Entry Only New England

Massachusetts Flat Fee MLS Entry Only Listings

Boston Flat Fee MLS Helps For Sale by Owner (FSBO)

1.5% is not much.

1.5% is the percentage of condominiums for sale in Boston that are currently listed for sale as flat fee MLS entry only listings. That’s 6 units out of 425 currently listed for sale in Boston. While flat fee MLS listings still only represent a small, but growing, number of the total listings for sale on the Massachusetts MLS, what’s fascinating is the success of flat fee MLS listings so far in 2014.

Fascinating is the speed at which flat fee MLS listings are going under agreement in Boston. The latest condo to be listed for sale in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood as a flat fee MLS listing is 1 Westinghouse Plz Unit C308 Boston, MA 02136,and the loft-style condo went under agreement in just seven (7) days!

The Lofts at Westinghouse is a 72 unit condominium development in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood. 1 Westinghouse Plz Unit C308 is a sophisticated Boston loft.

1 Westinghouse Plz Unit C308 Boston, MA 02136.jpg

How to FSBO Boston with Flat Fee MLS

Over the past six months, the average days on market for Boston Hyde Park condominiums to sell has been 63. It’s fascinating to compare this average (entirely comprised of condominiums sold using a traditional real estate brokerage charging a full commission) to the latest flat fee MLS listing at 1 Westinghouse Plz going under agreement in 7 short days, approximately 9 times faster than the Hyde Park average! Combine a quick sale along with the prospect that FSBOs can save substantially when listing with a flat fee MLS listing service by eliminating the listing agent commission fee, and it becomes clear why 2013 set a record for number of flat fee MLS listings in Massachusetts.

FSBOs who want to sell by owner without a Realtor have leveraged our How to FSBO Massachusetts guide, which is packed with helpful tips and tricks to guide a for sale by owner through the process of listing on the MLS without a Realtor and saving thousands in real estate agent commission fees.

Raynham FSBO Saves $22,160 Selling without Realtor

A Raynham, Massachusetts for sale by owner (FSBO) who recently leveraged a flat fee MLS entry only listing to get their property listed in the official MLS and then syndicated to thousands of real estate websites saved over $22,000 in real estate agent commissions and fees on the sale of their single family home.

113 Paddock Rd Raynham, MA 02767 sold on December 27, 2013 for $455,000. The 2,937 four-bedroom house was listed on the MLS via Entry Only New England, the first all digital flat fee MLS entry only listing platform in Massachusetts. The FSBO saved over $22,000 by eliminating the commission typically paid to a listing broker, and instead, paid a one-time flat fee to Entry Only New England for a flat fee MLS listing. The Raynham FSBO saved additional funds at closing because the buyer in the transaction was not represented by an agent.

Of the 68 single family homes in Raynham that have sold in the past six months, only two have been entry only MLS listings. While the majority of homes are still listed for sale in Massachusetts using a Realtor who charges a full commission, the number of entry only MLS listings in Massachusetts are near record levels.

List without a Realtor on the Most Popular Real Estate Websites

If you’re selling your home today, it’s imperative that your listing has a comprehensive web presence. Approximately 90% of buyers and renters start their home search online, and you might be shocked to learn that only a small handful of top real estate websites get nearly half of all that online traffic.

Get Listed without a Realtor on the Most Popular Real Estate Websites

Inman News staff writer Paul Hagey put together an article entitled Top 10 real estate websites get nearly half of traffic where he laid out clearly that an elite list of just 10 real estate related websites capture approximately 42% of all real estate website traffic – said differently, everyone going online to look at anything that has to do with real estate visits a select few “mega” real estate websites!

If you’re selling your home, your properly listing must be present on these behemoths in the real estate industry, and while it doesn’t hurt to be listed on the thousands of other websites from real estate brokerages and individual agents, there are a select few websites that are “must have” – it’s a must that real estate brokers place their listings where buyers will find them!

The most important real estate websites that your property needs to be listed on are Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Yahoo! Homes, and Homes.com.

List on Trulia without a Realtor

Now that you know what websites to go after, how do you list your property for sale or rent on Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com, and others? Good question. You may have seen discussion threads on sites like Trulia that state you must have a Realtor to list on Trulia. However, the way to get your property listed for sale or rent on these websites is simple, use a flat fee MLS listing service.

A flat fee MLS listing service (backed by a licensed real estate broker) will charge you a one-time flat fee to list your home for sale or rent in the MLS, and once in the MLS, your listing will be syndicated to all of the top websites like Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Yahoo! Homes, and Homes.com.

So the key is the multiple listing service (MLS).  Once in the MLS, that’s the gateway to being listed on the top real estate realted websites, along with thousands of others.

Entry Only New England is the only all digital flat fee MLS listing service in Massachusetts and a trusted local provider of entry only MLS listings, helping for sale by owners (FSBOs) get their property listed for sale and rent in the official Massachusetts MLS and then successfully syndicated to sites like Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Yahoo! Homes, and Homes.com.

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Who’s Contact Information Is Listed on the MLS Listing?

When you list your property for sale by owner (FSBO) and leverage a flat fee MLS entry only listing service like Entry Only New England to get your property listed and advertised in the MLS, it’s important to understand how real estate agents and interested buyers or renters are going to contact you if they’re interested in seeing, renting, or buying your property.

