With the average house price approaching $250,000, sellers are balking at the prospect of paying up to $15,000 in real estate agent commissions to sell a home and are looking for cost effective alternatives – Flat Fee MLS by UIHS Realty is one.
Flat Fee MLS provides home owners to list their home on the MLS and gain the market exposure neccessary to generate potential buyer interest at a fraction of the cost – a few hundred dollars comparted to thousands.
IHS Realty is a leading provider of online flat fee MLS services together with a very wide range of services to support both buyers and sellers to list, market and close on a home sale.
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IHS Realty Support for Flat Fee MLS Listing Service
Once you’ve decided to select IHS Realty as your partner for a Flat Fee MLS Listing service, we do not stop working for you there.
We offer a wide range of support services along with guidance, tips and resources on how to market and negotiate the best deal for your home.
One simple way we support our clients is by providing a 24/7 answering service for buyer enquiries and as an additional incentive for potential buyers to purchase an IHS flat fee listed home we have partnered with HomeBuyer Connect to offfer valuable discounts and savings when they purchase a flat fee listed home through IHS Realty.
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Holding an Open House is a great way to market your home – so is the MLS
Combining the power of the MLS marketing system with a dedicated and motivated seller is a sure fire way of getting your home sold.
Real estate agents either love or hate open houses, not least as the most popular day for them from a buyers point of view is Sunday – how many realtors work Sunday ?
If you are in control of your home sale, you can list your home, and open house dates on the MLS and combine the MLS marketing advantage with the personal touch of an open house.
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And should I make one, or accept one?
A backup offer is an offer that is negotiated like any other offer until the buyers and sellers reach a price and terms that are mutually acceptable. A unique term of the agreement is that it is accepted as a backup offer subject to the collapse of a previously accepted offer that is in primary position.
Backup offers are an much underused aspect of real estate negotiations. If you are looking for a home to purchase, you make a backup offer on a property that is currently under contract and continue looking. You simply make an offer and go through the negotiation process as if you are making the original offer. Once you and the seller agree on the terms, your backup contract sits in limbo until the original contract is closed or the deal falls through. The whole idea is to have an offer on the table should the original deal not work out for any reason.
For sellers, it’s a great tool for leverage. You never know when a deal could fall through. There are many reasons why contracts don’t close – financial matters, seller changes his mind, property conditions, unfavorable mortgage terms. If the deal does not close then the seller must continue marketing his home. A backup offer saves time and reassures you that your home is of interest to the market.
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- Contract Forms
Need contract forms? You can order your own contract package right here for one low price. Everything you need in one package.
Then refuse to listen to solid advice
If you aren’t getting many showings or offers – that’s a sign.
Most people think that if their home isn’t getting shown enough – it MUST be the agent’s fault.
Well, you shouldn’t blame your agent for everything. Sometimes, home sellers just aren’t paying attention. They’re not paying attention to their agent, the market or the buyer’s who are telling them they are just priced too high. In a word, it’s easy to get attached to the fantasy that somehow your house is worth more. Don’t be taken in by it.
First, you need to get a comparative market analysis of your house to see what other houses in the same neighborhood with similar amenities have sold for. Then, and only then, should you set a price. Don’t base it on what sold last year. Your comps have to be recent enough to give you a decent view of how the market is operating today. Otherwise, you could end up overpricing your house and an overpriced house won’t sell.
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You don’t want to scare buyers out of purchasing your home
Many for sale by owner sellers are not able to show the home to potential buyers in an objective manner. Often the seller skews the home showing to his own point of view, talking about experiences that he and his family have had in the home.
When you show your home be sure that you don’t bore potential buyers with all the memories you had while living there. You might just scare them out of buying the house. If you talk about all the positive memories you had the buyers just might leave and not call back, thinking they would be stealing your positive memories if they bought your house.
Instead, think about the houses positive features. Why would you buy it? Sell the benefits of the house to your potential buyers and leave the memories for sharing with your friends and family after the house if sold.
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Expect this tool to become more popular in 2007
Call it virtual voyeurism: By August 2006, 51% of all Internet users had taken a virtual tour of a piece of real estate, according to the latest release from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, up from 45% in November 2004.
You can expect in increase in these numbers in the next couple of years. Virtual tours will soon be an absolutely essential point of marketing for sellling your house online. If you want to hit buyers where they need to be hit to make that decision, a virtual tour will be the one thing that will give you the edge over other home sellers.
In fact, if you want potential buyers to come and look at your house, you will have to get them to take a virtual tour, then they are more likely to contact you.
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- Virtual Tour
Get your virtual tour at IHS Realty for $149.95.
Buyers need to dig for information
Learn why sellers are selling, if they have deadline, what they paid, what inspections they’ve had done
These days, the home buyer is king.
