Flat Fee Commissions

Flat Fee Commissions

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Hi, I’m Chuck Marunde. I’m the founder of iRealty Virtual Brokers, and I’d like to tell you about a new flat fee real estate business, and why I created this service for homeowners.

Sellers Are Paying Too Much in Commissions

First, traditional real estate bricks and mortar brokerages charge way way too much in commissions. Sellers who list with a traditional broker are not getting their money’s worth, at least not for the massive commissions they pay their brokers. Most people already know that.

Second, traditional real estate brokers over-promise and under-deliver. They under-deliver in the areas of marketing, negotiating expertise, contracts and legal issues, due diligence issues, financing issues, dealing with contingencies and objections by buyers, and numerous issues that rear their ugly heads prior to closing. Having been a real estate lawyer and a broker, I’m often surprised at the stunning lack of knowledge of listing brokers. That lack of knowledge and inexperience can cost a seller a lot of money and stress.

“The role of the traditional brokerage has long since stopped making sense. Everything is online: data, communication, contracts, support and clients. So the brokerage of 2018 must trim the overhead fat and give agents tools to meet consumers’ expectation of full-service agents at a lower cost. To do that, the brokerage has to get tech-savvy — and fast — and reduce all the overhead that doesn’t directly serve consumers.” Forbes Magazine”

Excerpt From: Chuck Marunde, J.D. “The New World of Marketing for Real Estate Agents.” Apple Books.

Third, traditional real estate brokers don’t do much more than put a listing in the MLS and wait until it sells. I know that because that’s the number one complaint from home sellers I’ve been hearing for decades. It’s an old complaint, but still valid today.

Join the Internet Revolution

Fourth, the entire world of marketing and advertising has dramatically changed over the last decade, and the traditional bricks and mortar brokerage is no longer relevant. The world of selling a home is now high tech and streamlined and low cost. You should not have to pay for all the traditional overhead and office space and outdated advertising methods of a listing brokerage.

This flat fee real estate commission is truly unique, and I’ll explain exactly why.

The traditional bricks and mortar brokerage model has been charging a large real estate commission forever. I started in real estate sales when I was 21 in the mid-1970s, and commissions haven’t changed. They were 5% to 6% to 7% in various markets, and they still are today for single family homes.

Back then when a homeowner listed and sold his home, he paid a typical commission of 6% or $6,000. If there was a listing agent and an agent representing the buyer, each got $3,000.

Today, even though prices have shot up many times, the commission is still the same. A homeowner who lists and sells a home today for $800,000 pays a commission of $48,000. Yes, I did say $48,000. Even if the commission is 5% in your market, that’s still $40,000.

That’s a lot of money, especially in a hot market when all the listing agent has to do is input your listing information into the MLS and sit back and wait. Many homes in a hot market, like the one we’ve just been through, were selling in days or even hours.

In my market I watched some for-sale-by-owners get posted on Zillow and sell quickly. I sold some of those FSBOs quickly to my own buyers for a fraction of the traditional commission. By the time we got to closing everyone was happy, including me.

In a hot hot market, a seller doesn’t need a traditional listing broker. In fact, you don’t need a traditional bricks and mortar brokerage in any kind of market. The world has changed, and the brokers no longer hold the keys to the castle. We have something called the Internet, and for those who master Internet marketing and powerful tools like SEO or search engine optimization, blogs, videos, and online books, as I have, you can reach buyers for your home no matter where they live.

“I Found My Own Home On The Internet.”

Here’s a dirty little secret the industry doesn’t want you to know. Buyers now find their homes on the Internet themselves, meaning that listing agents are no longer the reason buyers can find your home. Today buyers typically find a home they want to look at online, and then they call a real estate broker. You can save tens of thousands of dollars by just having buyers call you direct.

But you’re not alone. I will equip you to do everything you need to do, and I will be your advisor in the background.

