Miami By Owners Save on Average 65% in Real Estate Commissions when using our Flat fee MLS Listing Service

The reason South Florida home owners consider using flat fee MLS to sell their property is they want to save 50% in real estate commissions, or possibly pay none, while still getting great service and Internet marketing.

But, there is a trust issue with most Miami home owners when dealing with Realtors®.

I am Keith Gordon, broker for flat fee MLS listing service ADDvantage®. I have been a member of the Coral Gables Board of Realtors® since 1996. I have been offering Florida residents honest real estate brokerage dealings for 25 years. You can trust my discount MLS brokerage firm ADDvantage® with your flat fee MLS listing as I have been licensed since 1984 in Florida and have never had a compliant!

Trust is always an issue when money is involved. Many Miami homeowners have limited faith or trust in Realtors®. This is one reasons by owners choose to list in the MLS without a traditional broker.

I find many of our clients even doubt our sincerity until they have listed and dealt personally with our staff and have experienced our easy to use yet sophisticated MLS listing software as well as witnessed our timely and professional MLS edits and overall customer support. Our company offers more service that 99% of all full-service Miami real estate firms!

There are three areas that I find Florida by owners have issues with:

1) Buyer leads are a hot topic with flat fee MLS home sellers. At ADDvantage®, our policy that has been effective, flawless and honest since we started ADDvantage® in 2005. Every buyer lead received by us from all sources such as Realtor.com, Homes.com and others websites are handled in real time from 8:00am-8:00pm 7 days a week. Between these hours, all emails and calls are answered by our staff and forwarded to our Miami flat fee MLS sellers by phone and/or email. Our relentless attention to all details has earned us the reputation in South Florida as the most trusted flat fee MLS service. All buyer leads are stored in the sellers control panel under “buyer leads” for easy retrieval.

2) The next point of trust is how Realtor.com and IDX feeds work. Most Miami by owners DO understand that no seller contact information is allowed to be published in Realtor.com. By rule, ONLY the listing broker’s number and name may appear. All Realtor® websites throughout Florida such as Remax.com get their MLS listing data from a feed called IDX. The IDX feed is generated from Realtor.com which means all websites that display MLS listings contain the listing brokers contact information, not the sellers. Therefore, sellers must implicitly trust their flat fee MLS broker to not mishandle buyer leads.

3) Offers from Realtors® are the next hot topic of trust. By owners do not want their offers going through the flat fee broker. They perceive the offer as theirs and would prefer that the flat fee broker never sees the offer or even being slightly involved in that part of the selling process. At ADDvantage®, we are facilitators of deals and would never impede the sale. We forward all offers in real time to the seller and call notifying them of the offer. We have never mishandled an offer in 5 years. Most offers do come through ADDvantage® because Realtors® often prefer the “listing broker” to forward their offer to the “self-represented” seller. Despite the fact that it is stated directly in the MLS to call seller for all showings which includes the seller’s phone number, it has been Realtor® protocol for 80 years to only deal with the listing broker. This also assists ADDvantage® with assuring the seller listing status is updated from “active” to “contract pending” in a timely manor…An MLS board requirement.

Trust remains an issue when someone is listing flat fee MLS or dealing with a “Realtor.” Miami by owners want to avoid paying any commission, if possible, or at worst case pay just 50% of the cost of a traditional listing. At ADDvantage®, we have earned our reputation as Miami, Florida’s hardest working and most trusted flat fee MLS broker because we have delivered more offers, more buyers leads and Realtor® feedback on all showings. We do this 7 days a week from 8:00am-8:00pm for 5 years in a row.

Call us anytime 1-877-232-9695 or check out our latest creative and effective flat fee MLS listing plan called ADDvantage Success.

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Florida’s real estate market is definitely showing new signs of life in November. We have successfully negotiated 5 ADDvantage Plus contracts last week. I am hopeful that the low interest rate environment and actions by the “bailout” shores up short sale and REO activity.

Looking forward, the best advice I can give Miami by owner MLS sellers is to price your home competitively and disregard the active short or the closed short sales. Realtors in Miami, Orlando and Tampa are focusing on properties they can close for their buyers and avoiding the lure of short sales. The bottom line for Realtors is you can’t make a living off short sales only.

