There has been a lot of recent talk about the Competition Bureau and CREA and the recent changes to the MLS® rules that govern REALTORS®
Its time to shed a little light on this, at least from our perspective. The new MLS® rules allow for a licensed REALTOR® to do what is referred to as "mere-posting" a listing onto the MLS®. They will charge some sort of nominal fee for this, probably around $500 or something. The idea here is to allow people to market their properties themselves, (For Sale By Owner) and do all of the work themselves.
From where we sit, this is probably a good thing. It gives consumers choices, which they previously did not really have. Now as we see it, consumers have 3 viable options:
Option #1 - Sell it through the traditional "higher commission companies" who will place your property on MLS® and provide full service real estate. Depending upon what your home is worth, this will cost a fair amount of money, though it will vary across the country. A $400,000 home will normally cost somewhere between $15,000-$24,000 through a company like this.
Option #2 - Sell it through One Percent Realty. We will charge you $6900 for this same $400,000 home, with all the services and exposure that you would receive from the traditional higher commission companies. This fee also includes payment to the buyers agent ($3000). We do open houses, handle the showings, negotiations, and paperwork that you would expect from any full service real estate company. In short, the services and exposure are the same as you would get from option #1 above, but for way less money.
Option #3 - Sell it yourself. You can now put your home on MLS® and have your home exposed with all the other listings, and deal directly with the public or REALTORS® who may show your property. Worth noting, is that since your property is on the MLS® system you will have a reasonable chance of dealing with a buyer's agent. These buyers agents expect to be paid. Most likely, they will be looking to the Seller to pay them something, probably at least half of the fees discussed above (the $400,000 home). So again, if we use the $400,000 home as our example, a buyer's agent will be expecting to receive between $7500-$12,000 to sell your property.
So if you can have the full services of our professional REALTORS® for $6900, why would you not just leave it to a professional....