Marketing real estate has changed so much in the last couple of decades. The traditional bricks and mortar brokerage that sill relies on print newspaper ads, mass letter mailings, postal cards, open houses, radio ads, and farming neighborhoods is doomed.

We are so far past traditional advertising, it’s embarrassing when I see a real estate agent advertising on a shopping cart at Safeway. Today’s most effective marketers are using the MLS as a start for their listings, because that gets a listing to all brokers and all buyers who use all the syndicated sites to look at homes.

Beyond that, most brokers don’t understand what to do that is cost effective, so most brokers shoot from the hip, and then boast to their listing clients about all the places they are advertising their listing, nevermind that their efforts are ineffective in reaching highly qualified buyers.

In 2010 I wrote in my book entitled, The New World of Marketing for Real Estate Agents about dramatic changes that were happening in the real estate industry. I suggested there were major disruptive moves coming, and I was right. I want to share this with you so you can see I actually have a strong background on this subject. Here’s an excerpt:

Here is the first tectonic force that is at the root of all these changes effecting the real estate industry: a change in consumer behavior. Granted, it’s a huge change in consumer behavior. It’s so big with so many implications, most people don’t comprehend it.

Consumers are no longer willing to be sold with obnoxious advertising and told what to buy and when to buy it. Consumers are sick and tired of interruption advertising, billboards, high pressure salesmen, and cold calls or telemarketing.

I believe it was Seth Godin who first coined the phrase, “interruption advertising.” It’s a very descriptive phrase of traditional advertising that interrupts your favorite movie with an ad for a product you don’t want and don’t care about, or a large obnoxious page in a magazine or newspaper that interrupts your reading experience.

Consumers want and demand freedom to control their own destiny. They don’t like being controlled. They don’t like being manipulated. I write here about changes in consumer behavior and preferences in the context of buying real estate, but isn’t it interesting that the same could be said of consumers’ feelings about politicians, Wall Street, and salesmen in every industry?

This tectonic shift in consumer behavior is changing the world. The second tectonic force effecting such dramatic changes in the real estate industry is powerful in its own right, but also acts as a catalyst for the changes in consumer behavior.

The catalyst that has empowered consumers and is forcing these changes that are the death knell of traditional real estate brokerage is . . . advances in technology. The traditional brokerage model has been unequipped to deal with these tectonic shifts. The impact of the real estate recession has accelerated this process to be sure, but only in time. Had it not been for this recession, the impact of these changes in consumer behavior would have taken longer, but the impact would ultimately be the same. The recession has acted like a diversion, however, distracting real estate agents from the real cause of their doom.

I had been using the Internet since it’s earliest days when I built my first real estate website for buyers in 1995. Those were the days when the Internet first went public, and there was so much uncertainty, no one knew what to expect of the Internet.

When I wrote my book in 2009, I had been using the Internet for real estate law and brokerage for 14 years already. I built my own websites, did all my own writing and graphics, and I did all my own tech work. I experimented with every possible way to reach clients with my free content, my articles and videos. In those days there were no systems or software that did those things yet. There was no software that created a website for you, and blogs did not exist. Forums were the first big way for people to assemble and communicate to each other on the Internet. I had to create my first website with html code, and there were no Youtube video guides on how to do that yet.

I was there before Netscape, before Yahoo, before MySpace, before Bing, before eBay, before Google, before Facebook, before Amazon, and before the invention of the iPhone. I was there before we had SEO (search engine optimization), and I was using the Internet to reach buyers and help sellers long before anyone had developed marketing and lead generation systems on the Internet.

I was convinced the Internet was the future of business, so I poured myself into it. I created the largest real estate website in my market, and the largest online presence of any individual broker in the entire Northwest. As a lawyer I posted relevant real estate statutes, regulations, checklists, forms, articles, and even legal documents I created, all free to the public.

I was an early advocate of giving away valuable information on the Internet. While that might not seem like a big deal today, at the time it was. Lawyers and Realtors were hardly willing to give away everything they knew.”

I’ve been giving it all away since the beginning of the Internet, and I never required consumers to register or provide their PII (personally identifiable information). As a real estate broker I built dozens of websites and blogs, specifically to help buyers find answers to all their questions in my little niche.

Today I have thousands of articles on the Internet written specifically for buyers, and they are all free. I have a large number of real estate videos that help buyers understand more about real estate in my area, issues of concern, the beauty of our pristine mountains, rivers, lakes, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca on our northern side.

I created videos that show buyers why Sequim, Washington is such an extraordinary place to live and why so many retirees come to that conclusion. I also created a buyer video series that takes buyers through the entire search and buying process.

And I designed and programmed a very powerful MLS site that includes features buyers can’t find anywhere else. In addition, my MLS sites include source data from the listing agents, which means the data and photos are 100% accurate, which you cannot say about Zillow.

