How to Sell Your Home with a Westchester NY Flat Fee MLS Listing

Selling your home in Westchester NY with a flat fee MLS listing is a great way to save up to all 6% of traditional broker fees.

With a Westchester NY flat fee MLS listing, you’ll save at least 3% in the listing broker’s commission and possibly also the 3% traditionally paid to a buyer’s agent if you are able to find a direct buyer.

What are the reasons to list my home through a Westchester NY flat fee MLS listing?

Which MLS should you list your Westchester NY home in?

What are the next steps to selling my Westchester NY home through a flat fee MLS listing?

Do I need to hire a real estate attorney if I’m selling through a flat fee MLS listing in Westchester NY?

A flat fee MLS listing is much more effective than a traditional For Sale By Owner listing precisely because of the exposure your home will receive from buyers’ agents through the MLS.

Given the choice, most buyers’ agents will prefer to search for listings for their clients through their local MLS because all of the listings in the MLS are co-broked, meaning that listing agents have contractually agreed to share 50% of the commission with a “co-broker” that brings a buyer.

Each buyer client is worth 3% in commission to a buyer’s agent, and given the risk averse nature of buyer’s brokers why on earth would they send clients listing ideas where there wasn’t a guaranteed way for them to get paid?

You should list your Westchester NY home in OneKey MLS, which is the dominant Multiple Listing Service in Westchester County. OneKey MLS replaced the former Hudson Gateway MLS (HGMLS) after its merger with the Long Island MLS and is now the system where virtually all Westchester residential listings are entered, shared among agents, and syndicated to major consumer listing websites.

It’s important to understand that the New York metropolitan area is fragmented across multiple MLS systems and broker databases, many of which still appear in outdated articles despite no longer being relevant for Westchester. References to HGMLS persist online even though it no longer exists as a standalone MLS, while systems like the NY State MLS have a negligible presence in Westchester County. Listing a Westchester home anywhere other than OneKey MLS today generally means your property will not reach the real local buyer and agent market.

The easiest and most reliable way to verify which MLS actually matters is to search for homes in your town on Zillow or another major listing portal, open several listings, and scroll to the bottom of each listing page where the “Listing Source” or “MLS” field is shown, which explicitly identifies the MLS name and MLS number used for that property. When you do this for homes across Westchester County, the listing source consistently shows OneKey MLS, confirming that this is the MLS Westchester agents are actually using.

After taking 5 minutes to submit your listing details on our website and purchasing our List Your Home Online product, you should consider purchasing professional photographs and a floorplan in case you do not already have these handy.

Starting at approximately $300 as of this writing, professional real estate photography is the easiest and smallest investment you can make in your home sale process.

The cost is truly insignificant compared to the average home sale price of over $1 million in Westchester NY.

Professional photographs are an incredibly important component of a successful home sale. Since over 98% of all home buyers start their search online, what do you think they’ll see first about your home?

That’s right, often times buyers won’t even bother to read through your listing description but will instead first flip through your photos online.

Because of the shorter attention spans of internet users today, you had better make sure your listing photos look incredible.

So ditch your flip phone camera and let our professional photographers come with proper equipment and experience so you can showcase your home in the best possible light. Furthermore, our photographers will digitally re-touch and edit your photos and have a finished product available typically within 24 hours of the photo-shoot.

Yes, a lawyer is absolutely necessary for real estate transactions in Westchester NY and New York State in general. Unlike other states such as California where the purchase agreements are simple, standardized forms which Realtors can guide their clients through without a lawyer, purchase contracts in New York are typically much more complex and negotiable.

Typically once an offer has been accepted, the seller’s attorney will send across a standard purchase contract along with a rider with more specific negotiating points to the buyer’s attorney. The buyer’s attorney may respond with a separate rider with the buyer’s specific demands.

Besides negotiating the contract of sale, lawyers are responsible for legal and financial due diligence on behalf of their client. For buyers, that includes ordering a title report and reviewing the report for any violations and liens against the property. It also includes reviewing the building’s financials, offering plan and board minutes if you happen to be buying a condominium or cooperative apartment.