I have a few questions regarding flat fee MLS listings:

[list]
[*]Are flat fee listing services such BuySelf.com reliable?
[*]I would rather contact a local agent and pay them to create a listing in the local MLS database. How many of you licensed agents have or would provide this service? Is it even legal in regards to real estate policies, generally speaking. (specific location is Knoxville, Tennessee)
[*]Can you differentiate between a full service listing and a
flat fee MLS listing? If so do agents tend avoid these types of listings because the home owner is not willing to pay a commission fee?
[*]What do agents get out of showing/selling(if anything) a home listed as for sale by owner or listed under a flat fee service contract?
[*]Any additional comments or information you can give me regarding flat fee MLS listings would be much appreciated.
[/list]

Thanks

Just google flat fee mls in your area. Very few brokers offer this service, but you will find one. Agents looking at your listing will know it is a 'entry-only' listing. If you are not offering a commission to the selling agent, don't expect any showings.

If the broker who lists your home on the mls syndicates the listing with Realtor.com, trulia, and the 40+ other sites buyers look at, you might get some buyers calling you directly.

BK Estates

LOCALLY: If the agent is representing the buyer, they have a fiduciary duty to show all available properties, within the criteria set by their buyer.

The buyer will then make the final decision, as our "Buyers Representation Agreement" requires the buyer to make up any short-fall in their agent's agreed commission.

The agent who falis to fulfill their fiduciary duty to their client and in this instance puts their own interests above that of their client, could be successfully prosecuted by our regulatory authorities.

Important Notice:This information is provided as basic educational information by the author and is not a substitute for the advice of an expert and/or the advice of a lawyer. There is NO representation as to legality, accuracy, correctness of the herein information and the reader is strongly urged to consult a lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction to ensure accuracy before acting on this information

With legalese out of the way now the REALITY of the REAL WORLD.

In the United States new agents make up the bulk of the buyers agents here as most seasoned agents are listers.

About 90% drop out the first year in the business.So when they do a transaction they are starving for a commission.Many are on crappy splits from their brokers.So they are looking to get as much money as possible to survive as long as possible.

So if listings are FSBO,flat fee where the agent will be stuck with twice the work,or the listing pays out a low co-broke expect that listing to take longer to sell.

An exception would be if the property is priced insanely low but I find most sellers overprice instead of under price.

So not the politically correct answer but this is how it rolls in the minds of many agents.If you want to help your seller reach the most buyers they need to appeal to the most brokers and agents to get the property sold.

flat fee has been around along time and you see less and less of it. it didnt catch on

Devil:

The seller said he just wants to list it on the mls and not pay a commission to the selling agent. I said he shouldn't expect any showings (at least not by agents). I don't know what world you live in, but I live in the real one.

Gotta run, I'm late for a cocktail party...

Fees:
Some Canadian insight into the "real world" of real estate as reported at the following website.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on...article1778822/

Which quoted Lawrence Dale, who said he was forced to shut down his Realtysellers website in 2007 because of anti-competitive rules in the real estate industry,recently relaunched the site and is offering free MLS listings and rebate programs for buyers.

Mr. Dale is also a well known and respected litigation attorney.

I don't agree with the article.

In America there are many,many mls systems numbering in the hundreds or more.Many of these mls's are privately owned and paid for.

Therefore you cannot demand a private entity to open up their whole system for public use. If the government wants TO PAY FOR and MAINTAIN a free enterprise system then by all means they can go for it.

Last time I checked that is not what they are making noise about.

The inputting of data is for accuracy purposes.Our mls's get sued multiple times a year and they win every time.

In commercial real estate where I do deals you have private mls's and you have to pay to be a part of them very hefty fees.

What flat fee companies want is to be the first to make a quick buck and the system be dam%ed.

In my country this stuff already played out years ago.Your outcome may be different.

To let untrained individuals have free reign in a private system is a recipe for disaster.

