Archive for the ‘Flat Fee MLS’ Category
8 Signs that the Housing Market is Improving
We finally have a reason to celebrate!! There is an avalanche of positive news regarding an upturn in the real estate and housing market in 2012.
- Foreclosure activity in 2011 is down more than 50% lower in several states, including New Jersey, Maryland and Florida. Realty Trac
- The much feared “shadow inventory” of foreclosures declined dramatically in 2011. In December 2012, 2.2 million properties were in some stage of foreclosure. In September 2011, that number dropped to 1.5 million units…or a whopping 32% in nine months. Realtytrac
- Realtors in some hard hit area’s, such as Michigan and southern California, are reporting a shortage of housing inventory and a return to bidding wars in tight markets.
- Wall Street thinks the worst is over. Stocks of the nation’s five largest, publicly traded, home builders are at 52 week highs, signaling an upswing in home construction in 2012. In addition, the home builders have been snapping up deals on land and abandoned subdivisions, in anticipation of increased buyer demand. CNBC
- Home sellers, Realtors and home builders are getting help from rising rents, as Americans realize that owning a home is often less expensive than renting one. And, while future rent increases have no ceiling on how high they can go, ownership locks in housing expenses and equity is created as the loan balance decreases each month.
- Legal issues, property maintenance and other issues complicating the foreclosure process will push banks and lenders to approve more short sales in 2012, further reducing housing inventory.
- Interest rates will remain at historical lows in 2012, which allows more people to qualify for a home and cheap money buys more house for the same monthly payment.
- Overall, foreclosure activity was dropped more than 30 percent in 2011. Fewer than 2 million properties foreclosure notices were filed in 2011, down from 2.9 million property filings in 2010. Realty Trac
If you need to sell your home, things haven’t looked this favorable in years. 
Arm yourself with an MLS listing and exposure on Realtor.com and all the major search engines for real estate. Millions of home buyers search these websites, daily. If your home isn’t there, they will buy the one that is.
Thank you for visiting Why6Percent.com. We have helped thousands of home sellers and we can help you, too.
To MLS or Not to MLS? Separating Fact from Hype
Topics:
What is the MLS?
What are the Benefits of advertising on the MLS
What is all the “Hype” of the MLS
What Should You Consider?
What is the MLS?
The Multiple Listing Service is a database of homes and property that are for sale. The MLS is operated by the local Board of Realtors®. The MLS is the resource agents use to find homes for their buyers or advertise their home listings to other agents. MLS listings include detailed information about the property. In addition to selling price and address, an MLS listing generally includes number of rooms, size of rooms, interior and exterior features, lot size, local school district, property taxes, association dues, directions to the property and comments. Most also include photo’s of the home and a lockbox. At the sellers discretion, most MLS listings can also be upgraded for a fee to include additional photos or virtual video tours.
To MLS or Not To MLS; Separating Fact from Hype
The Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is a powerful tool for real estate agents and home sellers. It allows seller’s and agent’s to cross-sell all properties in a given market, which greatly expands the sales force of all the properties for sale. The Internet has expanded the power of the MLS by providing information in real time to not only agents, but to home buyers and home sellers alike through its www.Realtor.com website. The MLS and Realtor,com it is looked at by thousands of real estate agents who may have a buyer for your property and individual home buyers searching the Internet.
Note: In addition to Realtor.com, properties listed on the MLS also appear on other major real estate search engines like Zillow, Homes.com, Military.com, Trulia.com, Yahoo, Google and a host of others.
Benefits of MLS Advertising:
There is only one very significant benefit to having your home listed on the MLS…EXPOSURE! The fact that your home is for sale will now be known by anyone searching the Internet. Additionally, hundreds, if not thousands of real estate agents in your market will also know about your property. To fully benefit from this exposure, you need to be willing to “co-op” with a real estate agent, if they bring a buyer whose contract terms are acceptable to you. “Co-op” means that you agree to compensate the buyer’s real estate agent at the closing of your property. Typically, a buyer’s agent will earn between 2%-3% of the sales price of the home. If you are willing to “co-op” with a buyer’s agent, you should indicate this clearly in your Internet and classified advertising, and on your brochures.
To list your home on the MLS, you will need to contract with a real estate listing agent that is a member of your local real estate board. If your interest is purely to have your home listed on the MLS; you can contract with a new type of Broker who charges a one-time fee to cover the cost of them listing your home in the MLS and allows you to act as your own listing agent.
