Flat Fee Listing Service for Washington State Homeowners

Finally, there’s a Flat Fee Listing Service for Washington State Homeowners, and it is founded and designed specifically for homeowners who want to save tens of thousands of dollars but don’t want to give up access to a real estate expert who knows exactly how to market your home effectively.

A flat fee listing service has come to Sequim homeowners, and it’s not like a $325 cheap model that brings very little to the table and then drops the homeowners on their heads. It’s also not like the 5% to 6% traditional bricks-and-mortar listing model either. This flat fee listing service brings the single biggest value to homeowners that any traditional broker can bring. What is that value, the single most important component to any marketing system today for a home? In Washington State it is to list the home in the Northwest MLS (NWMLS). Everything else a traditional listing broker does is for all practical purposes worthless, and I’ll explain exactly why.

I love what the great actor Lee Ermey said in the movie Switchback (1997). He played Sheriff Buck Olmstead with Dennis Quaid who played Frank LaCrosse. “He told the truth, and once you’ve heard the truth, everything else is just cheap whiskey.” I’ve never forgotten that statement. It has so much value for all of life, and it does in this context, too.

Let me explain what sells a home and what does not in terms of marketing, and there’s an order of priority or an order of effectiveness in this list. I’ll go through the list of what traditional listing brokers do to sell homes. Here’s the list, and then I’ll explain each one, how the listing agents present these in their listing presentations in order to persuade you to sign their listing agreement, and I’ll also explain who those marketing methods really benefits–you as the homeowner or the listing agent who uses you to generate leads. Ready for this list and these honest explanations? Here we go. The primary list of traditional marketing includes these methods. I’ve included explanations in context.

Traditional Listing Practices and Why They Are All About Justifying Big Commissions

