Entry Only New England is excited to announce that we’re taking a major step forward in how we facilitate communication between FSBO sellers that use our platform for flat fee MLS listings and interested buyers / renters and their agents who contact us with inquiries regarding those listings.

One of the reasons FSBOs list with Entry Only New England is because of the transparent integrity we have in facilitating direct contact between buyers (along with their agents if they’re represented) and our FSBO clients – we actually encourage clients to test the integrity of our communication.

While we believe that we are, right now, at the forefront of the industry when it comes to transparently facilitating communication among FSBO sellers and those making inquiries on their listings, we’re leveling up.

Historically at Entry Only New England, we handled all communication via email.

If a buyer inquired about one of our flat fee MLS listings directly via email, we responded to the buyer via email and provided the FSBO seller’s information, and then that entire email communication thread would be forwarded by email to the FSBO seller alerting them that there was an inquiry on their MLS listing (and that we responded with their contact information).

If we received a phone inquiry on a listing directly from a buyer, we would have that phone inquiry transcribed to email using Google Voice technology, and then that inquiry would be forwarded to the appropriate FSBO seller by email.  The FSBO would have the ability to both read the transcribed inquiry, and, listen to the actual voicemail left by the interested party along with seeing the phone number from which they called.

If a licensed real estate professional contacted us about a flat fee MLS listing by phone or email, we would politely tell them via email to go back into the MLS and contact the property owner directly as noted in MLSPIN (the largest MLS system in New England and the official MLS system of Massachusetts that Entry Only New England leverages) under the listing’s “Special Showing Instructions” field.  Licensed real estate agents and brokers are the only people that have direct access to the MLS, and all of our flat fee MLS listings contain the seller’s contact information so that they can be contacted directly (the “Special Showing Instructions” field where that FSBO contact information is located is not syndicated to third party websites like Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com).  Unfortunately, if a licensed professional fails to follow the explicit directions noted in a listing’s “Special Showing Instructions” field, they’re wasting both their time and their buyer client’s time with erroneous and inefficient behavior.

Email provides a tremendous amount of transparency and integrity, especially in the FSBO realm.  At Entry Only New England, buyer inquiries are not passed to real estate agents as leads, nor are buyer contact details sold to third parties for prospecting and solicitation.

Yet while we are quite prompt in customer service, in the act of listing properties on the MLS, making listing updates, and forwarding buyer inquiries to FSBOs (our Google reviews are a testament to that), fundamentally, our approach to facilitating the direct connection of FSBOs and buyers (and their agents) using email still makes us a bottleneck, a communication middleman if you will.

Our Approach to Communication Facilitates Direct Connection to a FSBO and Cuts out the Middleman

What we’re announcing today is a new approach to eliminate the middleman.

We remain committed to not passing buyer inquiry leads to agents or third parties, to give FSBOs the best shot they can get at finding a buyer that is not represented by a Buyer’s Agent so that they can eliminate paying any real estate agent commission altogether, the holy grail for a FSBO!

Buyer inquiries (or inquiries from licensed agents) will now be automatically pushed to http://www.stuartstjames.com/listings so that the interested party can obtain the direct contact information of the property owner for the home they’re interested in.

Moving forward…

• If we receive an inquiry via email from Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, or the MLS itself by way of a real estate agent (who fails to follow the “Special Showing Instructions” field on all our listings that guides them to contact the property owner directly using their provided contact information), we’ve put the technology in place to automatically, in near real time, point the inquirer to http://www.stuartstjames.com/listings so that they can obtain the FSBO seller’s contact information directly.
• If we receive an inquiry via phone, the inquirer will immediately be met with a greeting that they should visit https://www.stuartstjames.com/listings and not leave a voicemail because it will not be returned – again, we do not want to erroneously insert communication delays into the process, if a caller is waiting on the Entry Only New England team to respond in some way, we’ve just introduced a bottleneck.  Once landing on https://www.stuartstjames.com/listings, the phone caller can quickly ascertain the direct contact information for the FSBO seller and engage them directly.

If we are contacted by some other means, we’ll promptly facilitate the interested party navigating to https://www.stuartstjames.com/listings by way of email communication.

Our goal is to transparently and promptly facilitate direct interaction between FSBO sellers and interested parties, and eliminate any communication middleman bottlenecks.

We’re excited about this advancement in our flat fee MLS service and are proud that it’s the result of bringing together and responding to feedback directly from our FSBO clients.

Each autumn, as Massachusetts stretches towards winter, the real estate market slows down. There are simply less homes that are listed for sale during the season, and as a result, less homes that close.

FSBOs oftentimes don’t know what to do during the fall and winter months.

Unfortunately for homeowners, there’s no crystal ball.

A case could be made for the fact that, during the fall and winter months in Massachusetts, there’s less inventory and supply of homes for sale so the chances of selling are increased.

While at the same time, one could argue that there are less buyers in the market who want to brave the cold and therefore the possibility of selling at a desirable price is reduced.

Clearly, there’s no definitive answer.

But, FSBOs have a choice, they have control over the status of their listings on the MLS.

An MLS listing can hold a number of different MLS Listing Property Status Types (PDF), and one of those, called Temporarily Withdrawn, allows a home to be taken off the market, only temporarily as the name suggests, and then reactivated for sale on the MLS to bring it back on the market at a later date.

FSBOs can utilize a Temporarily Withdrawn property status to remove an MLS listing from the market during the fall and winter months, and then reactivate the listing on the MLS once they believe the market is heating back up.

Before using Temporarily Withdrawn, a FSBO should have an overall plan and timeline for when they will reactivate their MLS listing, taking into consideration when their MLS listing coverage period expires – ensure there’s ample runway in the flat fee MLS listing agreement following reactivation for the property to sell.

At Entry Only New England, FSBOs can update the property status of their MLS listing as many times as they’d like, at no charge, within the listing agreement coverage period.

Whether a FSBO leverages a Temporarily Withdrawn status for their MLS listing during the fall and winter seasons is a choice they have, and if used, Temporarily Withdrawn status can assist in maximizing the effectiveness of a flat fee MLS listing for FSBOs selling their own home.