Flat Fees for the Seller

One of the innovations in the new world of real estate we have been talking about on this site are flat fee services. This term can apply to a number of different areas in real estate today, but the most common usage is in reference to a seller paying a flat fee to a brokerage in order to have a piece of property listed on that brokerage's MLS.

If you have read our article defining flat fees, you may know what they are and how they work, but might not yet realize their advantages to you as a seller. Well, those advantages are huge, and we will list them below.

Save money

Perhaps most importantly, using a flat fee service will generally save a seller a lot of money, provided you can sell your house through the MLS. Traditional means of selling real estate means using the services of an agent, and paying that agent. And boy, does tradition call for a lot of pay.

Agents are paid by commission, and standard commission for a real estate agent is 6%. This was fairly reasonable a decade or so ago, when many houses were selling for around $100,000. However, the dollar amount skyrocketed along with housing prices since then. Even at lower prices, paying an agent 6% would raise the eyebrows of many sellers.

A flat fee agreement means sellers don't use the services of an agent to get word of their home to the market. Instead, they take advantage of the most powerful marketing tool at the disposal of real estate brokers, the MLS, at a set fee. This flat fee is usually a couple of hundred to just over a thousand dollars, significantly less than what you would pay on commission.

If a buyer finds your home with the help of an agent on the other end, only half the standard commission will be paid on the final sale amount. If the transaction is handled agent free, there is no commission paid at all, only the cost of the listing is incurred.

Home Exposure

You're still listed on an MLS, and that means a lot of exposure for your home. The real estate market is national and international today, not just local. More exposure using a flat fee MLS listing means a lot more potential buyers can view your home!