Orlando Saves Over 50% in Real Estate Commissions

Realtors should be deal makers…professional messengers, not CMA Super Heroes

I am Keith Gordon, member of your local MLS Realtor Association which is Mid-Florida Regional MLS. I come to you with a message about selling your Orlando home and the buyer’s agent that you will likely engauge along the way. My company is ADDvantage Real Estate services better known as GetMoreOffers.com. We specialize is listing homes in the MLS for a flat fee. Our basic flat fee MLS listing plan is $349 for a 9 month listing. I also offer a full-service-flat fee MLS listing called ADDvantage Success. It is through this contract-to-close listing program that I have come to believe that too many buyer’s agents think they are CMA (comparable market analysis) Super Heroes and not professional messengers as they should be!

My story is about buyer’s agents. Because I represent many by owner MLS sellers throughout Florida, I come to you with a unique set of skills and experience. I am not your typical Realtor because my business model is web-based and we are a discount real estate broker in Orlando much the same as a Charles Schwab. I work for a fraction of what a traditional 6% charges and my company offers many services and marketing that you can’t get from a “bricks and mortar” agent such as our Street Smart ADDvanatge Realtor eblast, 100% on-line listing and 24/7 edits to your listing, feedback and more.

My issue is why buyer’s agents use a CMA (comparable market analysis) as their crutch to sell a home. A CMA is not the only way to compare value and ruins the excitement that gets a deal done. If a buyer says to an agent I want to make an offer and the buyer’s agent says, “great, let’s run a CMA and see where values are?” By the time the buyer has come forth with their “I love this home and want to make an offer” it would seem pretty obvious that they have seen more than one home and have an idea where they think value is. If they are wrong and offer too much, something called an “appraisal” will come to the rescue and save the buyer from paying too much. 

What’s wrong with saying to the buyer, “great, what do you think you want to offer?” This leaves the door open for a discussion with the buyer about other homes you have seen and begs for the buyer’s opinion of value.

CMA’s are NOT the only tool in the arsenal of Realtors to weigh value. I believe it takes the excitement out of the deal. It’s not just about price per square foot. It is also about the street, back yard, pool, kitchen, roof, layout and many other factors that a CMA can’t accurately compare.

Realtors are not super heroes with a cape that reads “CMA to the Rescue.”

Call me anytime about listing your home 1-877-232-9695.

ADDvantage, an Orlando flat fee MLS listing service, designed a special software program in 2005 that delivers an email to all Realtors in Orlando within a 35 mile radius of a Street Smart ADDvantage flat fee MLS listed property. Our Realtor-to-Realtor Street Smart email has become the best read email that Realtor receives of any kind in Florida.

To get in the Street Smart ADDvantage email, an Orlando seller must offer a 4% or greater commission to the buyer’s agent and be listed in the Street Smart program offered only through ADDvantage. Realtors from other companies call ADDvantage all the time requesting that we include their listings in the Street Smart ADDvantage email.

The Street Smart ADDvantage Realtor eblast program has been a huge success for the Orlando Realtors and the flat fee MLS sellers that have used this plan in Florida.

Over 1,000,000 emails have been delivered to Florida Realtors each year. Our flat fee MLS website, getmoreoffers.com, tracts the number of hits that each Street Smart ADDvantage listing receives so sellers can see their results.

Before we launched Street Smart ADDvantage in 2005, we researched the concept of paying higher buyer agent incentives and made the following conclusions.

Our Street Smart ADDvantage properties would get shown more by Realtors and sell better than other standard MLS listing. That would be only logical since a Realtor that sees a 4% or 5% commission offer will likely not pass up a chance to show that property and possibly sell that home.

In summary, the theory that supports the concept of Street Smart ADDvantage is higher commissions are often cheaper than price reductions. For example, a 1% commission on a $500,000 home is $5,000. When negotiating with a buyer or Realtor, price increments do not move in $5,000 clips but more like $10,000-$15,000. The extra $5,000 in commission pales in comparison to dropping $15,000 off the ask price.

Call us anytime, if you have questions about listing flat fee in Orlando MLS

1-877-232-9695 or visit our site getmoreoffers.com.