For Sale By Owner vs. Flat Fee MLS websites

January 9, 2006 – 6:41 pm

Choosing the right home selling method can be critical to your success

One of the most impressive byproducts of the Internet real estate revolution has been the plethora of web-based alternatives for marketing and selling a home. Choosing the right online marketing platform has become just as important as choosing the right real estate agent once was before the Internet. Web based alternatives to the traditional brokerage commission provide For Sale By Owner home sellers with the ability to effectively market their homes to the public at large while saving huge sums of money.

Although they come in several flavors, the basic difference between web sites offering to sell your home for a fee boils down to marketing exposure. You can choose a For Sale By Owner (FSBO) site such as ForSaleByOwner.com or Owners.com where you get a webpage on their website for your home along with the ability to upload a number of photos. Depending on the website and the package you choose, you may also get a variety of home selling tools, such as downloadable flyers, yard signs and information boxes. ForSaleByOwner.com appears to be the leader in this category. They reported having 70,000 home listings in October 2005.

Of course the key here is how much traffic the FSBO website you select actually gets each month. Like any other website, a web page that no one else ever sees isn’t worth much in terms of selling your home for the highest possible price in the shortest amount of time.

Alternatively, you can select a flat fee MLS listing website, such as MLSLion.com, offering to list your home in the Realtor Multiple Listing Service (MLS) as well as listing on top real estate websites such as Realtor.com. Realtor.com is the nation’s leading real estate website with over 1,000,000 unique visitors each month and 2.5 million homes for sale.

According to web statistics at Alexa.com, Realtor.com reach is approximately 1,650 per million web users versus 125 per million for ForSaleByOwner.com and 40 per million for Owners.com.

While it might make sense that flat fee MLS and Realtor.com listing websites would cost more, a quick survey shows that the fees are roughly the same. A listing on ForSaleByOwner.com costs between $249 and $699 while a Realtor.com listing through a flat fee broker at MLSLion.com costs between $295 and $795. That’s roughly 13 times the marketing exposure for about the same price.

Why would anyone pay the same amount of money for 13 times less exposure, you might ask. One answer is that For Sale By Owner sites don’t require any commission to be paid. Flat fee MLS listing sites usually require that the seller pay at least some amount of commission to a buyer’s agent who sells the property. However, most flat fee MLS listing agreements allow the seller to sell the property on their own (when no buyer agent is involved) without paying any commission.

Many For Sale By Owner’s would like to sell without paying any commission whatsoever, however, most realize that paying a "buyer’s agent" fee (usually about 1/2 of the full listing fee charged by a traditional real estate broker) actually increases their bottom line. Greater exposure means more demand, and more demand means a higher selling price and faster selling time.

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By admin | Posted in FSBO, Flat Fee MLS, For Sale By Owner, mls listing, multiple listing | Comments (0)

InSight Realty Announces New IDX Feed

December 23, 2005 – 1:44 pm

Raleigh Durham MLS listings now online

InSight Realty announced today the addition of the Triangle MLS IDX feed to its website, www.insight-realty.com. InSight’s website now features listings of homes for sale in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Cary, North Carolina area direct from the Triangle Multiple Listing Service.

With the addition of the Raliegh-Durham , NC database of homes, InSight continues to add to its property listing database, now among the largest in the Mid-Atlantic region. InSight is the only website in the country to offer Realtor MLS listed properties along with For Sale By Owner properties and links to Government and Bank foreclosures making it one of the most comprehensive homes for sale websites in the U.S.

For more information about properties for sale in InSight’s coverage areas throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, visit http://www.InSight-Realty.com/search_homes.php.

By admin | Posted in MLS, Triangle MLS, multiple listing, north carolina homes for sale, raleigh durham real estate | Comments (0)

Brokers Look to Consolidate MLS Listing Services

December 5, 2005 – 6:33 pm

Connecticutt Realtors look to merge MLS system

There are currently 10 MLS systems in Connecticutt. That’s too many according to Jaerry Alaimo, broker owner of Century 21 Alaimo & Corrado in Enfield, CT. and president of the board of directors for the Connecticutt statewide MLS initiative.

Each of the current Multiple Listing Services serves the various geographic areas of Connecticutt with some overlapping boundaries. And, of course, each MLS employs staff and spends money on offices, equipment and utilities. There are implicit cost efficiencies that could be realized from a merger into one statewide MLS.

From the agent’s point of view, the plethora of MLSs pose a different problem. Each MLS has its own set of rules, fees, data standards, etc. that make life more complicated and expensive for a Realtor. A consolidation into one MLS would alleviate much of the problem.

To the consumer the benefits of large, state-wide or regional MLS are even more significant. Having a property advertised to Realtors and all of their buyers on an MLS throughout the state gives there homes added exposure and an accompanying possibly increased demand for their properties which could well provide a higher selling price.

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By admin | Posted in MLS, mls listing service, multiple listing, national mls, regional mls | Comments (0)