Seller Told to Skip MLS? DO THIS!

Anthony Lamacchia: You go on a listing appointment, a seller looks across the table and says, “Well, the other company that we met with, they said it would be better off if we just put our house up for sale with them in their internal system. They said it wouldn’t make sense to put it out on MLS like everywhere else. Well, how do you feel about that?” Now, what do you say to that as an agent, if you get a question like that on a listing appointment? I’m going to walk you through that right here. I’m going to show you some data and things you can bring up on that listing appointment.

I’m also, after I go over that, going to show you these two forms. Okay? This is eXp’s Seller Advisory: Risks of Limited Market Exposure form that they just came out with very solid, very thorough form. This is our Lamacchia Realty form, which, by the way, we’ve had for six or seven years. We just renamed it to our Selling off MLS Acknowledgement. You can see it’s still in draft mode. I’m going to go through both of these forms with you after I go through a mini role play here on how you would handle a seller asking such a question on a listing appointment.

First thing that I would do is, let me jump back into the appointment, “Okay, Mr. Seller, well, just so you know, we have an internal system at our company as well, and we use it sometimes when people are taking a few weeks to maybe get their rugs changed or get the house ready to list. We’ll do a little internal marketing within our company to let others know that this listing is coming up. It makes the most sense to put your home on the multiple listing service so that it’s exposed and syndicated all over the world to as many folks as possible. We have a motto at our company that more marketing equals more demand and more demand creates more money.

I want to show you this report. Take a look at this. This is a report that we had put together a few weeks ago from Semrush, and you can tell by looking at it that we’re showing off these large company real estate websites. You can see that Zillow in the last 12 months has had 1.2 billion unique visitors to their website. Just so you know, if you’re not on the open market in the MLS, you’re not going to be on Zillow. All those buyers eyeballs are gone. Realtor.com 471 million, and then you can see the rest and the 600,000s, the 300,000s and so on.

Well, these are really powerful websites that you will miss being on if your home is listed and restricted to a specific company. Even if one of those specific companies is one of these companies, remember, these are national statistics, national companies, international statistics, and you’re limiting yourself to just them. Let’s say it’s just Compass, for example, you’re missing out on all the Zillow views of nearly 1.2 billion.

In addition to that– now that’s just the public portals. Okay? Now, if I put the public portals aside, let’s also think about, for example, agent population of companies. If that company that you’re talking to is saying that they’re going to hoard that listing just to their realtors, well, how many realtors do they have? Do they have 300? Do they have 500? Do they have 800? Do they have 2000? I don’t know. In the state here of Massachusetts, there’s 26,000 realtors. I think the company with the largest amount is maybe 2000. If you are restricting your listing from being seen by all the other agents, you’re again restricting the amount of buyers.

Then let me also show you MLS. This is a screenshot directly from our multiple listing service. You can see, for example, this listing here, we’ll call it Plain, Plain Drive in Stoughton.

You can see it has 831 client matches. Now, if you click into the client matches, you can see what companies all those buyers are from, Berkshire Hathaway, Home Services, Coldwell Banker, Town Hall, Coldwell Banker, Siena Real Estate, Century 21, RE/MAX Partners, Leading Real Estate, all these different companies.

If you are not on the multiple listing service, this property would not be getting exposed to them. You miss out on direct syndication directly to buyers and all the various aggregators and companies that pull these lists through internet data exchanges and send them directly to buyers in addition to missing out on the portals, which also makes you miss out on a whole lot of information. When you think about those large websites, Mr. and Mrs. Seller, as I said, more marketing equals more demand equals more money. My job and what I’m most concerned about doing for you is exposing your property in every way I possibly can to bring as many buyers in here as possible. Remember, it rolls downhill.

Take, for example, the amount of buyers that see a property online. There might be 3000 that see it online when it’s listed publicly. Out of the 3000, well, how many actually come to see it? Maybe a 100 including open houses. Well, out of that 100, how many actually are interested? Maybe 20. Then how many make offers? Well, if it’s more than one offer, you are going to get more money. That’s in addition to all the other things that I do, postcards, social media, advertising, et cetera. By me putting on the open market, I’m exposing it to everyone.

I know I mentioned it earlier but at our company we have our own internal system as well called Lamacchia Links. Over the years, buyers and sellers have loved it. Sellers have been able to expose their property to other buyers in our company, buyers who, especially a few years ago when inventory was extremely low, buyers were able to find out about properties before they were listed. That system is primarily used as a pre-marketing tool before going on the MLS.

I’m happy to put your property there, and we’re allowed to do that in this particular MLS here in Massachusetts, where we can get a delayed listing form signed. I can go over that with you later but I just want to make sure you are totally clear that you are better off listing on the public open market. I just wanted to make sure you realize that, because as I said, I want to market, I want to create the most demand, and I want to obtain you the most money.”

