About Flat Fee MLS Services

The MLS is the primary tool used by Realtors to find homes for their buyers. According to the National Association of Realtors, approximately 80% of all U.S. homes are sold through Realtors using the MLS and homes listed on the MLS average net proceeds of 7% higher than homes sold for sale by the owner. This is why MLS is the most powerful home marketing tool and why you need to be listed on the MLS in order to maximize your chances of selling.  Millions of dollars are spent by companies and individual agents in order to attract, educate, and take buyers through the process of purchasing a home. By getting an MLS listing you are basically hiring all of the agents that belong to the MLS nationwide.

However, using services of traditional real estate firms is expensive, you may have to pay up to 3.5% in commissions to real estate companies to place your home in realtors database.If you want to sell your own property acting as for sale by owner (FSBO) seller generally you can not put a listing for the home directly into realtors database MLS.  However, there are brokers and many online services which offer FSBO sellers the option of listing their property in their local MLS database by paying a flat fee.

In a flat fee MLS listing, the listing agreement between the real estate broker and the property owner typically requires the broker to enter the property into the MLS and provide other contracted services, with the broker acting as “limited service broker”. Listing fees for flat fee MLS services cover a wide range, but generally include two components: the flat fee paid to the listing broker, and the commission the property owner agrees to pay a Buyer's Broker (if there is one). The commission which is normally paid to the "listing" broker is replaced by payment of the flat fee.

Typically, with flat fee MLS the fee is paid at the time of listing the property rather than at closing or settlement, the opposite from traditional brokerage services. However, if a Buyer's Broker sells a Flat Fee MLS listing, the commission payable to the Buyer's Broker is typically paid at closing. The buyer's broker is still typically offered a percentage though that could be a flat fee as well.  Significant advantage to flat fee MLS is that if the seller finds his own buyer without the use of a buyer's broker, then the buyer's broker commission is eliminated, and the seller owes no broker a commission.

With flat fee services all phone calls about your home placed in realtors MLS will come to you instead of your your realtor, which will benefit you in both ways: it increase traffic to your home and you will have full control over your home selling process, while saving thousands of dollars on commissions.

It  is very important for any home seller to understand that MLS still accounts for 80% of potential home buyers, especially if you decide selling your home as the owner.  If you are willing to do some work and research on your own in order to save thousands of dollars selling your home then this is the correct path. There is no guarantee you will sell your home but you will have a far greater chance of success in going with our service instead of a strict “for sale by owner” route. The fact is that if you are priced right there is no reason your home will not sell just as fast as if it were listed with a full service traditional real estate agent.

For example, for Illinois users our company offers following services. We list homes in MLS for $295 flat fee instead of 2.5% of selling price charged by most real estate companies in Chicago and its suburbs. We recommend a minimum 2.5% buyer’s agent commission for the Chicago regional area. If there is no agent associated with the buyer then you pay NO % commission and you just saved 5% in commissions. 

 If you are interested to place your listing in MLS for flat fee please search real estate agents in your area and ask them if they can place your home in MLS for flat fee. For Illinois users please check our additional services at Flat Fee MLS Services in Illinois (sorry, we are not there yet to offer flat fee services in other states, but we are sure there are some companies that offer similar services in your area)

We highly recommend you to contact flat fee services companies and place your home into MLS for flat fee in addition to any free internet services – MLS is still very powerful real estate marketing tool and even if you decided to sell your home on your own, we highly recommend you to use realtors MLS to your advantage