If you heard 1.7%, what would you think?

Perhaps you’d first think that was a small percentage, or maybe a measly amount of a large pie.

Whichever one, you’d be right.

So what is 1.7%, anyway? It’s the percentage of all single family homes that have sold in Massachusetts throughout 2014 that were flat fee MLS entry only listings.

198 single family Massachusetts home listings have sold in 2014 that were listed in the MLS by owner, while 11,623 single family homes have sold in Massachusetts that were listed in the MLS by a traditional agent charging a typical real estate agent commission.

If you do the math and get the sum total of 11,821, and then divide 198 flat rate MLS listings into that large number, you’ll get approximately 1.7%.

While we’ve seen the popularity of entry only MLS grow over the past several years, FSBOs who want to sell their own home without a Realtor still make up only a small portion of the total homes sold in Massachusetts.

It will for a number of reasons, but today, there are three worth mentioning.

1. According to the MLS data, flat fee MLS listings sell faster than full commission listings sold by traditional Realtors
2. FSBOs who list on the MLS by owner using an entry only MLS listing end up selling their home, on average, for a higher price per square foot than homes sold by traditional full commission agents
3. Flat fee MLS listings allow homeowners who want to list by owner to save thousands of dollars in real estate agent commission

Massachusetts Flat Fee MLS Listings Sell Fast for Top Dollar

Let’s just look at the 2014 data available in the official Massachusetts MLS system and go from there.

The 198 single family homes sold in 2014 across Massachusetts that have leveraged the entry only MLS process, where a seller lists on the MLS for sale by owner without a Realtor, carry an average days on market (DOM) of 89 and the average sales price per square foot was $213.

Contrast that with the 11,623 single family homes that have sold with a traditional real estate agent charging a full commission (and we’ll look at the first 500 listings) where the average days on market (DOM) was 109 and the average sales price per square foot was $205.

And let’s not forget about the thousands in real estate agent commission savings.

Entry Only MLS without a Realtor Saves Thousands in Commission

So FSBOs are selling faster and selling for more than Realtors in 2014, but how much are they saving in real estate agent commission?

There’s no doubt that FSBOs put in time, effort, and work listing their own home without an agent, is it worth it?

In 2014, on average, FSBOs who list their own home in the MLS with an entry only MLS listing have saved $10,790 in real estate agent commission.

Is $10,790 worth your time and energy? Is that fair compensation for the work that you would put in to sell your own home without an agent?

Perhaps that’s hard to answer, maybe you’re considering an entry only MLS listing for the first time and have never worked on the sale of a home without a Realtor.

Is the perceived “extra time” you as a FSBO have to put into the home selling process when you sell without an agent worth $10,790? Consider this, a listing agent who charges a typical real estate agent commission to list and sell a home will still constantly contact the seller, coordinating showings, asking questions to relay buyer requests, and so forth. Sellers spend a fair bit of this “extra time” regardless of whether a listing agent is used.