Arkansas Blog

For most families, their home is the single largest investment. When selling their home, the single largest cost is the commission paid to the real estate agent. The Johnson family was hoping to sell their home in Central Arkansas, and they wanted a way to better preserve the value in their investment. This was their first time selling a home and they were unwilling to pay a 6% commission on the sales price, amounting to over $11,000, to a real estate agent. Instead, The Johnsons hired Standard Listing Realtors, a new residential real estate brokerage in Central Arkansas, to list and sell their home after interviewing several other companies.

Standard Listing Realtors was the Johnsons’ choice for two reasons: Standard Listing Realtors lists and sells homes for a discounted commission of 2.9% of the final sale price plus five hundred dollars (2.9% + $500). And the Johnson family was confident that their marketing strategy and knowledge of the local market would work quickly to sell their home and save them money.

As it turned out, it did: Their home received several showings and the Johnsons received an offer within five days. By listing the home with Standard Listing Realtors, the Johnsons saved about $5,500 compared to a 6% commission on the sale of their $192,000 house.

“Every seller wants to save money, and reducing the commission by about half represents a meaningful amount of money saved for any home seller,” says Scott Christie, COO of Standard Listing. “The savings add up quickly. For example, a seller with a $150,000 house would save more than $4,000; A seller with a $350,000 house would save more than $10,000; And a seller with a $750,000 house would save more than $22,000.”

“Home sellers with expensive properties get the steepest savings with our business model,” says Christie. “Oddly enough, those are the ones most susceptible to the traditional brokerage pitch. They think a “boutique” brokerage in our market is going to get a higher price for their property. The truth is that 92% of people looking for a home browse real estate listings online. They have access to the same inventory of homes for sale as real estate agents. When a homebuyer sees a home they like, they jump on it, and it does not matter which brokerage has the home listed.”

Standard Listing Realtors provides a full service, traditional real estate listing to home sellers, unlike other flat-fee or discount brokerages that require homeowners to do most of the sales work in exchange for a reduced cost.

“Our business model is simple. We provide a full-service real estate listing for about half the price,” says Matt Lamb, CEO of Standard Listing Realtors, “and we include everything a home seller would typically expect to receive and more. We provide general listing and staging advice, pricing strategy, professional photography, we handle all the marketing, our listings are published on hundreds of local and national real estate websites, and we handle all the showings, negotiations, paperwork, and closing coordination.”

“I would stack up our marketing plan to any other brokerage in town. In addition to the typical type of marketing a home seller might expect, our listings receive thousands views on Facebook in the first week. Our listings are published on hundreds of websites on day one. It happens fast.”

Lamb, who sits on the Board of Directors of the Little Rock Realtors Association, recently sold his interest in iRealty Arkansas in 2016, a residential real estate brokerage in Central Arkansas he co-founded in 2013. From 2013 to 2016, the brokerage closed more than 1,000 homes totaling more than $150,000,000 in sales volume.

“While commissions are negotiable and real estate agents prefer not to discuss them other than with their clients, a common commission structure in the Central Arkansas area is for the seller to pay 6% of the final sale price and that commission is split with 3.6% going to the listing agent, who represents the seller, and 2.4% going to the the buying agent, who represents the buyer. The Standard Listing Realtors discount program only affects the listing agent’s portion of the commission; buyer’s agents will be paid a commission of 2.4% of the final sale price. That brings the entire cost of listing and selling a home to 2.9% plus $500 - About half of the cost of working with a 6% brokerage.”

Lamb says that the Internet and technologically enhanced marketing tools have drastically reduced the time it takes to list and sell a home. “Listing, marketing, and selling a home used to be much more time intensive. With the tools and technology available to real estate agents today, we can quickly get an accurate estimate of a home with a few clicks of the mouse. The same holds true for marketing. We can have a listing up in front of thousands of people in a matter of minutes on Facebook and other social media platforms. The point is that, over time, the workload associated with listing and selling a home has gone down significantly, but commissions have remained the same. The industry has an incentive to keep commissions high for obvious reasons. Our mission at Standard Listing Realtors is to provide first class service to home sellers and to charge a fair, reasonable commission that saves home sellers a lot of money. In turn, home sellers have more room to negotiate or they can pocket the savings.”

Do you need to sell your home?

Standard Listing Realtors provides free, no-obligation home seller consultations seven days a week in Central Arkansas from 8AM to 8PM. Learn more on their website at standardlisting.us or call (501) 444 - 2055.