The flat-fee MLS listing concept is fairly new and not all agents will be anxious to provide this service, as they are in the full service real estate listing business. To learn more about using a flat-fee MLS service, visit websites like http://www.why6percent.com
In many areas of the United States, when a home appears on the local MLS, it will also appear on aggregator websites like MSN Home Advisor, Yahoo Real Estate, Realtor.com, Zillow.com and local state and broker websites. Many of the MLS Boards send their inventory directly to these websites to enable even more exposure for the homeowner.
In today’s transient society, thousands of people use the internet to search for homes far in advance of their relocation. Many people supply the list of properties that interest them to their agent, so the agent can set up showing appointments. When a buyer is relocating to a new area, time is limited and critical. This means the buyer’s agent becomes a critical part of relocation effort. Therefore, the MLS can be key to exposing your home to people relocating to your area.
What is the Hype of an MLS listing?
1) Your house will never sell if it is NOT listed on the MLS…False.
Your house may sell more quickly or for more money because of the tremendous exposure we discussed above, but your home can sell with or without the MLS.
2) Buyers will never find your home if it is NOT listed on the MLS…False.
According to the National Assn. of Realtors data, 60% of all home sales occur because of the sign in the yard. Newsletters, directional signs, open houses, classified advertising and InfoTubes or InfoBoxes, filled with attractive home information flyers, will also help you find a buyer for your home.
3) Real estate agents will not bring a buyer to you if you are NOT on theMLS… False.
If an agent has an interested buyer and you indicate you are willing to pay them a commission, they have no reason to boycott your property. If they do, they risk that the buyer contacts you directly and they don’t make a dime.
Considerations:
The MLS has proven value and is certainly a wonderful way to expand your advertising reach. If your goal is to make local agents aware that your home is for sale and reach the millions of buyers searching for homes on major real estate websites. Keep in mind that you will need to pay a commission to a buyer agent at closing, if they bring you an offer that you accept.
If you decide to place your home on the MLS, consider it as a part of your overall marketing strategy and not a replacement for your advertising program. Properly understood, the MLS can be another excellent part of your home selling process.
Thank you for visiting Why6Percent.com. Our national network of flat fee MLS brokers are standing by to assist you in marketing your home. Please visit our website or phone 1-800-381-9496 to get started!
7 Tips to Sell Your Home this Weekend
In today’s’ super-competitive housing market, it is essential that homebuyers picture themselves living inside the home you are trying to sell.
7 Home Selling Tips from the Lips of Top Selling Agents
- For starters, take down the Wallpaper – Trust me when I say, “Buyers just do not like wallpaper.” If you doubt how personal wallpaper is…just walk into any wallpaper store and stare at the thousands of available patterns. Chances of your tastes matching are at least a thousand to one. Don’t risk it! Pull that paper down!
- The Clutter HAS to Go! Living in a house is alot different than Selling a house. It is easy to get blind to your own clutter. Ask a friend, neighbor or neutral party to be honest with you. Then, pack away every single thing you don’t use. And, clear the kitchen counters completely.
- Smelly Homes Will NOT Sell. Agents have an old saying, “If I can smell it, I can’t sell it.” Pet smells, musty odor’s, etc will kill a sale everytime.
- White is not a Color. But, paint is your friend. Every room should have a fresh coat of paint in a warm, neutral color.
- A Spot of Color. Everyone loves flowers. Place pots with colorful annual flowers by the front door or plant seasonal color in the beds to make your home inviting and memorable.
- Househunting Begins on the Internet. If your property is not exposed on the internet, your chances of a buyer finding you are very small. Tip the odds in your favor by advertising your home on the MLS and all the major search engines for real estate. InfoTube also offers FREE property listings on its website. Also, make sure your listing includes at least 10 good photo’s of the interior and exterior of your home. If possible, also include a video tour of the house and neighborhood.
- Forget About Comp’s and Sold Properties. Study your competition, which means homes currently For Sale. If your home is priced too high when compared to your competition, it is going to sit for a long, long time.
Homeowners should please keep in mind that Buyers have a lot of choices. The homeowner who can make their house stand out among the vast inventory of “For Sale” signs will the one who wins the selling game.
Thank you for visiting Why6Percent.com,, your do-it-yourself home selling source. We can bring buyer’s to your door. Check out our website to see how we’ve helped thousands of home sellers.
Foreign Buyer’s Snapping Up US Property.