1. Post the listing in the local or statewide MLS
   1. EXPLANATION: Posting your listing in the MLS is the most effective strategy to reach qualified buyers and get your home sold within a reasonable period of time at the highest price. Once it is posted in the MLS it will be broadcast to over 30,000 NWMLS members in Washington state, and all of those agents’ potential buyers can see your listing simply because it is in the MLS, NOT because your listing agent did something no one else can do without a “full service broker” and a “full commission” broker. As you’ll see, you can’t post a for-sale-by-owner (FSBO) in the NWMLS on your own, but you can retain a flat fee listing broker who will post it in the NWMLS for you with the same powerful strategy to reach qualified buyers. The same massive crowd of MLS licensees still see your listing in the same way, whether a full commission broker inputs it or a flat fee listing broker inputs it. In the later case, you can save tens of thousands of dollars and get the same benefit.
   2. Professional Photography and Videography with high-quality photos, virtual tours, or drone footage should be a part of any MLS listing.
      1. EXPLANATION: Listing agents do NOT do this kind of work, and the vast majority don’t know how to do it right even if they wanted to. Don’t ever let a listing agent tell you in a listing presentation that one of their services and another reason you should list with him is because they get the finest photos and videos. That has nothing to do with him or his brokerage, because you can pick up the phone and hire the same photographer and videographer he will. My point is, this is not a reason or benefit of listing with a traditional listing agent.
   3. Automatic (not an extra step for listing agents): Syndication to platforms like Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia, and Redfin.
      1. EXPLANATION: One of the arguments that listing agents love to make in their listing presentations to a homeowner is that your listing will be syndicated all over the Internet, including Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia, Homes.com, and many more syndicated MLS sites. SO WHAT! If a flat fee listing broker puts your listing in the MLS it automatically gets syndicated too. So again, this is another bit of hype from listing agents. Why do they exaggerate or boast or engage in hype in their listing presentations? For one reason: To justify their high commissions. That’s it. They want you to perceive that they are giving you great value, great service, and that justifies 5% to 6% commissions, but that is nothing more than poppycock. 
2. Staging the Home: Arranging for professional home staging to enhance the property’s appeal during showings and open houses.
   1. EXPLANATION: This is another one of the major pitches listing agents give homeowners at the listing presentation. They talk about how they have your home beautifully staged so that buyers will be impressed and persuaded to buy your home, because they might not buy it if it was not beautifully staged. This is such a dumb argument. In experienced listing agents often insist that staging can make the difference between selling your home or not selling. There is no reliable statistical evidence nationwide that that is true. Instead there is plenty of evidence from agents all over the country that staging can help to make a home look nice, but buyers, at least retirees who are way past being fooled by gimmicks, are not going to buy a home because of its staging. I’ve shown many homes for 4 decades, many of which were completely empty, some still fully furnished since the owners lived in them, and others in which the owners had moved and taken all their furniture and it was staged. For decades buyers have been telling me they look right past the furniture, and many times they have told me the staged furniture doesn’t fit the house anyway. They have been telling me my whole career that they are looking at the floor plan, the architecture, the quality of the materials, the features in the home, the appliances, the master bedroom, the master bath, the hardwood flooring, the natural sunlight that comes into various rooms, the views from the windows, and so on. They never ever said to me, well the home is perfect, but there’s no furniture in it, so we’re not going to make an offer. Staging is nothing more than the traditional bricks-and-mortar agent’s excuse to justify a massive commission. If you as a homeowner will have an empty home, you can hire a home stager if you really want to. They don’t work at the brokerages. The brokerages have to hire them, but so could you.
3. Posts a sign in front of the home.
   1. EXPLANATION: Signage is not what you think it is, at least not in terms of its effectiveness in selling your home. Signs are supposed to alert buyers that your home is for sale and they should call the listing agent from the sign. That used to happen a lot, but today everyone, unless they live in a cave, starts their search for their home on Zillow or another site they like. Husbands don’t say to their wives anymore, “Okay, honey let’s go for a drive in the car and look for “For Sale” signs in front of homes.” If a husband did say that to his wife today, she would undoubtedly burst out laughing and say from the kitchen countertop, “I’m already looking at homes on my laptop right now. We would never find some of these homes driving around randomly looking, and besides, who wants to spend $5.50 a gallon to drive around?” So if a sign in the front yard isn’t how people shop for houses, why are listing agents so adamant about you needing one in your front yard? One reason and one reason only. The sign is a lead generator for the listing agent. That’s it. I want you to remember something when you’re thinking about traditional approaches to marketing your property. Always ask yourself who does this strategy really benefit–me as the homeowner or the listing agent? Does it generate zero to almost none for me while generating dozens and dozens of leads for the listing agent? And if people do call off the sign and make an offer on my listing, he doubles his normal commission. If people call him off the sign but don’t buy my home, he tries to sell them another listing, so he comes out with the sign being a great lead generator for him. Not so much for me as a homeowner. One thing a sign does do for you that is not good. Criminals can see your home is for sale, and who needs that? Need I say more?
4. Brochures and Flyers: Creating printed or digital brochures with property details to distribute at open houses or to potential buyers.
   1. EXPLANATION: There was a time decades ago when brochures and flyers had a legitimate place in a comprehensive marketing strategy, but not so much anymore. Printed brochures and flyers are rarely seen by buyers no matter where they are placed, and even if one is picked up from a box somewhere, the people taking one are usually not even shopping for a home or they’re just curious. They look at it for about 30 seconds and pitch it in the garbage when they get a chance. You’ll see why handing them out at open houses is nothing more than a ruse when I explain the failure of open houses for homeowners.