If your home is in the State of Washington and within the NWMLS market area, you may qualify to have your home listed with us. What do we do for you and how much is the flat fee commission?

Here’s a list of what we bring to the table for you:

1. Your listing will be placed in the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, which covers the largest markets in Washington State.
2. Your listing will be syndicated to Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, and many other sites.
3. Your listing will appear on tens of thousands of public MLS sites of other real estate brokers who are members of the NWMLS, and there are about 35,000 members.
4. All of the forms from the NWMLS (over 100) will be available for you and your buyer, and iRealty not only provides guidance on selecting and completing the right forms, Chuck Marunde, J.D., Broker/Atty (Ret.) will complete all the forms for you and your buyer. This is a level of knowledge and experience you can’t find at traditional brokerages, nor do you get it with FSBO services or other discount listing or flat fee services. 
5. Buyers will contact you directly, and you’ll make arrangements to show your home.
6. Any leads iRealty receives on your home will be given to you.
7. You’ll negotiate your price and terms with your buyer, but you can call on Chuck to help you negotiate as he has negotiated many hundreds of transactions over his career and he knows every nuance in negotiating tactics.
8. Your photos, taken by you or a photographer you hire, will be added to the listing.
9. If you like, you can create a non-branded video or drone video, or you can hire a professional to do that, and those will be added to the listing.
10. You’ll install your own “For Sale” Sign, if you want one, and you might not.
11. iRealty does not provide you with a lockbox, and we don’t recommend one anyway.
12. You’ll have access to one of the most experienced professional real estate brokers in the country, and he will guide you through every aspect of your home presentation, photos, videos, marketing, negotiating, and dealing with buyers.
13. The quality and level of knowledge and experience Chuck Marunde brings to you in this process, from listing to closing, far exceeds what you get from the vast majority of listing brokers around the State of Washington who charge a full 5% or 6% listing fee. Chuck’s integrity is evident from his illustrious career in the USAF as a JAG, his vast education and real estate experience is evident from decades as a real estate broker/owner, and 20 years as a real estate lawyer separates him from the crowd of brokers pleading for your business. In addition, You can have the highest level of confidence in this listing broker.
14. You’ll have access to a private series of articles and podcasts Chuck created for you to help you through this entire process.
15. You’ll have access to over 2,000 real estate articles written by Chuck.
16. You’ll have access to a to a password protected area.
17. You’ll also have access to over 100 videos produced by Chuck.
18. And you also can check out one dozen real estate books written by Chuck and available on Amazon.
19. iRealty charges you a flat fee of $5,000. There is no charge to your buyer. If your buyer calls you directly, or a buyer lead comes to iRealty through any of our marketing, we give you that buyer without any additional fee. iRealty will help you draft the paperwork and handle the due diligence all the way to closing without any additional fee to you or the buyer.
20. If and when Chuck Marunde is hired by a buyer to be their buyer’s agent prior to their identifying your home as a home they may be interested in buying, Chuck charges a $2,500 buyer’s agency fee to that buyer, but that has nothing to do with your listing or the sale of your home. But if Chuck’s buyer finds your home or Chuck introduces it to them, and if that buyer does decide to buy your home, Chuck charges that Buyer a flat $5,000 fee. In other words, 1.) Chuck is paid $5,000 by you as the seller, and that is all Chuck is paid if the buyer is represented by their own agent, or 2.) Chuck is paid $5,000 by you as the seller, and Chuck is paid $5,000 by the buyer if the buyer is not represented by another agent. In the later case, Chuck is paid a total of $10,000, which is dramatically less than than a traditional 5% to 7% total commission most sellers are paying in Washington State.
21. Chuck will fully explain how all this works to your buyer, assuming your buyer has not hired a third-party buyer’s agent. If your buyer still chooses to hire a third-party buyer’s agent after talking with Chuck, Chuck will explain that he will be responsible for paying his buyer’s agent’s fee, but if he buys directly from you with iRealty’s assistance, there is no fee added to the purchase price to cover that commission. The law of agency will be fully explained to your buyer, including dual agency and the legal and ethical issues. As stated above in item number 7, you’ll have a listing price, and the buyer will decide how much he wants to offer himself, whether it is the full listing price or something less. The only answer the buyer will get from me if he does ask how much he should offer is “full price.” The truth is buyers today are very smart about doing their own research, and they usually know how much they want to offer.
22. While it may be obvious, it needs to be said that Chuck also helps you avoid legal nightmares and liabilities that most Realtors are ill-equipped to avoid, let alone even discuss with clients. 

