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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I am Keith Gordon, broker for Florida flat fee MLS service ADDvantage. I often blog about flat fee MLS because I have been a Florida flat rate MLS broker since 2000. I am an experienced Florida real estate broker and have been licensed since 1984. I started offering flat fee in the Greater Miami-Dade market working primarily with investors. Shortly thereafter, we had more For Sale By Owner sellers than investors. The flat fee proved to be a viable concept and in 2005 ADDvantage was founded.

Flat fee, flat rate, FSBO with MLS…everyone calls it a different name but the intent of the “seller” is to get listed on a local MLS, not pay a listing commission (3%), retain the right to sell By Owner, get advertised on the Internet to FSBO websites, pay a flat fee, have the right to cancel anytime and receive all buyer leads that happen to come to the flat fee broker.

Loosely defined, the above description is genuine Florida flat fee MLS.

Most, if not all, people I speak with during the day about listing flat fee with ADDvantage ask me the same question…”my number will be in the MLS and I get all calls, right?”

I am not really sure why everyone believes this but the answer is no. No calls go the seller from Realtor.com. The seller is 100% reliant on the flat fee broker to answer the phone, take in coming emails, record the lead (buyer) and send that Realtor.com lead to the flat fee seller. This is the reason why ADDvantage says on our website “Where All Buyer Leads are Yours and We Answer the Phone 8:00am to 8:00pm 7 days a week.”

Realtor.com rules are so strict that not even the words “SELLER”, “FSBO” or “OWNER” are allowed and certainly not a seller’s phone number. Realtor.com will remove or fine anyone violating this rule. They are protecting full-service agents.

When flat fee listed, the listing broker will insert language in the MLS under “Realtor Remarks” section that states “call seller directly for all showings and offers 305-999-0988.” Because it says this you would think that Realtors would call the seller and the flat fee broker is out of the loop. 100% not true.

Even with this obvious remark under showing instructions for all Realtors to see, just under 3,000 Realtor calls were handled by an ADDvantage MLS administratorover the past 12 months. 3,000 appointments to show homes listed “flat fee” through ADDvantage were booked through ADDvantage (not the seller) the past year.

Answering the phone at a flat fee company is a full-time responsibility that we take very seriously at ADDvantage. No Florida full-service or flat fee company does a better job because no company would spend the money needed to actually man-the-phone from 8:00am-8:00pm 7 days.

Our systems at ADDvantage are 100% electronicWe know every statistic about every account. For example, 26.47% of our flat fee sellers in Florida sell themselves saving all commissions. We know that it takes 115 on average to sell a Florida home flat fee listed through ADDvantage, see our Florida flat fee MLS sales statistics.

What is a genuine Florida flat fee MLS service? My definition of flat fee MLS is a service that is 100% transparent and shows its prospective flat fee clients a listing agreement before they pay. And, in that listing agreement, itemize the services that are being “sold” to the flat fee client for that “advance” flat fee payment. A genuine flat fee service will “unconditionally” withdraw a listing from the MLS upon request from seller so another broker can input the listing immediately. Of course, no cancellation fees, all buyer leads go to the flat fee seller, not the listing broker and finally, the hours of phone support are posted on the website and/or in the flat fee listing agreement.

Call us anytime and we would be glad to explain the differences between our Florida flat fee plans. 1-877-232-9695.