And I could go on about what I’ve done on the Internet that my competitors have not done, but I have a bigger point. While you might think doing all these cutting edge things for buyers would be standard practice for any MLS site in the real estate industry, they are not.
The big franchises have been slow to adapt to technology and the Internet. It takes time to slow and turn the Titanic. But independent or boutique brokerages are able to adapt quickly to client needs, and are able to offer clients the best and the latest, sometimes years ahead of colleagues still on the Titanic.

Part of what I hope to convey to you is that technology and the Internet have given brokers like me a grand opportunity to create resources specifically for buyers and sellers, and to custom build these resources to answer their questions and give them everything they’re looking for, but few in the brokerage industry are actually doing this.

What I’m describing is the modern high tech real estate brokerage that uses the power of the Internet to serve the best interests of clients. I’m not the only real estate broker in the country using technology and the Internet to bring clients more than they’ve ever gotten before, but there are not very many of us. We are less than 5% of the broker population.

The following is from an article I wrote in 2019 on my Real Estate Blog:

I’ve written on this real estate blog about negotiating price and the importance of knowing what you’re doing when you draft an offer and negotiate the price. Not only can it mean the difference between reaching mutual acceptance with a seller or killing the deal, it can also mean tens of thousands of dollars to you. 

Negotiating – Mistakes People Make

Experienced negotiators have seen many patterns of behavior over the years, and they learn all the nuances of negotiating. Amateurs think in simple terms, like take the listing price and offer 5% less. Or amateurs assume if a listing has been on the market for 100 days that the home is overpriced, and its time to make a low ball offer. There are a hundred immature negotiating approaches I have seen people and their agents take over the last four decades. The crazy thing is they are totally confident they know what they’re doing. That’s the problem with knowing just enough to be dangerous, and it can cost you a lot of money.

Today I’ll share one example of what I’m talking about. Realize that this is one of hundreds of examples, so you will see why I say negotiating is not for amateurs. I represented a buyer who spent a lifetime working as an engineer. The seller who was represented by another agent was a very creative artist. So when we went into the negotiations what did I know, and what could I anticipate?

Negotiating: Engineer v. Artist

An engineer thinks like an engineer. Do you know what I mean? A trained engineer is logical, calculated, unemotional, and cautious in making a final decision. An engineer wants to look at hard data when determining what price to offer, and he knows in advance what price range still comports with the prices of comps and the replacement cost approach. An engineer can be a great client, but can also go to extremes in analysis. 

The seller was super creative and quite an artist in life on several levels. A creative seller does not think like an engineer. An artist thinks not about mathematical comparisons, but about the design contributions she has made to her home since she has owned it, and those designs have great artistic value to her, and deep emotional connections. Her home became an extension of her inner self, and she loved her home. The value of her home cannot be adequately represented by the cost approach or a comparative market analysis. 

Both of these people are good people and are exactly who they were meant to be. But negotiating without an understanding of their differences and how they approach negotiating can be a recipe for disaster. This is especially true if the creative artist’s own real estate agent is also a creative type of person. Going into this negotiation, I knew a creative artist type will often make unreasonable demands that have no basis in a careful real estate analysis, and I knew my engineer would walk rather than agree to a price propped up by a seller’s intense emotions. Our entire approach needed to address each party’s special concerns and feelings. We did reach mutual acceptance, and in the end everyone was very pleased.  Imagine not understanding this going into the negotiations. This is why buyers and their agents often get frustrated and angry and walk away.

Negotiating is part science and part art, but negotiating is definitely not for amateurs when tens of thousands of dollars are at stake.

You do not have to have a lockbox, and one is not required by the NWMLS. If you choose not to have one, I’ll have you acknowledge that to comply with the NWMLS rules.

What is the purpose of an MLS lockbox? It is to allow thousands of brokers the ability to use their digital key to enter your home. The NWMLS has about 35,000 members, so that’s a lot of people who have a key to your front door. 

If you were doing a traditional bricks and mortar listing where the listing agent puts a lockbox on your front door and then everyone waits for another broker out there to show and sell your home, the NWMLS lockbox is essential.

But this flat fee listing service changes everything for the better. When it is your phone number in the NWMLS, interested buyers call you directly, and that takes the keys to the castle away from the brokers. They no longer have all the buyers calling them, thereby placing them between prospective buyers and you where they can feel confident demanding a buyer’s commission. 

You surely already know that with a traditional listing approach, your listing broker has to call you after they get a call from a buyer’s agent, and coordinate the showing time for the buyer and the buyer’s agent. You have to leave your home, and your listing agent doesn’t want you to make any contact with the buyer. 

You leave while total strangers walk all around in your home, and you have no idea what they are doing. Hopefully they respect your privacy, and hopefully they don’t steal anything or take a photo of any personal information. But you’ll never know because you weren’t there.