Big Price = Big Commissions

If your home is an $800,000 home, this flat fee listing service doesn’t cost you $40,000 or $48,000. I recently submitted an offer on a $1.5 million listing. Someone outbid my buyer, but if it sold for listed price, the commission was $75,000. Wow!

iRealty’s flat fee commission is only $5,000, and there are no extras or hidden fees, and we do not add a percentage commission for advice on negotiating or for help completing all the contracts, like some brokerages do. Chuck’s flat fee of $5,000 is incredibly reasonable considering all that he brings to the table for you.

If you’re wondering how you can get all this for $5,000 and save tens of thousands of dollars in commissions, here’s the simple answer. Chuck’s business model is not the expensive high overhead model of the traditional bricks and mortar. That model is dying a slow and painful death. I’ve eliminated as much as 85% of all those unnecessary costs, including expensive office space, office overhead, infrastructure, wasteful advertising, costly branding, ineffective subscription services, and I don’t have half a dozen people roaming around the office on my payroll. All this means you don’t have to pay for that.

I also do my own content creation, my own websites, my own video filming and editing, my own tech maintenance of all my sites, and I write and publish all my books myself. I do not hire inexperienced secretaries or assistants and delegate the work you hire me to do to them. I have one phone number, and I’m the one who answers it. I’m not the traditional bricks and mortar trying to make money on volume listings with massive commissions. This is why I call my brokerage iRealty Virtual Brokers.

I’ve eliminated most of the overhead of the traditional brokerage, and by designing a high tech business that maximizes my own professional knowledge and experience, I can give you more than many listing brokers for less—actually a flat fee of $5,000.

To keep the commission this low, I delegate a few important tasks to you, but honestly even under a traditional listing you end up doing some of these yourself in one way or another.

What are these tasks you’ll have to do to save tens of thousands of dollars?

Chuck Marunde, J.D.

Those tasks include the following: a.) you’ll fill out a detailed property information sheet for the NWMLS, b.) you’ll be responsible for arranging showings when buyers contact you directly, c.) while the NWMLS will syndicate your listing, you will be responsible for any additional advertising you may choose to do to promote your property, but I don’t recommend additional advertising, d.) if a broker who represents a buyer contacts you to show your property, that will be your responsibility, including whether and how much you agree to pay that buyer’s broker. You can tell that broker you will pay him 1% or 2.5% or nothing, or you can tell him he will have to collect his buyer’s fee directly from his own client. That will be up to you. I can advise you on all these matters. Don’t let any traditional listing broker tell you this won’t work, because I have had success with all of these approaches. I recently sold a $900,000+ property for a seller, and I disclosed in the NWMLS that a buyer’s agent would have to collect their commission directly from their buyer client. Another broker did bring the buyer, and his buyer paid him 2.5% in addition to the purchase price. I’ll walk you through this whole process, so you don’t have to worry about being on your own.

If you’d like to get started with listing, you can check our Flat Fee Listing FAQ section, which answers common questions asked, and you can text me at 360-775-5424, and I’ll call you as soon as I am free, and of course, you can learn more and fill out an application online at WAstateFlatFee.com.

I’m looking forward to meeting you and helping you save a ton of money while still getting your home sold for the highest possible price in the least amount of time.