Now, see how I did that? That was obviously off the cuff. I just did it quickly. I showed some different documents here and things that I would go over on the listing appointment, and most of what I went over is consistent with our Crush It In Real Estate Listing Appointment training. That gives you an idea of the way that I would explain it. The other thing that you should do, preferably at that point prior to exposing the property in any internal system or anything like that, obviously, providing your MLS allows it. You could see in that mock presentation that I just did. I talked about here in Massachusetts, MLS pin, where there’s a little more leeway with those kinds of things.

If you’re in an MLS that doesn’t allow that, then don’t say it. You could see how I was very clear with the seller. I showed the reports on website activity. I showed client matches. I explained the different brokerages. I explained how they’re definitely going to have less demand on their home, which is going to equal less money for them. I was clear, and everyone needs to be clear about that. If the seller still after that wants to keep it private and off market, well, so be it. We’ve got some sellers that have done that. We have one that with a lot of new construction who’s been adamant about that and we’ve never put it on MLS, and that’s what he wants to do? That’s okay.

Now, what I want to do is I want to show you these forms. Let’s start with the eXp form. We’ll pull it up on the screen. You can see they just came out with this form. It still says draft on it like ours. “Seller Advisory: Risks of Limited Market Exposure. Selling a property privately without inclusion in the multiple listing service or broader public marketing channels can significantly limit visibility and reduce buyer competition, which may negatively impact your final sale price and terms.”

They’re making that clear right off the get-go top, top, and then you see here, limited buyer exposure. It talks about less buyers, financial risk, longer time on the market, no public portals. I thought that was smart, and that gave me an idea with our form. You can see how there– I’m going to read that one. “Withholding your property listing from public portals such as Zillow, Realtor.com, Redfin, Homes.com may reduce its visibility, limit the pool of potential buyers, and negatively affect your chances of achieving optimal sales terms and net proceeds.”

Now, a little further down, “eXp Realty strongly encourages you to consider exposure to the broadest market possible, which includes the multiple listing service and broader public marketing channels available to all consumers prior to accepting an offer.” They’re really being bold about it. They’re explaining it in depth. Now, prior to engaging in any form of office-exclusive or private listing network or pocket listing, it is imperative to establish priorities and assess the potential ramifications of restricted visibility on both buyer demand and transaction results.”

They’re being really bold, really outspoken about it. We did not go as far in our form but I think our form covers the bases and this is what we’re going to be, at a minimum, strongly, strongly encouraging our Lamacchia agents to get signed here at our company. Let’s take a look at our form. We call it the Selling off MLS Acknowledgement. “This form is intended to provide sellers with the information needed to make an informed choice about selling a property without utilizing the benefits of the multiple listing service to market the property.

After reviewing this form and discussing all options with your Lamacchia Realty agent, the choice to sell off-market is the seller’s choice.”

Notice we’re making that clear because, as I said, if they want to sell off market, we’re willing to do it, but we want to make sure they’re clear. “Lamacchia Realty provides this acknowledgement to Joe Schmo on the property located at 123 Main Street. The seller acknowledges that the broker has informed the seller of the following.” We went a little bit more limited in ours than eXp. Just for whatever reasons, sales reasons, et cetera, they were extremely thorough. You all can choose which one you want to use or which parts you want to take and be my guest.

“The vast majority of sellers sell their property by hiring a brokerage that lists their property in the MLS. Listing the property on the open market through the MLS is likely to generate a higher price and better terms for the property, rather than selling without using the MLS.”

Number two, “By not listing the property in the MLS, there will be limited exposure to buyers and the listing will not be posted on public portals such as Zillow, Realtor.com, and others. Certain portals may prohibit or limit whether they will display listings that have been publicly marketed outside the MLS.” That is the key sentence, folks. That key sentence we put in there on purpose because we wanted to make absolutely sure that sellers understand that if they market off of the MLS in advance, that could screw up the ability to put it on Zillow if it fails to sell.

Number three, ‘The broker recommends that the seller seeks counsel from an attorney of seller’s choice prior to selling off MLS and prior to accepting an offer to purchase, blah, blah, blah. Seller’s decision, seller represents they’ve read it, blah, blah, blah.” I hope that makes sense, folks. That gives you an idea of how I would recommend going about it on the listing appointment, both verbally and what to show. I always teach and preach, make sure you show people things. Don’t just tell them things. That’s why if I’m in your shoes, I would absolutely have this here.

If you want this, we can provide it to you. Put your email in the comments on YouTube, on Instagram, on Facebook. We’ll grab your emails, and we will send this image to you and you could, I don’t know, put your own logo on it or whatever you want to do, or just say it’s from Crush It In Real Estate. Crush It In Real Estate’s not a real estate brokerage, and we’re happy to provide it to you. I hope that helps. I hope that helps make it more clear. That’s all. Good luck. Happy home selling.

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