That’s because in most markets, there is an oversupply of new and resale homes available. Just ask any real estate agent for the “number of days on market,” and you will discover home listings languish much longer than a year ago.
No truer words were ever spoken. Buyers need to gain leverage. You do that by learning about the seller – why is he selling? Does he have a deadline? How much the seller pay and when did he buy? If you don’t ask the questions then you’ll be negotiating in the dark.
Here’s a short list of information to dig for:
Why is the seller selling?
What did the seller pay?
What is the seller’s deadline to sell?
What inspections has the seller had performed?
One more thing – ask your agent to conduct a comparative market analysis.
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List on the MLS and you’ll be listed locally as well as nationally
One in four buyers purchase a home they first saw on the Internet, according to a 2005 survey by the National Association of Realtors.
Veronica Melissas started out on Realtor.com, the Web site of the NAR that contains most of the MLS listings in the country.
When you list your house on IHS Realty, you get listed on Realtor.com and your local MLS web site. That’s the best exposure you can get. No matter where you live or where the property exists that you are selling, you’ll be listed nationally at Realtor.com and on IHS Realty’s web site and you’ll also be listed regionally and locally on the MLS in your area.
IHS Realty has been playing the flat fee game long enough, we know how to make it work for you. Don’t you want to do business with a trusted source? We weren’t just first. We’re also the best.
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- Flat Fee MLS
Learn more about how flat fee MLS services work.
A transaction broker can assist the buyer and seller
In the old days of real estate their was one way to buy or sell a house – through your full service real estate broker. Typically this real estate broker, or one of his agents, provided a wide array of services for a fairly large commission rate. Whether or not you required all of the services in their bundle you paid for the entire package.
Today, in most areas, more and more home buyers and sellers are fortunate to have choices in real estate services and the fees that they pay for those services. Transaction brokerage is one of the newer alternatives to the traditional real estate brokerage service model. Rather than acting as an "agent" for the buyer or seller in a real estate transaction, a transaction broker acts as a professional assistant or counselor.
A transaction broker can, for instance, assist the seller of a property in properly pricing the property for sale, assist a buyer in preparing a purchase offer on a home or assist both parties in fulfiling the obligations of the contract towards a successful closing. Although not an agent for either party, they are required to treat all parties honestly and fairly and use reasonable skill and care in the performance of their duties.
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That’s a great opportunity for home sellers
Buyers like the Filadelfias, as well as sellers, are increasingly accessing information on real estate Web sites to become better educated about the housing market and to gain more control over the buying and selling process.
A National Association of Realtors survey reported that 77 percent of homebuyers used the Internet to search for a home in 2005, compared to only 2 percent of buyers a decade earlier. Twenty-four percent of homebuyers said they found their home through an Internet search, up from 15 percent in 2004, the association reported. Only 2 percent found their home this way in 1997.
The beautiful thing about these statistics is that home sellers can now use the same tools that real estate agents used to have exclusive access to. It’s true. If you want to sell your house yourself, you can use the multiple listing service and cut your agent out of the picture altogether.
Buyers are going online to research the real estate market in your area long before they ever contact a real estate agent. That means, they have a handle on what’s available before they commission an agent to negotiate a fair price. That’s money in the seller’s pocket. You can negotiate the buyer’s agent commission down to 1%-1.5% based on whether or not the buyer of your property found your house or the agent did. Furthermore, if you sell your house without the assistance of a seller’s agent, you can save thousands of dollars on commissions.
Flat fee real estate services are the way to go. Don’t miss out.
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It’s the same there as it is here
Realtors are all a buzz about this new form of listing houses on the MLS (multiple listing service). Some feel it creates more work for the buyers agent, while others see this as a way to tap into the For Sale By Owner market.
Even in the UK, they’re talking about flat fee services like IHS Realty. The principle is the same there as it is here. The seller contracts with an online flat fee service, pays one low fee, lists his or her house on the MLS, and buyers and buyers’ agents call for appointments.
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Exclusive agency agreements help everyone
(Source) The FTC has now settled with five MLS systems that did not allow brokers to post listings with anything other than exclusive-right-to-sell listing contracts. From this point forward exclusive agency agreements can be used with MLS systems based in Loveland, CO; Concord, NH; Williamsburg, VA; Appleton, Oshkosh, and Fond du Lac, Wisconsin; and Monmouth and Ocean Counties in New Jersey. Two Michigan MLS systems that did not agree to the FTC proposals face administrative complaints, matters that will be contested in the court system.
We laud the FTCs decision. Not only does it ensure the survival and success of services like IHS Realty’s, but it means greater choice for consumers – and that’s more important. Sellers looking for a place to sell their homes can list on the MLS and reach 75% of the buyers in the market. That ability benefits buyers, sellers, agents and brokers, and mortgage companie. Greater choice always equals more freedom and more benefits for consumers. Chalk one up for the FTC.
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