Attention Why6Percent Realtor.com customers: Due to growing foreign demand for American real estate…Realtor.com plans to offer a language translation service to reach non-english speaking homebuyers.
Foreign buyers are turning to the U.S. to buy “trophy properties,” according to a recent Wall Street Journal blog which added that demand is so strong, leading real estate website Realtor.com plans to add features, including a translation service, to help the influx of international buyers find real estate.
“They’re feeling that investing in U.S. real estate right now may be a more stable option than investing in their home countries,” Julie Reynolds, a Realtor.com spokesperson said.
Reynolds cited a National Association of Realtors survey that showed that 55% of foreign buyers paid cash in 2009, compared with about 8% of overall respondents.
In her WSJ blog, S. Mitra Kalita concluded that, “Given the shaky state of some markets and a still-tight lending environment, real-estate agents say the rush to market to foreign buyers only makes good business sense.”
And the National Association of Realtors findings back her up: It reported that between April 2009 and March 31, 2010, $66 billion of residential property — 7 percent of the total U.S. residential market — was sold to foreign nationals, recent immigrants and temporary visa holders.
“We have definitely seen an increase in international clients this year,” said Miami realtor, Ines Hegedus-Garcia. “What’s exciting is the fact that they are not interested in just single residential properties, but multiple properties as well as commercial and industrial. They are savvy cash buyers who do their homework and pull the trigger fast once the numbers make sense.”
On Realtor.com, traffic from countries in Western Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Asia has increased by more than 50% over the past two years with the foreigners targeting properties in Florida, California, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, New York, and Nevada.
At a local level, Realtors have also noticed the surge of interest from abroad: Last year 28% of them reported working with at least one international client in the previous year (2009 – 2010), up from 23% in 2008.
Here’s how the foreign interest in U.S. property breaks down: Canadians have make up the bulk of international buyers during the past 3 years; Mexicans the fastest growing; and buyers from the UK, stung by their own housing market collapse, have posted the steepest decline.
About 50 percent of international homebuyers said they wanted to move here and make the homes their primary residences; 25 percent bought vacation homes for their own use; 14% were bought residential rentals for investment; and another 14% said they wanted their purchases to double as their own vacation home and a rental.
Thank you for visiting Why6Percent.com. Our customers receive all the benefits of advertising on the MLS and Realtor.com for a fraction of the money. Visit our website for details and FAQ’s. If you have a home to sell, it is time to Spring into action!!!
Foreclosure Moratorium Erases Competition for Home Seller’s and Builder’s
While Wall Street wrings its hands and pulls its hair over the banking problems and foreclosure moratorium, home seller’s and home builder’s have a BIG reason to celebrate. Their competition dropped the ball!!!
The moratorium on foreclosures effectively removes ONE THIRD of all the homes For Sale from the market!! 33 Percent of the competition is GONE!!! For how long, we don’t know…but, we do know that this is a RARE opportunity and all property seller’s should take full advantage of it.
What can home seller’s and builder”s do to take advantage of the Bank Error?
- Realize that Time is of the Essense! The banks will work hard and fast to get their inventory back on the market. And, when they do, they will no doubt offer special incentives that individual seller’s can not compete against. The clock is ticking…….
- Price Right and Show Well! If your home is priced right against its remaining competition, and it is staged, depersonalized and shows well, Your House Will Sell.
- Marketing to the Masses is Key! The MLS sells over 90% of all the homes in the United States. If your home is not on the MLS, your chances of selling are less than 10%. If money is tight, know that you don’t have to pay 6% for an MLS listing. You can purchase an MLS listing for your Home for only $399.
Why6Percent.com believes that “a bank moratorium on foreclosure competition” is a very unique opportunity and the window is open for a short period of time, only. We are here to help you . “The clock is ticking”. Don’t let this unbelievable opportunity pass you by!!
What Does it Cost to Sell a Home?
Whether or not you use a real estate agent, the process of selling a house will involve certain costs.
Please note that some of the figures used in our examples will vary depending on the state or county a house is sold in, as well as the settlement company used and any other unique provisions that may be contained in a contract of sale. Additionally, the real estate broker commission is typically 6 percent of the sales price, but it is not a set amount. It is a sales expense negotiated between individual sellers and brokers. For the purposes of our example, a $250,000 sales price was used.
Transfer taxes
As you might expect, most state and local governments make sure they profit when someone sells a house. In most states, one-time transfer taxes will be due when a sale takes place. It is customary for transfer taxes to be split 50/50 between the buyer and the seller, but there is no set requirement that they be divided in that manner.
