Regina Corcoran's - "Pursuing the American Dream"
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Why go it alone?

By Regina Corcoran Special to The Citizen

Real estate agents in the Florida Keys: 1,120. No additional charge. It sort of makes that cell phone commercial look like a mom and pop operation, doesn't it?

When it comes to renting or selling residential property, if you are not Rambo, don't try it alone. Sure, in our normal, garden-variety, hot seller's market, it's not so tough. In the current environment, though, sellers and landlords need a professional.

Who ya gonna call? A Realtor, of course. Hire someone with the training, experience and trade skills to help navigate through these testy currents.

To give your property the best chance to sell or rent, the key is to get the greatest exposure. One of the best benefits of listing the house you want to sell or rent with a Realtor is the multiple listing system (MLS).

After signing an exclusive right-to-list contract with the property owner, one of the first things the Realtor does is reach out to all 1,120 licensed agents in the Florida Keys who are members of the Association of Realtors. The listing agent promptly enters the listing data into our MLS.

The information immediately hits the electronic "in basket" of every Realtor in the Keys. As a result, consumers all over the world can learn about your home from their easy chair, hammock, kayak, sleeping bag, or throne just by going to http://keywestmls.rapmls.com/.

Craigslist is no more than lukewarm by comparison, right?

For this stellar buy one get 1,120 free promotion, here is what Carl Consumer needs to do.

Look for paragraph 4(c) in the standard Exclusive Right of Sale Listing Agreement. It gives your Realtor the marching orders to include your property in the MLS.

If you aim to rent your property, examine paragraph 4 in the Exclusive Right to Lease Agreement. This paragraph spells out the Realtor's obligation to cooperate with other agents and allows your agent to compensate them.

To make this agreement so clear it tinkles, I suggest the parties also check the "other" box in that paragraph and explicitly state that the rental will be entered in the MLS. As always, check with your attorney about this and all legal issues.

One reason Keys Realtors ditched (did I say ditched? No, I meant switched) the old MLS provider a few years ago was rentals. For some odd reason the former company couldn't integrate rental listings into the inventory. Our MLS committee was militant that any new MLS provider must include properties for rent as well as for sale.

It's easy to figure out how owners benefit when their listing is in the MLS. They get not only their own Realtor and all his or her potential buyers and renters, but the seller/landlord also gets all the potential buyers/renters of the 1,000-plus Realtors in the Keys as well as worldwide exposure on the Internet.

Why wouldn't you put a listing in the MLS? A very few agents are as covetous of their listings as Gollum is of his ring. Rather than doing twice the business and sharing part of the fee, they want it all for themselves. They don't want no Bagginses to stand between them and a few dollars more.

How does that benefit you, the seller/landlord? It beats me. In this market it's critical to aggressively and assertively employ every solution.

A real estate company simply can't attract as many Internet hits as our MLS. While a good real estate agent may attract some customers, that one woman or man can't attract the thousands of prospects served by the Keys Realtor members.

When you are ready to hire a Realtor, look for the paragraph that tells you that you are getting all 1,120 Florida Keys Realtors and their prospective buyers and renters.

What do you think?

Regina E. Corcoran, SRA, is a Florida real estate broker, state-certified residential appraiser and residential contractor. She is president of AmeriRealty Corp. and vice president of AmeriMortgage Corp. She can be reached at ReginaECorcoran@cs.com. Corcoran writes her column exclusively for The Citizen. It appears every other Sunday.