^ tons of alternatives and commissions are always negotiable.
I am not able to advertise any incentive - if I did, my entire brokerage would have to be able to offer the same thing.
There are brokerages/Realtors that will sell your house for 1% commission on each side.
There are brokerages that offer to put your house on the MLS and you handle everything.
There are full service brokerages (where I am)
At the end of the day, you get what you pay for and I know many on this forum can vouch for that. In fact, I have helped a handful of people on this forum who either A) tried going with a discount option at first or B) listed with me while their neighbor or someone on the street was using a discount brokerage (this case was entertaining as it was the same house and not only did we sell for way more but we sold way quicker). The unfortunate thing for the people who try the discount route first and if it does not work, list with a full service brokerage is that I can see how long you have been trying to sell your place. You only have one chance at the "honeymoon stage" where the listing is fresh to the market.
I will tell you the real struggle with many of the discount options. When I am booking multiple showings a day to show my clients, the system is set up to make it as easy as possible to reach the listing realtors and ask for a showing.
Many of the discount options have me contact the seller directly.
1) I do not want to talk to the seller as they try to sell the house on me and quite frankly, have no idea how the business is run and can become annoying
2) They never answer their phones (most likely because they have a day job of their own). I sometimes need to get in on a moments notice. The seller calls me back a day later and it is too late.
3) Often in this case, commissions are not set in stone. It is my job to negotiate with the seller on my commission. This is a huge flaw (IMO) of the system as it is a conflict of interest to my client. "Hi Seller, I want 3.5/1.5 commissions and I know that you are going to reply with an offer to give me 1% or less and then anything above that comes out of my buyers pocket on the purchase price" .... see the flaw?
In addition, my clients can vouch that although they pay full or close to full commission - they receive all the best in the industry. I can spend over $2,000 on any one of my listings before it has even hit the market and I have no guarantee of selling that property and getting that investment back. Why do I do it? Because a properly marketed property will stand a better chance at selling and will typically sell for more. Do the math on me getting 10 people through the door and a discount service who took their own photos getting 3 people through the door.
A discount service needs volume to stay afloat. They make less on each listing and spend much less marketing each listing. While the discount service may list 10 properties and sell 5 I prefer to list 4 and sell 3.
*Disclaimer - this is all personal opinions and in no way intended to knock/put down any other type of real estate model. I personally feel that the public is poorly educated on their options. We all hear the radio ads that slam the full service model and claim to save you thousands of dollars. We don't hear the full service brokerages advertising the differences in these models and if saving $7,000 on commissions is worth selling for $14,000. The discount route may be the right style for some people, I want CP to understand the differences so that they can make a decision best suited for them
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