What Buyer Agents think about BuySelf Realty's Flat Fee MLS Listing Sellers

One of our sellers recently had a compliment that we usually don’t hear. This wasn’t a compliment from a seller, about our service (we hear those regularly)—this was a compliment from a buyer agent to our seller. We just happened to be carbon copied on the email exchange between our seller and the buyer agent. The buyer agent said “You are a great seller to work with!”
This compliment doesn’t surprise us, and I suspect it happens quite frequently. From the beginning, a big part of our service has focused on agent-friendly listings. One element of having an agent friendly listing is educating the seller about how Realtors work, what they expect, and how to motivate them to show a property. We don’t know of any other flat fee MLS brokers that provide this education, which surprises us because it is so essential to a successful home sale. A seller with a flat fee MLS listing who is uneducated about how agents work is much less likely to sell.
None of the key elements to having an agent friendly listing are complicated, but they can be hard to see from the consumer side. They are not intuitive, in fact, some could be considered counter-intuitive. We educate our sellers about the relevant information and behaviors they need to know to be agent friendly. From how to schedule showings, what the MLS listing should clearly communicate to agents, how the seller should respond to questions, general agent communication and more. There so many errors flat fee sellers make, if they aren’t educated, that will significantly reduce the number of showings and buyers, in our experience.
With the help and experience of our 16,000 sellers, our agent-friendliness education has substantially improved and evolved since 1998. The improvement has come mostly from assisting sellers with their home sales, but also from being involved with Realtors at Realtor Association committees and events.