tours.

I do a hell of a lot more than just plop my listings on the MLS and hope it sells.

Also, my sellers know the skinny on open houses. They know that the more open houses the office holds, the more buyers we will be introduced to - and the greater the chances that someone from our office will meet the buyer for their house. All of our agents are encouraged to promote and sell our office listings - and a open house visitor to listing A may end up buying listing C - which if we didn't have open houses we never would have met that buyer and we don't know if another office would have introduced that buyer to that property.

Anything can be skewed to represent to Point Of View you wish to portray. I guess the true answer is results.

If you are good at what you do and get results for your clients, they'll use you again or recommend you to their friends. And many of our customers are those who have "tried the rest" and got nothing.

We're in a minimum service state, and in this area, there are few real estate attorneys doing closings -- we use title companies and the attorney's opinion of the abstract is a fee that's negotiable as to which party pays it. So much of what's in that list has "partial" truth, but those points aren't "the whole story" or "wholly" accurate. We put a lot of effort into our advertising and our websites (yes, we have more than one website); our listings are on realtor.com as well as about a dozen other sites!; we don't troll for fresh clients through open houses - we really don't like to do an open house unless the client wants one! I just have to roll my eyes and put an outfit like the one that put out that list into the "snakes" category.

A case can be made to show sellers that they don't need the flat fee service either. LOL

As a buyers agent I love when a seller is at the showing almost as much as i love negotiating directly with a seller. They don't have a clue.

one thing that sellers and agents do not often mention as shown in this list is this....


hours worked on the listing is never factored into the equation. when hiring any professional you will always have a choice in picking by price.

i had custom lazik a few years ago when they came out with the all lazer lasik and changed to doing the custom job that gets rid of stigmatisms as it was not done before especially with the precision that it is done today.

i paid 5500 dollars for both eyes and my fiance had it done at the same time. we paid a total of 10500 dollars for both of us. they gave us a 500 dollar break because we both had it done with them. we could have had both of us done for a total of 6000 dollars. to this day i am glad that we paid the extra money because we got better results! if you want a cheap job done there will always be a place for that though many people want a quality job done and the market speaks for itself. if the discount model was superior then it would overtrhow the traditional model. reality is that the discount model makes up a small percentage of listings and sales. must be a reason for the smaller percentage! if i thought it was a better model then i would change the way i list and sell homes.

i was on a thanksgiving weekend in a cabin this past weekend. i had several calls come in on my listings and i answered them, handled the issues and questions (on my listings). if i were making less money and giving less service i would not have done that and the offer coming in today (based on the questions that i had answered) would not be coming in and my seller would not be in the position of working out the details. my time is valuable adn i answer teh phone when i do because there is a real paycheck attached. if i were paid less i would not inconvenience my family the way taht i do to close a deal for peanuts! sorry but that is the truth.

Does anyone know why Buyers and Sellers NEED us as REALTORS?

We are suppossed to try and take the emotion out of the transaction. If it were up to a buyer and seller to speak with one another and get the deal done it most likely would not happen because of the emotions involved. It is the THIRD most stressful thing in our lives.

what is the first and second most stressful?

probably finding sellers and buyers :-)

People will believe what they want to be true, and if they want it to be true that they can do it themselves for less money..they will believe it, no matter how untrue the claims of various fly by night, take the money and run companies.

I hate to think of how many people take the same oath I took and then turn around and almost literally try to destroy the very system they are using to make money. And they are making money in dubious ways with questionable tactics and ethics. The drastic change in the market has made the long term profitability of these schemes less and less, leading to an ever changing parade of new website/schemes to entice sellers with outlandish claims.