Some states, like Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Wyoming, have no transfer taxes at all. In other states, Colorado for instance, the transfer tax is nominal – the state charges only one tenth of 1 percent ($40 on a $400,000 house) in transfer taxes. The so called “Free State” of Maryland falls on the other end of the spectrum with some of the highest transfer taxes in the nation.
Commissions
As we stated earlier, real estate commissions are not a set amount. They are a point of negotiation between the seller and the broker. For illustration purposes here, we are using 6 percent, or $15,000 on a $250,000 sale.
Another seller expense you may run across in some area’s is a listing broker administrative brokerage commission. It’s usually adds another $250-$500 expense on top of the 6 percent commission fee. The seller will see it as a separate expense on their closing statement. So, what is this fee for? By law, brokers must keep records of all their real estate transactions for a period of years. And they must produce those records if asked for them. Although it’s a ridiculous added on fee, the listing broker administrative brokerage commission is an expense passed along by some brokers to help defray the cost of this requirement.
Settlement fees
The buyer is responsible for hiring the settlement or title company to perform closing, so the buyer will usually pay most of the fees associated with settlement. But, the seller does have some settlement expense. If the seller has an outstanding loan on the property, the settlement company will take care of paying that loan off out of the sales proceeds. They’ll charge something for the service, plus the cost of overnight fees to quickly get the loan payoff to the mortgage holder. In our example here, we’ll use $250. And, since interest in collected in arrears, the seller will be responsible for any interest charges that accrue after the last payment thru the day of closing.
The Bottom Line
If you sell your house for $250,000, you can probably expect to walk away with around $230,000 after taxes, commissions and fees. If no real estate commissions need to be paid out, the seller could expect to walk away with approximately $245,000. The real number will depend on exactly what it says in the sales contract and where the property is located.
Thank you for visiting Why6Percent.com. We help do-it-yourself home sellers market their home to millions of home shoppers every day. We can help you get the word out about your home, too!!
Hamptons Real Estate Brokers Under Investigation for High Fee’s
May 19, 2010, 12:57 pm
Hamptons Listings Said to Be Under Investigation
If Wall Street denizens thought they could escape the specter of Justice Department inquiries by decamping to the Hamptons, it appears they’re wrong.
Real estate listings in the Hamptons are the subject of a Justice Department inquiry, The New York Times and Bloomberg News reported Wednesday, keying off an earlier article in The New York Post.
Several Hamptons real estate executives told The Times on Tuesday that they had been contacted by Justice Department officials seeking information about a listing service that has been criticized as an effort to keep smaller agencies from having access to the area’s best properties.
The service, known as Realnet, allows members to share their listings with other members. Last year, George Simpson, who runs his own real estate listing company, sued more than two dozen local brokerages and Realnet. Mr. Simpson said that because only larger brokerages could afford the annual fee, which he said ranged from $15,000 to $50,000, those brokerages ultimately controlled “80 percent to 90 percent of the exclusive real estate listings.”
The stakes for brokerages are big, and apparently getting bigger, according to Bloomberg:
Hamptons home sales more than doubled in the first quarter, the biggest annual increase in seven years of record keeping, according an April 22 report by New York-based appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. A shift toward larger, more expensive homes pushed the median price up 35 percent to $908,500.
Three brokerages named in the lawsuit — the Corcoran Group, Brown Harris Stevens and Prudential Douglas Elliman — declined to comment or did not return calls, The Times said. Realnet did not return a call and an e-mail message seeking comment.
“The question I think the Justice Department is asking is: Are they putting their own profits ahead of what they should be doing for the clients?” Jonathan Lerner, a managing director at the Engel & Volker brokerage, told Bloomberg.
Gina Talamona, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment about the inquiry to The Times and Bloomberg.
By August, Mr. Simpson had withdrawn his lawsuit and said that he planned to refile his case under “different circumstances” and continue “moving forward with the crusade.”
But the original case apparently caught the attention of Justice Department officials. Mr. Simpson told The Times that in the past month, he spoke for 90 minutes by telephone with several department employees about the structure of the real estate industry in the Hamptons and which firms dominated the market.
Members of a multiple listing service post their sales listings for other members to see; nonmembers could be at a disadvantage because sellers generally prefer to have their homes placed on listing services and exposed to as many potential buyers as possible.
