Orlando Saves Over 50% in Real Estate Commissions

Our Orlando Flat Fee MLS listings are selling faster than we are getting new ones

Over the past 4 months, buyers and sellers in Orlando are coming closer together with their expectations of value. This narrowing of these “price-expectations” along with the added urgency of the expiring tax credit deadline has depleted our inventory of available MLS listings homes in Florida by 21%.

I see the real estate market in Florida completely differently now as we move into the second-half of 2010. I am Keith Gordon, broker and co-owner of a Florida flat fee MLS listing and full-service discount real estate firm, ADDvanatge®. We are a state-wide flat fee MLS listing service that specializes in being “available” for sellers, buyers and Realtor 7 days a week from 8:00am-8:00pm.

As a flat fee MLS broker, I primarily work with sellers so I have a unique and accurate view of how they are pricing their homes and I see a dramatic change in their expectations.

There remains a few “hold-outs” that bought right at the top in 2005 and possibly 2006 that remain 12-15% over-priced. But, unlike past years such as 2008 and 2009 where there were more over-priced MLS listings than well-priced ones, I see the reverse now.

It is not uncommon to to a new flat fee MLS listing at ADDvantage® sell during the first 2 weeks of being active in the MLS. This means that seller priced their Orlando home within a few percentage points of appraised  value. When a seller does this, every Realtor that has attempted to negotiate a home with their buyers and failed due to over-priced and inflexible sellers pounce of these well-priced listings.

Listing with one of ADDvantage’s® flat fee MLS listing plans helps the seller price their homes better because we don’t charge 6% to list but rather a flat fee starting at $349. This saves the Orlando home owner at least 50%.

Every poorly price home we have at ADDvantage is still active. I can recall about 10 homes out of our 147 we currently have listed in the MLS that are over-priced. They have been priced poorly from the start and continue to be priced behind the curve. The typical scenario of this type of listing is “we aren’t selling if we can’t get “x.” But “x” has nothing to do with current market value. I have yet to see one of these listing sell.

At ADDvantage®, we are the messenger, albeit a good one!. We list Orlando homes in the MLS, we market aggressively on the Internet and I represent many of the sellers ar ADDvantage® who use our full-service discount listing service ADDvantage Success.

There are two distinct advantages of listing flat fee in the MLS with ADDvantage®. The service and marketing are excellent and you save at least 50% in real estate commissions.

There are also two distinct advantages of using our full-service discounted flat fee plan ADDvantage Success. If you going to sell a home in today’s market, you must sell within what I refer to as the “appraisal envelop.” Every successful seller at ADDvantage® gets their deal done somewhere within this envelop. What I do for the sellers that I represent is get a deal done faster and at the high-end of this envelop. The extra cost to the seller over our traditional flat fee MLS “self-representation” plan is $350 up-front and a additional 1/3 of 1% at close or $330 per $100,000 in sales value. My value to home sellers is professionalism from start to finish. I do expect to get my sellers a sales price at the high-end of appraised value and I make sure no buyer’s agent takes advantage of one of my sellers or that no buyer is engaged that can’t close.

If, by chance, I push the buyer’s agent too far in value and we don’t appraise out, then the seller can always opt out of the contract, negotiate the difference by meeting in the middle, the buyer can agree to pay the original contract price or a combination of asking the buyer to take some or all of the seller’s closing costs such as documentary stamps on the deed or title policy.

My best advice to sell a home today is get the most for it and go buy another home at these bargain prices. 

Call anytime, 1-877-232-9695 or 727-942-2929. Might check out of smart home selling tips.

5 reasons why Orlando FSBO sellers believe ADDvantage is worth the extra money:

1) We are the only Orlando flat fee MLS service that guarantees (it is actually in our listing agreement) 8:00am-8:00pm 7 days a week live buyer lead and Realtor assistance. Our live phone support is one reason why we are a more expensive flat fee MLS service. The common belief is that all calls go directly to the seller so why would anyone pay for extra live phone support of 8:00am-8:00pm? The fact is ADDvantage has answered over 2,900 calls live over the past 12 months from Realtors and buyers needing assistance. Flat fee MLS websites all say they same thing: that “Buyers and Realtors call the seller directly.” This is absolutely FALSE; we put the same remarks in the MLS as all flat fee services do which states “call the seller directly for all showings and offers.” The reason we have received over 2,900 calls is because Realtors are a busy bunch of people and often fail to slow down and read the Realtor remarks. Some read them and can’t find the seller, and some couldn’t care less what the remarks say and call the listing broker as protocol. Also, NO seller contact information is allowed in Realtor.com. These are the reasons why Orlando flat fee MLS sellers need reliable phone support. Is losing one buyer lead or missing one Realtor showing worth tying to save $150 and list with an unreliable cheaper flat fee service?

2) We are the only flat fee MLS service in Orlando, Miami, Tampa or Jacksonville that spends so much time making sure our flat fee sellers are ready for an offer. Just yesterday at 6:45pm, a Saturday evening, I received a call from an Orlando Realtor that was making an offer on a property she had shown earlier in the day. She reached me at 6:45 pm Saturday and received the advice she needed which was where to send the offer. I asked her if she needed the seller’s disclosure statement she said yes. I simply went to our “user docs” area of our seller’s control panel and emailed it to her. She got what she needed, the flat fee seller received excellent service as their offer wasn’t delayed and this was all made possible because our MLS Administrators did their job to ensure all clients have completed their seller’s disclosure. I believe that we are the only flat fee service in Florida that spends the needed resources to follow up with clients and mail “welcome letters” to inform sellers of what their responsibilities are. The list goes on about other success stories that flat fee sellers have experienced at ADDvantage. It all starts with excellent phone ethic and we take the time to get the details right. We help Realtors and buyers today, not tomorrow or Monday.

3) Another point about paying more for an ADDvantage flat fee listing is buyer leads. In our listing agreement we state that all buyer leads belong to the seller, not us. This is not the case with many flat fee MLS listing services in Florida who take the leads for their own purposes.

4) Another point is the listing agreement. Our flat fee listing agreement states that we answer the phone 8:00am-8:00pm 7 days and that a seller can “unconditionally” withdraw a MLS listing at anytime with no fee or penalty. By the way, “suspend” is not the same as unconditionally withdraw. Many other terms can be used that don’t mean you have the right to permanently cancel your listing with no penalties. Listing flat fee isn’t always cut and dry unless you’re dealing with ADDvantage.

5) Lastly, our flat fee MLS listing plans have more proactive features such as Street Smart ADDvantage Realtor eblast and ADDvantage Plus contract-to-close.

Cheap is cheap and with ADDvantage you simply get more.

Call us anytime, we are here 1-877-232-9695 or visit our flat fee MLS listing website getmoreoffers.com