Will agents show your listings? A glimpse into NE Ohio's Competitive MLS

I’ll tell you why our MLS is competitive in one word: VOLUME.

Yesterday I checked the community of Euclid Ohio. There were 683 homes on the market. Rocky River has 240 homes for sale. Lakewood has 376; Cleveland Heights has 666. You get the point. There are a lot of available homes in NE Ohio.

If you are selling your home you will be asking the same question your Realtor® is asking—what can I do to make my listing stand out, and not be the house in the back of the room waving it’s chimney saying ‘pick me, pick me!’

I decided to use myself as an example. I have quite a few buyers at the moment and spend time culling the listings to set up showings.

Here is what I automatically eliminate:

1. Homes with no photos
2. Homes with no room sizes and amenities listed
3. Descriptions

Since almost all of my clients and close to what, 90% of all prospective home buyers are read more

Posted by Carole Cohen on May 05, 2008 under MLS, Guest Bloggers, Regional

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No IDX for you! How MLS Boards Can Hinder Agent Success

Many of the agents subscribing to the AIMS program have enjoyed success, some closing as many as five contracts in their first six months.

Some of those who were less successful initially and decided to cancel actually came back after enough time was given for their leads to pan out.

As with any product or idea, there are bound to be obstacles and problems, both for the customer and the provider.

Interestingly, the biggest obstacles thus far with our AIMS product have nothing to do with features, functionality, guarantee fulfillment or customer service.

Rather it has been the MLS boards’ rules and regulations around IDX that often prevent an interested and willing agent from signing up.

Usually this is due to several possible issues:

• Brokers-only boards – there are the MLS boards that do not allow their agent members to get their own IDX feed from a 3rd party IDX provider. Instead they are forced to either frame the brokers IDX solution or use the generic IDX solution offered by the MLS itself. In other words, if an agent belonging to a brokers-only board wants an excellent IDX solution with superior features, it would be impossible at this time.

Currently, of the 154 MLS boards included in the AIMS program, 34 are brokers-only. read more

Posted by Tal Ariel on Jan 17, 2008 under MLS, AIMS

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MLS Compensation; The Ugly Truth Today

Real estate compensation structures are wrought with problems, which could be effectively eliminated if the MLS-mandated offer of compensation were done away with.

Agent compensation is set by office policies that support a specific company’s fee philosophy and income. But the system doesn’t take into account how it affects consumers’ opinion of value received or how it can clash with other companies’ compensation policies.

These policies also contribute to uneducated agents blacklisting certain properties—either intentionally or unintentionally.

One major contributing factor to the compensation problem is that a buyer’s agent is paid according to the selling agent’s office policy. This totally disregards the buy-side agent’s office policy on compensation, the buyer’s contract with his agent and the seller’s best interests, which are to remove any barriers that may keep potential homebuyers from seeing their home.

One problematic result of the mandatory unilateral offer of compensation is the belief that the seller and his agent are the ones paying for the buyer agent’s fee. In reality, both the seller and buyer agents’ fees come from the negotiated sale price, and are deducted from the proceeds at closing. read more

Posted by Jeffrey Bastress on Oct 24, 2007 under MLS

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