Real Estate trend: Flat-rate option gains popularity

Assist-2-Sell paved the way, opening in Springfield 11 years ago, but now the firm has company in the flat-rate field.

Thirty-year old Help-U-Sell opened a Springfield office Aug. 1, with Mark Pike as the local broker-owner.

Pike said the flat-fee phenomenon is all about pricing.

“If you go by a gas station and it’s $2.49 a gallon, and across the street it’s $2.99 a gallon, you know where you’re going to buy gas,” Pike said.

Real estate is the same way, he said. “The flat fee interests people because it can save them money.”

Help-U-Sell charges $2,450 to sell most homes while the typical commission-based service charges 6 percent of the selling price. On a $100,000 home, that means a savings of roughly $3,500.

Scott Myer opened Scott Myer Realty in May 2004.

His office charges one flat rate to do almost everything needed to sell a home, from listing the home for sale to conducting staffed open houses at the property. He said flat-rate agencies are responding to the market.

“The sellers are getting smarter, and they’re not wanting to pay traditional full commissions anymore,” he said. “Any major city you go to, fee-based business has taken over. People are moving here from all over the country, and they’re familiar with fee-based companies, and that’s what they want.”

Business has been good for Myer – so good that the company opened a new office in Branson Sept. 1 to tap into that rapidly growing market.

Business has been good for everyone, though. Despite the opening and growth of new agencies like Myer’s, Springfield’s two largest firms – Carol Jones, Realtors and Murney Associates – experienced double-digit percentage growth in residential sales revenues.

Pike said he hasn’t seen any examples of agents from other companies shying away from showing his listed homes; he did, however, cite an example of an unnamed agent dissuading a customer from listing his home with a flat-rate agency.

“I did have a Realtor say to one of my first clients that no one would show his house because it was with a flat-fee firm,” he said.

“In the first three days that the house was on Multi-List, I showed that house 45 times, just because everybody was curious about the new company and wanted to know about it.”

While Pike said the discount brokerages are not going to put traditional firms out of business, Myer believes the Springfield area cannot sustain so many real estate agencies.

“The market is definitely going to thin out. We’ve got companies in town that are fee-based that aren’t full service, and there are traditional companies that are going to have to adjust their fees,” he said.

“The market dictates it. People want all the bells and whistles at a reduced price, and that’s what you’re going to have to deliver.”

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