Coming soon? Not so fast! By Ricki Free or maybe a divorce situation has made showings difficult, or if a seller has other significant concerns about privacy. But for the rest of the sellers, maximum exposure is the name of the game. Limited exposure to the market means limited buyers, which means limited or fewer offers. This is why FSBO (For Sale By Owners) are often not successful at getting top dollar for their property, they are fishing from a much smaller pond. Especially in a Seller’s Market, where agents list the property for sale on Friday and by Monday, they have multiple offers, if home is not exposed to the whole market you may be leaving some big fish in the pond. The other major concern for Coming soon listings can also be referred to as off-MLS listings, pocket listings or office exclusives. Just like with most things in life there are good and bad sides of a topic, but in the case of coming soon listings, for most Sellers, I believe it can be bad. Let’s first define what a “coming soon” listing is. It is a listing offered for sale initially to a “select” few. Let me also define MLS. MLS is the Multiple Listing Service. The MLS is only available to licensed agents and it is how we share information on properties for sale and for properties that have sold. In a nutshell, it’s our database. The MLS is the single most important tool to all agents who list and sell. The MLS is a cooperation agreement as well; all agents who are members agree to cooperate information and commissions. If I am selling my home why wouldn’t I want to be in the MLS where agents working with buyers are going every day to see what’s new on the market? There are few reasons why not - maybe I am a celebrity that doesn’t want a bunch of groupies traipsing through my property 20 coming soon listings is it can really mess up the comps (comparable properties) in a market. When we, as agents, and appraisers put a price or value on a property, we again go the MLS and see what other properties most like the property we going to list recently sold for. We can only use comps that have been exposed to the market, the whole market. Which means we can not use the coming soon sale in our valuation. Think about that - why would an appraiser not be able to use a “coming soon” listing that went under contract before it hit the open market? Because it is simply not comparable - if the listing was fully exposed, who knows what it could have sold for. There is only one person the coming soon listings benefits (with the exception of the above examples) and that’s the listing agent. Why not put the listing in the MLS to increase the number of buyers? By not putting the listing in the MLS and sharing the information the agent has an increased the chance of selling the listing themselves, which means they don’t have to cooperate the commission paid by the seller. Let me clear up commissions paid by the seller for those that don’t know. When an agent lists a property,
21 Publizr Home