Selling Your Condo: MLS Listing or Exclusive?
When listing your condo for sale with a Realtor, there are two main options for what type of listing your property will be: MLS Listing or Exclusive Listing. That’s right, you can sell your condo using a Realtor without using the MLS system. Selling exclusively means you list with one brokerage and give one brokerage the exclusive right to market, show, and sell your property. MLS listing means any Realtor from any brokerage can show and sell your property (and in some cases advertise it as well).
As a seller, you might think, why would I ever not want to take advantage of the MLS system with its massive exposure to buyers and Realtors across the GTA, by listing my property exclusively with one brokerage? There may in fact be several reasons, for example:
- Individual privacy. Your name is published on MLS listings (at least in the ‘back end’ system that all Realtors have access to). If you are a public figure you may not want 30,000 Realtors in the GTA seeing that your house is up for sale and booking a visit ‘just to look around’.
- Shhh…Don’t tell the neighbours. For a variety of reasons, sometimes you just don’t want to announce to your neighbours that you are moving. Putting your property on the MLS is a sure fire way to let them know. An exclusive listing
- Pre-arranged transactions. Many exclusive listings are sold before they are actually listed. These are cases where a Realtor connects a buyer with a seller behind the scenes, puts together a deal, then simply ‘lists’ and reports the sale on the same day.
- Limited showings. Listing exclusively likely means you will not get as many showings as you might with an MLS listing, but it also means the showings you do get are likely very serious buyers and targeted buyers. These are people who have received personal invitations from your Realtor to view the property, or they are likely clients of your Realtors’ brokerage. It also means you won’t have any looky-loo neighbours coming by to see how you’ve arranged your furniture and how your bathroom reno turned out.
Listing exclusively is not for everyone, in reality it is a solution for a very small percentage of sellers, but there are clearly valid reasons for this option. If you are interested in listing your condo exclusively, contact me today to discuss this option. My brokerage, Re/Max Condos Plus, is one of the few brokerages in the city that has the size, specialization, and enough ‘top-gun’ agents on the roster to get exclusive deals done quickly and efficiently.