This doesn't really affect my business model but I tell you through my real estate investments I am positioned to exit the business and solely do investing than to work for peanuts.

super realtor

As you say this stuff played out years ago in the United States and this may be why the Canadian Real Estate Association ("CREA") found it necessary many years ago to register the terms “MLS” and "Realtor" as registered marks of the Canadian Real Estate Association and which enables them to prevent the use of those terms (trade mark infringement) by anyone other than a member of their association.

All provincial real estate associations and real estate boards, accross Canada are member of ("CREA").

The Canadian Competition Bureau is a federal agency that has the power to prosecute and utilize the RCMP (federal police agency) to enforce their court orders.

My limited understanding of this situation is that the government says that no association can dictate the fees charged by a brokerage company or put rules in place that penalizes them should they wish to deviate in any way from what the real estate association considers the norm.

So if a brokerage company wants to charge no fee or a flat fee, or whatever, for their services, or for listing a seller's property on the MLS system, then they are free to do so, but whether they will or they won’t is entirely up to the individual brokerage firm.

Important Notice:This information is provided as basic educational information by the author and is not a substitute for the advice of an expert and/or the advice of a lawyer. There is NO representation as to legality, accuracy, correctness of the herein information and the reader is strongly urged to consult a lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction to ensure accuracy before acting on this information .

Hey Devil,

Here is how it played out in the United States over the years which you might find interesting.

The flat fee companies are not interested in free trade but making a quick buck.

When they became prolific was in the boom times of real estate as property was appreciating and sellers felt they didn't need the full services of a brokerage to sell their property.

As many markets have been distressed over the years these companies are now few and far between.With a glut of properties on the market in my area you have to be priced right and use extensive marketing other than just the mls to move a property which of course all costs money.

So many sellers have shied away from flat fee listings and went to full marketing programs.

Most here use it as a hook to get your foot in the door kind of like a FSBO service.Here 86% of for sale by owners end up eventually listing with an a broker.Of the 14% that do sell on their own the price is usually on average about 12% less than brokered transactions.

So they basically end up doing all the work and lose more money.Does one FSBO hit the jackpot every once in awhile and save?? I am sure they do and that is plastered all over the FSBO tv advertisements but ti is not the average or the norm but is what sucks them in to paying the fee.

What many will do here is get them to pay 500 upfront for minimal services.Then when the results are puny they will upsell them on the regular full commission package or refer them off for a referral fee to another full service brokerage.

In the states here we have the Department of Justice that sued years ago over the anti-competition rules.What eventually happened was brokered agreement moving forward but the DOJ definitely didn't get their way.

In the beginning the problem was ABC realty would say we will put in MLS for 499 dollars.In our standard listing contracts it would state all they would do.The real estate companies would way over promise to do all things like a full commission company to get the fee.Then when the seller needed them they were nowhere to be found to negotiate the contract and that left the buyers broker/agent in a dangerous implied fiduciary position having to help the seller to get the transaction to close.

What ended up happening is now firms have to say they are just putting in MLS or they are going to do all marketing,negotiate contracts,etc.

What happened then is most of these flat fee mls companies went away once there would be consequences for over promising and not performing.

If flat fee was so great and selling so easy FSBO would have overtaken us years ago.In my country some MLS systems are linked to and controlled by NAR and the REALTORS association and other are private entities that NAR nor the state real estate commissions have control over.


This is nothing more than a power play about money by different parties and it will always be about that.

Interesting to discuss though.

This article has nothing to do with the discussion of how an entry-only listing works or what the seller can expect from it, which was the original question.

First the article talks about the legality of putting entry-only listings in the mls, whether they be for a fee or not. That is not only legal in the US, but common.

Next the article discusses whether the information contained in the mls should be distributed to the public. Again, this has zero relevance to the original post. I think most information in the mls is available to the public anyway, whether it be through county records or real estate sites like Trulia. Some of these resources are not free, like County Records Research, but then again, neither is the mls.

What the public is missing is the agent remarks section, which is usually just instructions on how to submit an offer, and the showing instructions, which often includes lockbox codes or seller's phone numbers. Those items should not be made public for obvious reasons.

Maybe there is a lot of proprietary information in the Canadian mls's, but like I said before, almost everything in the US mls's can be found by looking in the many private and public resources that are available.