Here’s how different this flat fee listing service is in this respect. When a buyer calls you and you schedule the showing with them, you wait for them to arrive, which means you do not need a lockbox giving 35,000 brokers a key to your front door. 

But you don’t have to leave either. Now you show the buyers around your house. You’ll feel more secure, because you’re there. But there’s another big positive. No one can answer questions about your home like you can. No matter how prepared your listing broker is to answer questions, there will be specific questions about your home and the neighborhood that you know, but your listing broker does not. 

And one more huge benefit of showing your own home. It gives you a chance to meet the buyers and get to know them a little. And vice versa, they get to meet you. This is a big positive if they decide to make an offer. If you get along spectacularly, they are less likely to hit you with a low ball offer, and having met them, you’ll have a much better feel for their character and how serious they are.

The entire real estate industry likes to keep buyers and sellers separated, never to meet and never to talk to each other, especially before they have reached mutual agreement on a price and terms. Why? Their justification is that if a buyer and seller talk to each other, the seller might say the wrong thing and kill the deal.

I’ve had hundreds of buyer and seller clients over the years, and not once did a seller kill the deal with a buyer. On the contrary, buyers and sellers tend to get along fabulously, and it is always a positive experience that increases the probability of putting together an agreement.

So why do all traditional listing brokers freak out if sellers meet prospective buyers? Why do they insist on keep them separated? Why do they tell their sellers to leave the house long before the buyers get there, and not to return until they have left?

Here’s the dirty little industry secret. They keep buyers and sellers separated, because they are desperate to protect their commissions. They need to be between you and your buyer, or they can’t justify big commissions. They must protect their commissions.

Can you see why the flat fee listing service is so much better for you and your buyers? Granted I only earn $5,000 instead of 5% or 6%, but this business model is full of integrity and truly places you as the home seller and your best interests at the center of the Universe.

Many home sellers choose not to have a for sale sign in their front yard. I’ll talk with you about this, too, but here’s some background you can think about.

The vast majority of buyers find homes on the Internet now, not by driving around or attending open houses or by finding a postal card in the mailbox. Of course, there is more to the story, and here it is.

There are neighborhoods where major streets have a lot of traffic and a lot of people could see your for sale sign. That’s both good and bad. It’s good if a random buyer who happens to see your sign decides to buy it. It’s bad if criminals are looking for signs like this to case the joint for a robbery. 

Since most buyers are doing searches on the Internet through the sites where I will list and syndicate your listing, the odds of a buyer driving by and seeing your sign who also happens to be in the market to buy a home are low odds. Many years ago signage was important, but today it is not nearly as important as it was, and the security risks are higher now than they used to be.

There are two categories of homes where a for sale sign is definitely not a good idea. In a very expensive neighborhood where luxury homes are priced very high, and in individual home in a rural area that is a luxury home of high value. For criminals, a for sale sign in front of such a home is an invitation. 

Then there is the matter of what kind of privacy you want, and there is also an issue of safety for an elderly widow or widower. Since buyers are searching the MLS sites on the Internet so vigorously, why put a single woman or an elderly couple at risk? These are all things we can talk about.

If your home is suitable for a “For Sale” sign, and you want one, I recommend you keep it very simple. You can buy a For Sale sign on Amazon or at Home Depot, but the State of Washington does require that you have my brokerage name, iRealty Virtual Brokers, and my name, Chuck Marunde, J.D. The only other information you’ll need is the words “For Sale” and your phone number, since interested buyers will call you directly. I’ve included an example of a simple sign that meets the requirements.

In Washington State all sellers must complete a Seller’s Disclosure Statement, also known as a Form 17 for homes and a Form 17C for vacant land. The form is 6 pages of disclosures about your property that buyers need to know.

I’ll talk with you about this form and help you to know how to answer the questions to be in compliance with the law. You also don’t want to answer questions in such a way that you put yourself at risk for a lawsuit. Any representations made on this statement can be used against you in a lawsuit after closing by the buyer. Just to give you an idea of what I’m referring to here, imagine a question that asked if there was any problem with wiring inside any of the walls. You have check boxes for yes, no, I don’t know, or NA. If you check no because you’ve never had a problem with wiring inside the walls, you just legally guaranteed there is no wiring problem inside the walls, but you don’t know that for a fact, because you can’t see all the wiring inside the walls. If the buyer closes and then has a fire because of defective wiring inside a wall, they might sue you for misrepresentation because you represented in writing on the Seller’s Disclosure Statement that there was no problem. So the correct answer would be “I don’t know.”

I was practicing real estate law when this law went into effect on Jan 1, 1996, and I recall laughing, because this is another example of politicians trying to legislate honesty. If a seller is going to hide something, requiring him to complete this form is not going to suddenly make him Mr. Honesty.