5. Direct Outreach to Buyer’s Agents: Proactively contacting agents with clients who match the property’s profile to generate interest.
   1. EXPLANATION: This is more smoke and mirrors. I don’t recall any homeowner who ever sold their home because their listing agent sent a message to other agents. As agents we get these blast emails from other agents telling us about a new listing, but we ignore those. That’s not how our clients find out about properties. They find out 99% of the time because they are browsing Zillow every morning as they sip on their morning cup of fresh gourmet coffee. They set alerts for new listings that fit their parameters. They aren’t sitting on their hands at home waiting for me to call them and say, “Hey, I just got an email from a listing agent, and I think you should look at this one.” That just isn’t reality. My buyer clients and I become aware of a new listing or a price reduction immediately when it happens because of technology today.
6. Email Marketing Campaigns: Sending targeted email blasts to the broker’s client database, local buyers, or other agents to promote the listing.
   1. EXPLANATION: There’s nothing wrong with an email blast about your listing when it goes on the market, but who is paying attention to spam email anymore. Most of us have spam controls and we never see such emails because they don’t make it into our inbox. Again, this is not how buyers discover new listings or price reductions. We are already tuned into our MLS and the alerts systems we’ve set up. Anyway, email no longer has credibility even if it makes it through our spam filters.
7. Print Advertising: Placing ads in local newspapers, real estate magazines, or community publications to reach a broader audience.
   1. EXPLANATION: Well, traditional print advertising died long ago. No one uses it anymore.
8. Send out “Just Listed” postal cards to a few dozen neighboring homes
   1. EXPLANATION: These were popular in the 1970s all they way through the ’90s and some listing agents still used them because they said they would in their listing presentation. But you could do a “Just Listed” postal card to your neighbors if you wanted to. Doesn’t cost much, but it certainly doesn’t justify 5% or 6% commissions.
9. Hold an open house for the agent’s colleagues
   1. EXPLANATION: This is probably only something an industry insider like me would know. I wouldn’t expect the public to know this. When a traditional listing agent lists a home, he can put his listing on the office tour list, and on that day and time, agents from his office will march through your home. The listing agent tells you in the listing presentation that the agents in his office have buyers for homes like yours, and so this is a big benefit for you and your home may sell immediately. This is one of the most exaggerated pitches you’ll ever hear, because other agents in his office rarely, if ever, have a buyer for a home like yours. I can tell you no one I know has ever sold a home like that. Maybe one in a million, but it’s not a strategy that justifies high commissions. The only reason some agents from his office agree to walk through your home is so they can leave their business card on your countertop and give you the impression that your listing agent is marketing he heck out of your home. They agents know all this, so they scratch each other’s backs to give their listing clients the impression they are doing a great job. The truth is they haven’t done much of anything.
10. Hold an open house for the public once within a few weeks
    1. EXPLANATION: This is a big one. Are you ready for a bombshell dose of reality? Open houses are not sold to people who come to that open house. Statistically it may be less than 1% of homes actually sell at an open house to someone who attended the open house. Flip that around and something like 99% of open houses are a waste of time and effort for homeowners. In my small market area, I don’t know of a single home that sold at an open house in the last 29 years I’ve been here. I don’t know of an agent who can remember a house selling at an open house. So why on earth would your listing agent boast about holding an open house for you? Think this through for a second. What one question should you ask  or one query you should raise when you can’t understand someone’s motivation? How about this cliche? “Follow the money!” The answer to why your listing agent will gladly hold an open house is because it is one of the all-time best lead generators for him. He can expect to get 15 or more leads in one afternoon, and while he knows he won’t sell them your home (you thought he thought that), he may sell several homes to those leads who came to your open house like sheep to the slaughter. They had no idea the entire scheme was to reel them in like fish. And you had no idea he was using you and your home to generate leads for himself while claiming that he is making huge sacrifices to help you sell your home. That’s why he’s worth a massive commission that comes out of your sales proceeds at closing.
11. Network within the listing agent’s office and franchise
    1. EXPLANATION: This is nothing but added sales hype in the listing presentation.
12. Post some social media ads
    1. EXPLANATION: It sounds good, and who doesn’t play on social media? The problem is this isn’t where qualified buyers are hanging out just waiting to read your social media post somewhere on the Internet about a new listing. As I said already, they are already tapped into the MLS on their favorite syndicated site. No one takes social media posts seriously when it comes to buying a retirement home or when it comes to finding a heart surgeon.
13. Purchase some Google or Facebook ads
    1. EXPLANATION: In the beginning of Google, placing ads was a legitimate marketing strategy, although the results were less than spectacular. Today Google or Facebook ads are not effective ways to market a home, so I don’t know of any agents who actually do this anymore, although again, listing agents include this in their listing presentations. It’s silly they go so far to justify big commissions, isn’t it?

These are the primary strategies that listing agents use to promote and advertise your listing to buyers. The problem is:

There is only one strategy that actually works and benefits the homeowner more than the listing agent.

It should be obvious that your listing needs to be in the Northwest MLS, assuming you’re in Washington. This is the way your listing gets into all the public MLS websites of real estate agents who are members of the NWMLS. It is also the way your listing gets syndicated to Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Homes.com, and many other syndicated national sites. This is how buyers find all homes today. They go online and search for homes like yours. 

Do you see that this is the key and most effective strategy to market and sell your home, and all the other gimmicks on the traditional listing presentation list are just an effort to justify massive real estate commissions.

There is much more that a good flat fee listing service does for you, apart from listing your home in the NWMLS. You can learn all the rest of this flat fee listing service in the other articles and videos on this site.