Todd Sattersten :: Astronaut Projects

Direct MLS Link

Here is the direct link to our listing in MLS.

Flat Fee MLS Blog

Milan from Flat Fee MLS Marketing was nice enough to post a comment, so I thought it would be nice to point you all to his great blog on flat fee MLS listing services.

Happy Mother's Day

Rejecting the brash commercialism that Mother's Day has become, I did a little DIY for the two main moms in my life. I don't remember where I initially saw this, but I was immediately attracted to the idea of making my own $15 Mont Blanc pen.

It is very simple to do. I got my supplies at OfficeMax buying the two-pack Mont Blanc for $10.99 and a 4-pack of Pilot G-2 Pens for $4.99 (so my per piece price was $7.50). As the instructions lay out, you only need to cutoff the little nub at the end of the Mont Blanc cartridge to make it fit in the G-2 casing. I bought the ones in with clear case so you could see through.

If there is any question about the appropriateness of the gift, my wife has an engineering degree and an MBA. My mom is an accountant. I am assure you they both appreciate fine writing instruments.

To the rest of you mothers, Happy Mother's Day!

Flat Fee Real Estate - How The Relationship Changes

As we were signing the paperwork on Saturday, I asked Paul Liebe of Redefined Realty alot of questions about the growing interest in "For Sale By Owner" movement.

You have to start with the idea that in Wisconsin the typical fees for the agents involved in the sale of a home is 6% (3.6% to the selling agent, 2.4% to the buyer's agent). For a house like ours, that would amount to $18,000. That is a staggering amount of money. As I said yesterday, we weren't sure if the value was worth the cost.

The first thing Paul said is that fees cannot stay where they are. Consumers will not stand for it. His business of listing homes for owners has grown doubled to tripled every year for the last four years. That gave me a pretty clear indication of what is going on.

What is really important about a flat fee service like Paul's is that it changes the relationship. We paid him $500 to take pictures, provide signage and list the house in MLS. He gets his money upfront. If we are unhappy, we can do whatever we like at anytime (with agents you typically have a three to six month obligation).

The flat fee also removes any motivations around what happens with the price of the house. He charges extra for a price analysis, but was able to give us some quick advice based on what he was seeing in the market. The most important thing is that it is objective advice. Before we decided to do it ourselves, we had two real estate agents in and they talked about what they would price the house at. They were significantly different. It was hard to tell how they came to such different conclusions, but it clearly made us wonder.

This move to flat fees in real estate bears a strong resemblance to financial services. There is a growing trend in flat fee services versus planners being compensated as a percentage of assets or by the products they are selling. Again, it is about the agent doing what is in the best interest of the client.

One last thing-by listing in MLS, we are encouraging buyer's agents to contact us. Those folks still expect to be paid. Many people when selling themselves reduce the rate and say they want to save money any place they can.

We went the other way. By savings some money on the selling side, we decided bump the commission up to 3% (from 2.4%). For our house, this means another $1000 to $1500 in the agent's pocket. Everyone we talked felt this was an effective way to lure in agents and their clients. We'll see...

House For Sale

We live about 40 minutes outside Milwaukee and with my growing responsibilities at 800ceoread, we need to get a little closer.

So, we are selling our house and I think there will be quite the story to tell by the time it is done.

Anybody who knows Amy or I know that we can't do anything the traditional way. We have decided to sell the house ourselves and forgo using a real estate agent. Some might say we are crazy (this week's Fortune is the Real Estate Survival Guide and recommends getting an agent), but we think it is going to work just fine. Amy has time to handle the inquiries and showings. For $500, you can have it listed like any other house in MLS. The service we used included professional signage and a public web page.

I thought I would give everyone the important information in case they knew someone looking for a house in western Waukesha County (that's Wisconsin).

W324S7849 Paul Lane
Mukwonago, WI
Yahoo Map

Satellite Picture from Zillow

Important Things

• Three Bedrooms (study could be a fourth bedroom)
• 2.5 Bathrooms (master bedroom is ensuite)
• 2.5 Car Garage
• Built in 1991
• 1.1 Acre Lot
• ~2100 Square Feet

Price: $297,600
Full Listing on LakeCountryByOwner.com (page down to our listing)

Call Amy at 262-363-1564 to schedule an appointment

P.S. Freakonomics has some things to say about real estate. The looked at the ten most common words used in real estate listings and were able to divide them in two categories based on price gotten for house. One of the no-no's is exclamation marks. You will not see any of those in our listings for the house :)

P.P.S. We'll keep you posted on how things go.