As a FSBO, you’ll be coordinating showings and providing more information about your property that you’ve listed by owner to agents and interested buyers and renters alike, so, who’s contact information is listed on the MLS listing?

Who’s contact information would be listed on the MLS listing? Would it be mine, the seller?

Seller Contact Information on the MLS Listing

Entry Only New England will place the seller’s contact information into the MLS under the “special showing instructions” field of the listing. This information is visible to licensed real estate professionals who have direct access to the MLS, and the information is placed in the special showing instructions field to help facilitate all real estate agents contacting a seller directly.

The majority of showing requests to see a property are generated via licensed real estate agents representing buyers and renters, those real estate agents have direct access to the MLS, and therefore, the special showing instructions field on the entry only MLS listing which instructs an agent to contact the seller directly for more information will be utilized in nearly all circumstances.

That said, a seller’s contact information is listed on the MLS listing so that they can be contacted directly about their property.

While a seller’s contact information is part of the MLS listing in the special showing instructions field, there are times when the listing brokerage will be contacted directly regarding a property. Keep in mind, under MLS rules and regulations, third party websites like Realtor.com, Zillow, and Trulia are only allowed to display the contact information of licensed listing brokerages (rather than a FSBO seller’s contact information directly). While a seller’s contact information is indeed a part of the MLS listing in the special showing instructions field, that particular section of the listing is only visible to licensed real estate professionals and is not syndicated to third party MLS websites like Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com. In situations where the general public finds an entry only listing online at a website like Realtor.com and unilaterally requests more information about the listing (because they are not working with a real estate agent or want immediate information), then the listing brokerage must facilitate connecting that buyer and the seller directly.

Will that buyer always be contacting the listing brokerage via a third party website like Realtor.com, Zillow, or Trulia when they request more information about a particular home?

No.

Keep in mind that third party websites like Zillow and Trulia (which merged as of 2015), and Realtor.com are for-profit businesses, and part of the business model of sites like Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com is to sell advertising space to real estate agents so that when a buyer requests more information on a home in a particular zip code, the agent paying for advertising will be sent that inquiry directly, bypassing the listing brokerage altogether.

What often happens is that a potential buyer sees a listing on a website like Realtor.com, that buyer will contact their real estate agent to let them know they want to see the property, and the real estate agent in the process of setting up a showing for the property will access the MLS directly and will end up contacting the seller, rather than the listing brokerage, because of the notes in the special showing instructions field of the MLS listing.

Entry Only MLS Listings Look Just Like “Full Commission” Listings

AS a FSBO interested in listing your property for sale or rent for a flat fee, without paying a listing agent’s full commission, the way in which the contact information is setup is of benefit to you given that your entry only MLS listing will look no different to the public than any other “standard” MLS listing (because your personal FSBO contact information is not listed on websites like Realtor.com, the general public does not know the property is listed by owner). It’s only licensed real estate professionals who access the MLS directly who can see the seller’s personal contact information, and who are also bound by fiduciary duties to their client to show all property (including entry only MLS listings) that meet their client’s search criteria. It’s the combination of these items, among other things, that protect a FSBO and make a FSBO’s entry only MLS listing appear just the same as an MLS listing by a traditional real estate brokerage charging a “full commission”.

New Massachusetts MLS Features Help FSBOs

The state of Massachusetts is served by a Multiple Listing Service (MLS) called MLS Property Information Network, or MLS PIN. MLS PIN is the largest Multiple Listing Service in New England and one of the largest in the nation, offering a database of more than 38,000 properties for sale and rent and more than one million off-market listings, as well as full public records for all of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and other areas of New England. MLS PIN has recently announced three (3) system updates that help for sale by owners (FSBO) or those selling their home without a Realtor.

New Contingent (CTG) Status Available

The new CTG status has officially been released. It is the hope of MLS PIN that with the launch of this new status type, it meets the needs of those listings that have accepted offers but are continuing to show for additional offers, while eliminating some of the issues associated with the abuse of a deprecated status type called Active with a Flag that was banned from use earlier this year.

Contingent (CTG) Status: A property for which an offer has been accepted, but which the Owner has requested it still be listed in the Pinergy system for backup offers, has a status of “CTG.” A Contingent property must meet one of the following conditions: Inspection, Attorney Review, Appraisal, Financing, Third-Party Approval, Pending P&S.

There are currently seven (7) different on-market status types for properties in the MLS PIN system.

Longer MLS Property Descriptions

MLS PIN customers will now have twice the space to market their properties with the doubling in size of the “Public Remarks” allotment to 1,000 characters. This change will allow FSBOs in Massachusetts to provide long, feature rich descriptions that buyers love to read. That’s more space to describe the waterfront amenities, or the butcher block counters, or simply to spell out those tricky abbreviations.

New “Date Available” for Rental Searches

Finding the right rental property is about to get easier–at the Cape, downtown Boston and elsewhere! The Date Available field is currently available for all Rental listings, but soon it will be required to select that the rental is available now, or a date of availability. Starting in mid-July Massachusetts real estate brokers and agents will also be able to search MLS PIN by Date Available to hone in on pertinent properties.