At ADDvantage, we offer flat fee MLS listings in all Florida counties, including Greater Miami-Dade. I have been a flat fee MLS listing broker in Miami since 2000. In 2005, we started offering our unique brand of flat fee MLS in Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville and many other Florida cities.

Our flat rate MLS plans cost a bit more than our competition but we offer more service and a very articulate flat fee MLS listing agreement which spells our all the important details that sellers need to know about.

I often visit our competition’s websites to see what’s new. Some flat fee offers are genuine but many are not. Without writing a thesis about what to look out for when listing in the MLS flat fee in Miami, there are 3 key points that you need to be aware of.

First would be the right to cancel a listing and escape the listing agreement unscathed. Easier said then done in many cases. Sellers need these words in their listing agreement…”unconditional withdrawal.” This means the listing broker will cancel and remove the MLS listing immediately thus enabling another broker to re-list the property. No other words will suffice…not “remove”, not “cancel”, not “conditional withdrawal” etc.

The next point is phone support. Most flat fee websites all say the same misleading rhetoric that “all calls go directly to the seller.” This is false. This past weekend, we fielded over 30 calls from buyers and Realtors through Florida seeking showing instructions. One example of how important live phone support truly is to the flat fee MLS seller was a call I took at 12:20pm Sunday from a unrepresented buyer in Miami requesting to see a $1,300,000 home. Our seller was home and meet with the buyer. This buyer called ADDvantage from an ad in Realtor.com and no seller contact information is allowed in Realtor.com by rule of the MLS. 2,900 Realtors in Florida have called ADDvantage over the past 12 months either ignoring the Realtor remarks section of the MLS that clearly states “call seller directly at 305-393-8138 for all showings and offers” or because they couldn’t reach the seller. When listing flat fee, phone support can make the difference between selling and not selling.

The last major point of listing with a reliable and ethical Miami flat fee service is buyer leads. That $1,300,000 buyer lead that I received on Sunday went right to our flat fee MLS seller in real time. Not all flat fee brokers hand-over buyer leads from Realtor.com, homes.com and other FSBO websites to their sellers. These leads are extremely valuable to the seller and possibly to the flat fee unscrupulous broker. A $1,300,000 sale would result in a $40,000 commission at 3%.

In our flat fee MLS listing agreement, we state these 3 key points very clearly. Most flat fee website don’t even show you a listing agreement until after you pay. That is about as crazy as signing a note without knowing the interest rate.

ADDvantage offers 4 flat fee MLS listing plans. My favorite MLS listing plan is ADDvantage Plus because it looks and acts like a full-service listing, $799 plus $500 at close. A “Plus” listing in the MLS comes with Street Smart ADDvantage Realtor eblast marketing, contract-to-close representation, we take all calls and schedule all appointments and all buyer leads belong to the seller. This is a perfect flat fee listing.

The public’s favorite flat fee listing at ADDvantage is MLS ADDvantage for $349. And Street Smart ADDvantage is the most effective Realtor-to-Realtor marketing in Florida…But, you must offer a 4% or > buyer’s agent commission.

Call us anytime and we will pick up the phone guaranteed …8:00am-8:00pm 7 days. 1-305-393-8138. Or, visit oour flat fee MLS Tampa blogging site.

Choosing a flat fee MLS service in Miami is a very important decision. Flat fee MLS services vary greatly in South Florida and the more you know about them, in particular what’s said or what’s not said in their listing agreement, the better off you will be.

Miami-Dade residents should pay particularly close attention to three critical elements that should be in the MLS “listing agreement.”

The first critical element of a listing agreement would be who receives buyer leads from sources such as Homes.com and Realtor.com. These leads do not automatically go to the flat fee seller because no seller information is allowed in Realtor.com, therefore all leads go to the listing broker by default.

Traditional flat fee MLS means these leads should be forwarded to the flat fee seller. Not all Miami flat fee MLS brokers send these valuable buyer leads to their seller clients. Some even state this “disturbing” fact right in the listing agreement  (at the bottom) and some don’t mention anything about buyer leads. An articulate flat fee listing agreement would clearly state…

“all buyer leads from Realtor.com, Homes.com and other Internet advertising sources belong to the seller and will be forwarded by email.”

