How to Sell For Sale By Owner in Rockland County NY
Home owners in Rockland County New York have more options today for selling their homes themselves without the assistance of a traditional real estate agent charging 6% in commission. We’ll teach you in this article how to list your property on your local Rockland County MLS, otherwise known as the Hudson Gateway Multiple Listing Service (HGMLS), without having to pay full commission.
Is Selling FSBO Rockland County NY a Good Idea?
Selling your home For Sale By Owner in Rockland County NY has historically been a very poor choice. The primary reason that selling FSBO Rockland County NY doesn’t work is because of lack of exposure.
This lack of exposure unfortunately hasn’t changed with the advent of the internet. Before consumer facing real estate search portals became popular, For Sale By Owner sellers could only put a sign on their front yard and perhaps buy some ad space in their local newspaper. This left their property completely off market as most buyers would enlist the assistance of a local real estate agent who knew the area and market.
These buyers’ Realtors would exclusively look for listings in their local Multiple Listing Service database for ideas to show their clients. The MLS at the time consisted of books of local property listings aggregated from all participating brokerages in the region.
When you list your home FSBO on a traditional real estate search website, you’re only exposing your listing to a very small segment of buyers who are searching without a real estate agent.However, according to the NAR and many other statistical sources, well over 75% of all home buyers today work with the assistance of a buyer’s agent. So even though well over 90% of all buyers begin their home search on the internet, most eventually enlist the help of a local Realtor.
Furthermore, keep in mind that many buyers may search on public facing real estate search websites only to send links of interesting properties to their buyer’s agent. The buyer’s agent will then check to see whether the listings are actually available and schedule showings if appropriate.
The dominance of buyers’ agents in Rockland County NY is accentuated by the fact that most properties on the MLS can only be accessed through a lock-box. For security purposes, these lockboxes can only be accessed by a Realtor with a one time access code (if they are legitimately out of area) or through a Supra eKey app available only to HGAR Member Realtors.
Keep in mind that only 4.3% of all listings in Rockland County are sold For Sale By Owner. That means the vast majority of listings are on the MLS, and if a buyer wants to see those listings they’ll need a buyer’s Realtor with eKey access to get past the lockbox on these properties.
The necessity of a buyer’s agent to access property lockboxes combined with the fact that most Realtors in Rockland County NY will require buyers to sign an Exclusive Right To Represent Agreement means that buyers’ Realtors have more control than ever over the home buyer market in Rockland County NY. This is precisely why selling your home For Sale By Owner is not advisable in Rockland County New York.
Does Selling FSBO Rockland County NY Through Flat Fee MLS Services Work?
Be wary of most flat fee MLS listing services that you’ll find from a cursory internet search. As you can easily tell from a prudent review of their websites, they are for the most part mom and pop operations, or bucket shops as traditional brokers like to call them.
The troubling thing is, if you can easily find out what they’re about, don’t you think traditional brokers can as well?
Real estate is a game where over 90% of all transactions are done between a buyer’s agent and a seller’s agent. That means real estate agents need the cooperation of other agents to close a deal. Unfortunately, most flat fee MLS brokers are completely unaware of this fact, or are maliciously aware but just don’t care.
The latter may unfortunately be true as most flat fee MLS brokers are simply focused on volume, and because they earn their fee upfront they don’t care about the effectiveness of their services.
As a result, many home sellers are tricked into paying hundreds and even thousands of dollars for a flat fee listing service that is as ineffective as a For Sale By Owner listing. That’s because traditional Realtors who represent over three quarters of all buyers will effectively boycott the flat fee broker’s listings, and treat it as another For Sale By Owner listing. Even though this is against all anti-trust laws in the US, it is unfortunately very hard to police.
Think about it, why would a traditional Realtor want to assist in the erosion of commission rates and the breakdown of their industry by doing a deal with a flat fee MLS broker? Furthermore, most of these bucket shop discount brokers heavily advertise the fact that they are willing to work for less and are loudmouths about how traditional brokers are overpaid. This does not exactly endear these combative discount brokers with the wider brokerage community.
As a result, traditional buyers’ Realtors will try very hard to show their clients listings which are by other traditional brokerages. If their buyer finds a FSBO or flat fee broker’s listing online and sends it to their buyer’s Realtor, the Realtor will often just ignore the listing or tell the buyer that it’s unavailable! This is the last thing you want when you’re trying hard to get marketing exposure to your home!
Note: Most flat fee MLS companies have egregious names that all but make traditional Realtors want to throw up. As a hypothetical example, the names will be variants of “agents are dead” or “owners only” etc. And to throw oil onto the fire, these companies brand all their listings’ photos with watermarks of this offensive name. They’re making it obvious to even the most unobservant agent that they’re trying to take down the industry!
Is Selling FSBO Rockland County NY Through an Agent Assisted FSBO a Good Idea?
An Agent Assisted FSBO listing through Hauseit is very different from a traditional For Sale By Owner listing and a traditional flat fee MLS listing.
Through an Agent Assisted FSBO listing, you are paired with a traditional, brand name real estate brokerage that has agreed to discreetly list your home on the MLS for a flat fee.
Because your listing would be mixed in with the firm’s normal commission listings and because our broker partners are all brand name real estate firms, no one will know that you aren’t paying the typical 6% broker commission!
In fact, the HGMLS effectively only requires listing brokers to offer some amount of commission to buyers’ agents. The HGMLS does not require listing Realtors to list what they are earning or what the total commission is!
This ability to hide the seller’s broker’s compensation combined with listing your home with a traditional, brand name brokerage means you’ll truly get the same marketing exposure as someone paying 6% commission!
Note: You’ll save even further when selling FSBO Rockland County NY because the typical commission offered to buyers’ agents is lower than New York City. Whereas in NYC the typical commission offered to buyers’ agents is 2.5% to 3%, in Rockland County New York the commission offered to buyer’s agents is more often just 2%.
Read the Full Article: https://www.hauseit.com/sell-fsbo-rockland-county-ny/
Disclosure: Hauseit (https://www.hauseit.com) and its affiliates do not provide tax, legal or accounting advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, tax, legal or accounting advice. You should consult your own tax, legal and accounting advisors before engaging in any transaction. The services marketed on Hauseit.com are provided by licensed real estate brokers and other third party professional service providers. Hauseit LLC is not a licensed real estate broker nor a member of any multiple listing service (MLS).
