Our Best Answer Is:

Since 2004, Melissa brought more buyers to the closing table in Lake Placid, Sebring, Avon Park, Lorida & Venus, than any other broker or agent in the entire area. That includes ALL the 6%-er brokers who say "you get what you pay for" - they are trying to protect their bloated commissions.

Her buyers purchased over 600 homes during that period. The rest of the few hundred brokers and agents in Highlands County were well behind. Melissa was the #1 Selling-side agent in the entire area, so you'd be listing with a GREAT agent and your listing team will also include Zack (All About Realty's Sales Manager and a VERY energetic agent) and Dan, the Broker/Owner of All About Realty - AND WE CAN SAVE YOU LOTS OF MONEY!!

Real Estate Laws/Rules Have Changed
You may or may not have heard, but in July, 2024, the way real estate is handled in the US has significantly changed. Sellers have more options – to continue to pay buyer agents part of the commission received through the listing agent, or to not offer any commission to them.

Why Did The Rules Change?
Many brokers kept sticking to the 6% commission model, even though customers - and some agents - thought it was too much. Experts want/expect between a 20-30% overall reduction in real estate commissions.

What Changed?
The most significant thing is, many parties do not want sellers to feel like they MUST pay high commissions, and that they MUST pay a buyer’s agent. The process should be more “transparent”. Agents can no longer put compensation offers for buyer agents in MLS (but they can still offer it “outside” of the MLS).

What We Think
All About Realty agrees – many brokers were greedy. Charging sellers between 5.5-6.5% commission – AND THEY WEREN’T EVEN EQUALLY SPLITTING IT WITH BUYER AGENTS – is too much. Many also charge “junk” fees (“transaction fees,” etc.) We’ve been charging less than 5% commissions for many years. With escalating home prices, it only seemed fair. A few others have done this as well, but too many did not – hence the lawsuit and new rules! In fact, years ago, we received anonymous “hate mail” from agents and many would not show our homes when we lowered our commissions during the boom years. We had a billboard on US27 with a giant 4% on it for a few years – that started the trouble! They basically forced us to ask our clients to charge more – for THEM to show/sell our listings!

What We Are Doing
All About Realty will offer the choices outlined below. Many sellers will likely stay with the structure we’ve been doing for years – which is far cheaper than what most other area brokers charge - and we work hard to give you excellent service and great results.

We Set The Standard With Our Standard Commission
The commission structure we recommend – at least for the time being as this market is not great – is pretty much what we’ve been doing for several years – but a little cheaper:

We would charge you 4.5% TOTAL Commission, and we’d offer half of that to buyer agents – more than many brokers offer who charge much more.

We’d also put your listing in the Zillow Showcase Listing Program with 3-D photography (only 10% of an area’s listings are allowed in this program – more information below). If your listing agent – or team – brings the buyer, we’d reduce the total commission to 3.5%.

Our “Sellers Market” Commission
This is a good structure in a seller's market. We certainly can try it now, but you may want to offer buyer agents a little more - and have us spend more (such as the 3d photography and the Zillow Showcase Listing). The market has certainly slowed quite a bit. Of course, if your home is priced agressively, this could work in any market.

We'd charge you 3.9% TOTAL Commission, and offer 2% to buyer agents – more than we’d receive! If your listing agent – or team – brings the buyer, we’d reduce the total commission to 3.5%.

And More Choices For Our Sellers:
If you do not want to pay any buyer agent commission, we can do a 2.9% total commission – and offer buyer agents NOTHING. We feel this will hurt sellers, so we recommend paying them something, but you are free to make the choice - and we will work hard to get your home sold!

We will also include your home in the Zillow Showcase Program.

We are the first partners in Zillow’s Showcase Listings in Highlands County – this is a new program to see if sellers can pay less to buyer agents – and still get good results by sending buyer leads to the listing agent (us!).

Being in this program is important – you’d get an exceptional Zillow listing with “3-d” all around views of your home with an interactive floor plan, special placement (several times the views of a regular listing), and more. We can show you examples.

The TOTAL Commission would be 2.9% - which would include being in the Program.

Also, you can offer SOME commission for buyer agents with this plan as well – anything you want (a set amount, or a percentage, etc.).

THE CHOICE IS UP TO YOU – AND WE CAN MAKE CHANGES TO SUIT THE MARKET AND YOUR OBJECTIVES!

Other Reasons To List With Us (Besides Our Great Choices & Low Commissions!)

We have been in Business since 2005 – with zero lawsuits or complaints filed.

We advertise Extensively Online because most home buyers - especially with the amount of out-of-town buyers in our area - start their search online.

We utilize many of the best options from the top real estate sites (Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia and Homes.com). We advertise on Facebook and many other sites through our partnership with Adwords, Adwerks as well as Yelp and others.

We also do a variety of traditional print advertising (Mural Tour Book, Discover Highlands Magazine, etc.). This has become the least effective way to get homes sold, but we still do some choice ads.

We often compete with large “chain” brokerages. An important thing to consider is: The large brokerages have MANY agents with very little experience and marketing dollars, so it's very likely you could get stuck with one of them. That may sound harsh, but many agents work part time and do not spend on much if anythng on advertising - that is a simple fact. Also, the top 10% of the area agents sell the vast majority of the homes - so why not utilize a top agent - as well as an experienced team?

Of course, there are some very good agents at large franchises - and they can offer you great service and great marketing - but it's very difficult for them to offer ALL that and still save you money (remember the lawsuit that is changing so much? - it is a direct result of many of the large franchises and their bad behavior).

We CAN save you money AND do a great job - so we’d be honored if you chose us to help sell your fabulous home!

A Note About Teams: Don’t be fooled by disingenuous statistics. Some teams have 10-20 agents that mass all their statistics under a single person. It is typical for a husband/wife and small 2-3 people teams to do this, but in many cases the agent is claiming sales they had NOTHING to do with, or had a large team of people working simply to get (trick?) people into listing, then they rarely or never show your home - instead of "Team", a better description is: "Listing Machines That Overcharge"!

Melissa wrote EVERY contract, shows her listings, and worked with every client listed in her statistics (well beyond going to a listing meeting) and ALL our agents keep their own sales statistics - none of them are bunched together.

This below REAL world example is actually outdated now - we would have even saved them more. With prices where they are now, the savings can be HUGE! We've been offering lower commissions since 2004 - and we've done very well saving our clents money! Don't let the greedy chains lie and overcharge anymore - THEY are the reason for the lawsuit and the big changes resulting from it. It's about time people understand what's been going on.

If you want to discuss listing with us, Email to set up a listing appointment or you can call us at any time at: 863-840-2870 or 863-414-0009. Ask for Melissa, Zack or Dan.

We've advertized in and/or now utilize these print publications: