Entry Only New England

Massachusetts Flat Fee MLS Entry Only Listings

Predatory Realtors Pester FSBOs for MLS Listings

Did you know there are actually real estate coaches who sell scripts to real estate agents that teach what to say to a FSBO in order to convert them from a FSBO to a full commission listing of their own?

Kevin Ward of YESMasters and Bob Loeffler at Fearless Agent are popular.

If you’re trying to sell your own home, regardless of whether you’ve been able to list that home in the MLS or not, more than likely, you’ve received a call from a real estate agent who will eventually get around to asking you these questions:

  • Can I preview your property?
  • How are you marketing your property?
  • Can I ask when you sell this house, where are you moving?

The classic, but unfortunate, approach for a real estate agent to take is to create the illusion they have a buyer interested in your home as a guise to preview the property, only to give you a listing presentation once they get there.

That’s called a bait and switch, its legality is questionable, and is predatory real estate behavior at best.

It’s nice to see that Kevin Ward has the integrity to not guide his students down the road of bait and switch practices. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with everyone.

Invariably, once the agent has made their way inside your home, they’ll purport that if you just re-list with them they’ll be able to sell your property faster and for substantially more money.

If you go behind the scenes on one of these calls (click the YouTube video below to listen to one of these very calls) that real estate agents make to FSBOs, does it look like everything is above board?

Predatory Realtors Pester FSBOs for MLS Listings

The reality is that if you decide to sell FSBO, you need to be prepared to deal with predatory Realtors who aren’t interested in bringing a buyer of their own to buy your property, but rather, convincing you that you should re-list your home with them for a full commission.

FSBO Burner Phone Numbers & Disposable Email Addresses for FSBOs

One practical way to combat predatory Realtors, while at the same time qualifying buyers and their agents, is to use a set of temporary contact credentials (phone number and email address). Sometimes referred to as a “burner” contact information, you can build real efficiency, professionalism, and marketing power into your home selling process by using free Google Voice and Gmail tools. These tools will be used only for a temporary period of time, yet will protect your privacy, allow you to avoid exposing your personal contact information on the Internet, and, allow you to perform marketing, filtering, and qualifying activity all in one.

2014 MLS Statistics Show Entry Only MLS Benefits to FSBOs

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.

Our prediction is the percentage of sellers who list FSBO on the MLS is going to continue to rise.

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.

Homeowners in Massachusetts can sell their own home without a Realtor, and the data show that when FSBOs list on the MLS without an agent, they’re  selling their homes faster and at a higher price per square foot than real estate agents charging a full commission.

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.

Get Started Now - Flat Fee Entry Only MLS Listing

New Feature: List on MLS Immediately or Schedule for a Specific Future Date

Just as the real estate market is ever changing, so too is our flat fee MLS listing platform. We’re constantly rolling out new releases to our entry only MLS realty service offering packed with new features and functionality to respond to change and the requests of our clients so that we can deliver more value to you, the sophisticated FSBO!

The most recent addition to our platform allows a FSBO to select during the listing process whether they want their listing published on the MLS immediately, or, on a specific date in the future.

List Home Immediately in MLS or on a Specific Future Date

As FSBOs become more sophisticated, they’re investing significant time up front to learn and prepare how to FSBO before their listing ever hits the market. While many FSBOs want their property listed in the MLS as soon as possible, we’ve seen more and more clients leverage our flat fee MLS listing service and request that their listing be published on the MLS (and thus, “hit the market”) on a specific future date. Doing so allows a FSBO to line up a number of different items, from purchasing a FSBO real estate yard sign and actually allowing enough time for the sign to arrive at their home, assembling a professionally designed FSBO real estate flyer template for private showings and open houses (which we provide for free to our clients), to taking higher end or professional photos of the property.

Wait, you’ve got a professionally designed real estate flyer that you pass out during private showings and open houses, right?

At the end of the day, it’s about orchestrating a set of activities to come together so that when a property is actually published in the MLS, is syndicated across the Internet to the most popular real estate websites, and goes live on the market, it does so with a bang. Sounds a lot like what a traditional real estate agent who charges a standard real estate agent commission would do with one of their prized listings, doesn’t it?

Entry Only New England is the most advanced flat fee MLS listing service in Massachusetts, we’ll continue to release new features to our platform that pass more value onto our clients. Stay tuned, we’ve got a lot of great innovations in the development pipeline that will make you a more sophisticated FSBO and help you sell your home on your own both faster and for more money than you ever thought possible!

Include School Information in Your Flat Fee MLS Listing

For single family homeowners, the school district in which your home resides can represent an important selling feature of your home. That’s why Entry Only New England has added the ability for FSBOs to enter school information about their home during the single family home flat fee MLS listing process.

As part of our streamlined listing process, FSBOs listing a single family home for sale on the MLS can now choose whether to include school information (grade school, middle school, and high school) in their MLS listing by easily selecting the option to do so during submission of their property details.

Flat Fee MLS Listing School Information

If school information is important to you and you believe it can add incremental benefit to your listing, you can simply click yes to include school information during our listing process. If school information is not material to your property listing, FSBOs that don’t want to be bogged down with entering erroneous information during the listing process can quickly and easily skip entering school information and quickly move on to the other areas of providing property information – entering school information for a single family home listing will remain optional.

What Is the Best Flat Fee MLS Listing Service?

As a FSBO seller, you’re time is scarce, it’s both valuable and finite, so a flat fee MLS realty service that is best for you will be one that leverages technology and intuitive systems to save you time and keep the flat fee MLS listing process as simple and efficient as possible.

Entry Only New England is the first and only all digital flat fee MLS service in Massachusetts that lists property for sale and rent on the official MLS of Massachusetts that all licensed agents and brokers use – you can list your home on the MLS without an agent in approximately 20 minutes!

Boston Flat Fee MLS Listing Saves FSBO $23,955

The Boston real estate market is off to a fast start to the year, despite the bitterly cold weather brought on by the “polar vortex” of the 2013-2014 winter. One of the very first Boston condos to sell this year is a South End duplex condo at 85 Dartmouth St Unit 1 Boston, MA 02116 that sold for full asking price of $970,000.

Boston Flat Fee MLS

The owner of 85 Dartmouth St Unit 1 decided to sell their own home without an agent using a flat fee MLS approach, whereby a for sale by owner (FSBO) pays a one-time flat fee to have their home listed in the official local Boston MLS, drive a ton of exposure for the property, and avoid paying a listing broker commission.

A Boston flat fee MLS listing like this can save a FSBO thousands of dollars in real estate agent commissions and fees. In the case of 85 Dartmouth St Unit 1, the FSBO saved $23,955.

A Boston South End FSBO at 85 Dartmouth St saved $23,955 in real estate agent commission and fees by using a flat fee MLS entry only listing to sell their duplex condominium without an agent.

South End Boston Entry Only MLS

Over the past 6 months, there have been 290 South End condominiums that have sold, the average days on market (DOM) has been 32. The South End FSBO at 85 Dartmouth Street listed their condominium without a Realtor, got their full asking price, and sold in just 9 short days!

Entry only MLS listings hit record levels in 2013, and with the opportunity to save thousands of dollars in real estate agent commissions and fees by selling your own home without an agent, FSBOs are continuing to turn to flat fee MLS listing platforms like Entry Only New England.