Without such protection in the listing agreement, these leads may never find their way to the seller. Instead, the listing broker may take these leads for his/her own agents or refer them out to another broker for a referral commission.

One of the biggest reasons why Miamians use flat fee MLS is for the opportunity to sell “FSBO” which means selling to an un-represented buyer from sources such as Realtor.com or Homes.com. If successful, the seller pays no real estate commission at all. Without buyer leads, the seller loses this benefit of listing flat fee.

At ADDvantage, a Miami flat fee MLS service, our flat fee clients sell 30% of their properties with no Realtor involved…see our sales statistics. Our 8:00am-8:00pm 7 day a week live phone support captures many leads. Nationally, 84% of all homes sold are sold by Realtors. At ADDvantage, Realtors sell only 70% of our homes.

The next important element to look for in a flat fee listing agreement would be the word “conditional withdrawal.”  This has to do with the seller’s right to cancel their flat fee listing at will. The words that a Miami seller wants to see in their listing agreement would be “unconditional withdrawal” which means the listing broker will remove the listing from the MLS and allow another broker to re-list the property immediately. The words “conditional withdrawal” mean the listing broker will “temporarily  suspend” the listing from being “seen” by other Realtors searching the MLS but no other broker can re-list the property until some further action is taken by the listing broker. The reason some brokers use this language in their listing agreements is because the broker wants is a “fee” or “penalty” from the seller for canceling the listing. This same ploy applies to full-service real estate companies as well. So, “conditional withdrawal” has to due with forcing a seller into paying a “cancellation fee.” The odd thing is flat fee is a “paid-in-advance service” so why would a flat fee service care if a seller wants to try a different broker? The answer is they are unscrupulous. 

The last critical component of the listing agreement has to do with the hours of operation, in particular, the hours that the flat fee broker answers the phone. The biggest misconception about listing flat fee in the MLS is that all calls go to the seller. Many sellers believe that the flat fee listing broker’s primary job is to list the property in the SE Florida MLS and make changes to the listing as requested by the seller. This is totally incorrect.

ADDvantage, a member of Greater Miami Association of Realtors and a flat fee MLS specialist, has fielded over 2890 calls from Realtors and buyers over the past 12 months. Our 12 hour work days make listing flat fee through ADDvantage a big benefit for sellers…8:00am-8:00pm 7 days. Why do so many Realtors call ADDvantage when it says in the MLS under “Realtor Remarks” to call seller directly for all showing requests. The reasons will surprise you…below are the top 10 sited reasons why Miami Realtors call ADDvantage…

Hello, I see a listing on Homes.com and can you tell me how much the seller is asking and when can see it?

Hi, I’m a Realtor with Remax in Miami and I don’t have the MLS listing sheet with me and I need to know if I can show the property at 1413 Sunset Harbour Drive #209 in South? Beach

Hello, I’, Mike Gordon from the South Miami Realty, you have a listing at 2101 Brickell Ave. #Unit 3002…can I show it at 2:30-3:30 on Friday?

Hello, I’m Bill Peterson from Sunset Realty in Miami, I showed your listing on 5425 Hammock Drive Coral Gables yesterday and would like to fax over an offer…what is your fax number?

Hey, Keith Gordon here, from ADDvantage in Coconut Grove, I have tried to reach the seller as instructed in the MLS for property 1145 San Pedro Avenue Coral Gables but I can’t reach them…can you assist me with showing instructions please.

Hi, it’s Bill Taylor of Century 21 in Miami, I need a seller’s disclosure statement on 5656 Pinetree Drive on Miami Beach, can you email me one please?

“Hi, it’s Oscar B. Smith from Coldwell Banker, do you know if the dock at 1145 San Pedro Avenue in Gables By the Sea, can handle a 65” Sun Seeker?

“Hello, my name is Mr. Romeriz of Pinecrest Realty in Pinecrest, Fl… I am presently in front of 720 South Mashta Drive Key Biscayne with my buyers. Can you assist me with showing instructions.

“I am running late to my appointment to show your listing at 1400 Pennsylvania Ave #apt 35 Miami Beach, would you so kind as to call the seller and let them know.”

“Hi, I’m Gilligan from Pembroke Pines Realty, I can’t find 1009 Gilligan’s Way. Can you direct me into this listing?