John Nickles, a broker based in Southold and the chairman of the multiple listing service for the Hamptons and North Fork Realtors Association, told The Times that he was interviewed on May 5 by two Justice Department lawyers, an economist and a paralegal. Mr. Nickles said that his brokerage could not afford the more expensive system; he pays $160 a month for access to the local multiple listing service that he leads.
Joe Kazickas, owner of an East Hampton real estate company that runs a Web site called Hamptonsrentals.com, said he was scheduled to speak to Justice Department officials on May 24. He said that smaller brokerages that could not pay for the costlier listing database would find it “very difficult to compete.”
Source New York Times, Edited by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Thank you for visiting Why6Percent.com. Our job is keeping you informed and helping you market your home. If you do not have a listing on your local MLS or Realtor.com, you are missing millions of home shoppers each month. Visit our site or call 1-800-381-9496 for details!
Flat Fee MLS or Not? Separating Hype from Fact
What is the MLS?
The Multiple Listing Service is a database of homes for sale. Run by the local Board of Realtors®, the MLS is the traditional method agents use to find homes for their buyers or advertise their listings to other agents. MLS listings include detailed information about the property. Besides address and selling price, a listing generally includes the number and size of rooms, annual property taxes, local schools, selling agent and more. Most include photo’s of the home.
Facts about the MLS:
The Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is the fantastic way real estate brokers provide information to one another. MLS allows each agent to see all properties for sale in a given market, greatly expanding the sales force of all properties.
The Internet now provides MLS property information, in real-time, to brokers, agents, home sellers and homebuyers. The MLS is looked at by potentially thousands of real estate agents in your market that might have a prospective buyer for your home. And, it reaches 90 Percent of the Home Buyers who search on the Internet.
- Benefits of MLS Advertisement: There is one very significant benefit to having your home listed in the MLS listing…EXPOSURE! The fact that your home is for sale will now be known to the hundreds, if not thousands of real estate brokers and agents in your market. To maximize your benefit from this exposure, you will need to be willing to “co-op” a real estate agent, if they bring a buyer to purchase your home. Co-op means that you will cooperate in a commission incentive to the real estate agent. Typically buyer’s agents earn between 2 and 3 percent of the sale price of the home.
- Reach Buyers Searching on the Internet: Another key benefit to listing your home on the MLS is in most areas of the United States, the property appears on websites like MSN HomeAdvisor, Yahoo! Real Estate, Realtor.com, Google.com, Zillow.com, etc. and local state websites. Many of the multiple listing services send their inventory directly to these sites to enable even more exposure for homeowners. Millions of people from all over the U.S. use these various websites to search for homes daily. Recent data shows that the first thing homebuyers do is search the internet, often far in advance of their actual move.
- Global Reach: MLS also reaches the transferee’s moving to your town. In today’s transient society, people relocating from all over the U.S. first find the homes they would like to see on the internet. They supply their “must see” list to the buyer’s agent located in the area they are moving to. When relocating buyers are in town searching for a home, time is limited and every minute counts. Buyer’s agents quickly become critical to the transferee’s home search and relocating homebuyers rely heavily on assistance from a buyer’s agent. Therefore, the MLS can be key to exposing your home to relocating buyers.
Considerations: The MLS is a wonderful way to expand your advertising reach and certainly has value. If your goal is maximum exposure, then MLS is an answer. Contact Why6Percent.com and get started Today!
Thank you for visiting Why6Percent.com. Remember, you can sell your home! You have the ability and there is a buyer for your home. Stay optimistic and remember, the money you save will justify the time, energy and emotion that you will expend!
InfoBox for Real Estate. Mystery Solved.
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10 Towns for Real Estate Steals and Deals
It’s our job at Why6Percent.com to have our finger on the pulse of real estate from coast-to-coast. Recently, we have been telling you to get ready for a big home selling season this spring.
Why? Interest rates are rising. Job losses have slowed to a trickle. Factory and Industrial output is up for the first time in years. And, we feel that the Fed is holding back information, for now, on the job creation that is happening as we speak.
So, where are the best real estate deals in the country?? We have identified 10 cities that are offering up Trump-type deals of a lifetime. CLICK HERE to see where the action will start first.
If you haven’t placed your property listing on the MLS, Realtor.com, Zillow, Google, MSN, Military.com and all the other major real estate websites…you are missing buyers. Go to the Why6Percent.com website and sign up NOW!!Don’t wait a minute longer. Tax Credits, Rising Rates and Gutted Home Prices are creating a stir among buyers early this spring. You snooze…you lose… And, we certainly don’t want that.