While you must fill the form out rather than me, I can give you guidance. I hope you can see that this is one of the reasons I bring a lot to the table for you for a flat fee of $5,000. Very few listing brokers who charge 6% have the legal and practical knowledge I’ve acquired during my lifetime, which I now bring to you.

If you’d like to know more about the history of the Seller’s Disclosure law, here’s an article I wrote in 2010:

The Seller’s Disclosure Statement

And another in 2020: Washington’s Seller Disclosure

The listing information sheet, also known as the Form 1 “Listing Input Sheet” is required by the NWMLS, and once you’ve answered all the questions, it is a complete picture of your property. No one knows your property better than you, so you’re the best person to answer all the questions. The answers on this form are matched with data fields that are programmed in the NWMLS software, so your answers are inputted into the NWMLS to fill out all the information that will show up on the Internet syndicated on all the sites. For example, this is the source of data for your listing on Zillow.

Once you’ve completed this information sheet, it is attached to the listing contract to complete the contract for the NWMLS.

iRealty believes in simplicity, rather than making things more difficult than they need to be. But iRealty’s definition of simplicity does not mean compromising the law, ethics, morality, professionalism, loyalty, and it does not allow ambiguous contract language, which is a major problem in the profession.

iRealty also believes that our relationship with you, our listing client, must be very clear in the beginning so there are no misunderstandings. You won’t find Chuck Marunde sugar coating anything in order to get your business, and he won’t be anything less than absolutely honest about your home’s FMV. This is true also in regard to all your conversations about negotiating, addendums, challenges that may come with with the buyer, title issues, questions the buyer may have about the CC&Rs, easements, right of ways. Chuck knows how to deal with all these issues since he was an attorney for 20 years.

As Chuck has written, “I learned that one of the keys to drafting good contracts or counteroffers or addendums with special conditions is always to be crystal clear, use unambiguous language, and draft written language in the least number of words. That’s much harder than most real estate brokers realize. I believe it was Mark Twain who wrote:

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have time.”

All of this to say that the listing contract you sign with iRealty will be based on honesty and a clear understanding of what each of our rights and responsibilities will be during the term of the listing contract. That includes an agreement on what the listing process is. Here is the flat fee listing process with iRealty and Chuck Marunde.

1. As a home seller, you’ll complete the online application. Before or after, you and I will talk on the phone to make sure you understand all that iRealty will do and what you will be responsible to do during the lising term.
2. Once you’ve been approved, you’ll get some paperwork from Chuck to complete, including a form that is attached to the listing contract, which is the listing information form you will complete on your home.
3. You’ll get several other forms with instructions on how to complete them.
4. You’ll also be responsible for taking photos of your home, or hiring a photographer to do that, which you can typically do for a few hundred dollars. This is one of the reasons you’ll save thousands in commissions, since I don’t have to take the photos. I am an expert on how those photos should be taken since I have been a professional photographer, so I can advise you and share the specifications of the photos we need for the NWMLS with any photographer you hire. There are lots of photographers looking for work, so you won’t have any trouble Googling one and finding one.
5. If you want a video tour of your home, or you want a drone video for a home that has a stunning water view, you can also hire someone to take those, and like the photographs, Chuck will input those into the NWMLS with your listing.
6. We also have to have a legal description and a plat of your property, which we can usually get from the title company.
7. The NWMLS requires all listings to be inputted within 24 hours of the date of the contract, so we need to have the listing contract, the information data sheet, the photos, the legal description, and the plat all ready to input within 24 hours of the date of your contract, or we can give ourselves enough time to accomplish all of that by stating a date in the contract on which the listing will be inputted. For example, you and I may decide we need a week to get all that done.
8. Once I have everything I need, I input it all into the NWMLS.
9. When your listing has gone live in the NWMLS, I’ll email you a link to the public view of the listing and ask you to review all the details to make sure we have entered everything correctly. 
10. Your listing will be syndicated on many other sites, but the data feeds on all of those sites can take a period of days to get uploaded to those sites. All of that is done with software that operates in automatic mode.
11. I’ll guide you at every step of the way, including how to respond to buyers who want to see your home, what to do if the want to make an offer, what to do if a buyer’s broker wants to show your home, and every detail all the way through to closing.
12. If your buyer is not represented by another broker, I’ll draft the offer and all the addendums for you and your buyer. Understand this is way above what is offered by other flat fee services and discount FSBO packages. I have the knowledge, experience, and professionalism to bring more to the table for you than the vast majority of brokers around the country. I wouldn’t believe in this business model and it’s benefits to you if I didn’t bring more to the table than most brokers.
13. You don’t have to worry or be stressed out during this entire listing period, and all the way to closing, because I’ll be right here for you. 

There’s much more to this service, but this explanation of the listing process should give you some confidence in what it will be like working with Chuck Marunde.