MLS or The Villages to sell a house
 

If you were to list your house for sale in The Villages, would you choose to list with MLS or The Villages.. and why? Which one do you think would give you more exposure?

Absolutly the villages ask for beth pope 352-552-1511 traffic is the most important

Great question.

Think we would find someone from both camps and interview them and than decide

I would select one of the best agents in The Villages company and give them a chance. But, only if they agreed to a 90-day listing and allowed me to fire them at any time, if I lost confidence in them.

We went with The Villages first. They did not do much to try and sell our home. They only showed it maybe 3 times at the most, we think they were using it as an example so they could sell new homes. After 6 months not one offer or open house. We then fired The Villages and went with REMAX, they sold it within the first 2 weeks of their listing it. We do not have must faith in The Villages.

I would choose Jim McLaughlin from The Villages.

We sold one house ourselves. If they are presented well, priced reasonably and clean and kinda cute they will be lined up to buy a for sell by owner. Have a respected closing lawyer to do all the legal stuff. We had McLin and Burnsed.

Time after time this question is answered by the fact that The Villages outsell all local realtors.

Yes I like that. I am not a realtor and I really like the way The Villages does things.

Definitely MLS. Much wider exposure for your property. Neighbors have not been happy with TV realty.

Have been watching the market very closely. Stats on certain homes listed withTV. Watching little over 40 homes since February. The ones that sold did so within 30 days, and within $15,000 of asking price. But every home that sold either had a water view, or golf view. All had a pool, or room for a pool.

Those that didn’t have those qualities(19 homes) sat on the market for 90 days, some longer. Then Relisted with MLS. All but 6 were listed for the same $$ or about 10% less. So far 11 have sold, and 8 have decreased their asking price.

Your experience was nearly identical, literally word for word, to that of someone I know. I would not list my house with a Villages agent.

BTW she neither smoked nor had a cat.

P.S. I have never been and am not now a Realtor.

The rogue agents seem to be pretty aggressive.

Second Beth Pope, great agent and knows it all. We have used her twice over the last 3 years.

That is strange, the re-sales where we live, Fenney, seem to sell rather quickly water or not. We have had 4 neighbors sell there homes and all were pretty much within 30 days, 2 of them were sold the day they were listed and all 4 were with TV agents. There are a few that don't sell but there is always a reason for that, greedy price or something wrong with the house or lot that it's on.

Zillow = the largest real estate market IN THE WORLD!

g00gle "real estate in the villages fl"

Villages Realty is number seven on the list.

I would use an MLS agent as you have more exposure than The Village. Your home will be on zillow, realtor.com, trulia, homes.com, homesnap, instagram and facebook. I would also advise you contact Katy Kelly at RE/MAX Premier 352-355-7982

Thanks for the link, it's pretty interesting for anyone anticipating purchasing in the near future. Firing a school volleyball coach, because she quit being a Villages salesperson and went to work for another real estate company, seems pretty harsh and petty given that her coaching is totally unrelated to her job of selling houses.

I have been looking at houses via the internet since we left TV in April. I have looked at tons of houses on Trulia (same as Zillow, for my money) and The Villages. What I will say as a prospective BUYER, is that The Villages is pretty half-assed as far as their presentation of a property on-line. Most of the time the pictures won't even load. If I were selling, I'd go with MLS.

The word "Rogue" says it all. I wouldn't go near them.

I am not sure what you are talking about but I do know that the criteria for a child being a student at The Villages Charter School is that the parent is employed by The Villages. I think of it as a good thing overall. It encourages responsible people to move here to have a really good education for their children.

That is how it is. You must be employed by The Villages to have a child in their Charter Schools. This sounds like it may be connected. Is it?

Just given the focus of the TV sales force, sorry, marketing department, which is new construction, I would list an existing home with MLS. MLS sales are mostly resales, so they would have least conflict of focus. But that's just me, individual results will always vary.

sportsguy

We are looking at our 4th house. My research is based on what we need. New area was not in the mix of house hunting. I would love to move to the new area just for the running and biking trails, but due to parental units we need to stay in a certain area, and need larger footprint. Use a pretty straight forward approach for analysis.

Absolutely, I would list with them simultaneously. Why limit your options---if the Villages balked, I would go with the outside agent only.

FYI, TV agents will not show a house that isn't a TV agency listing. I'd go with MLS agent. Serious buyers of a used home will look at all agencies.

Selling a house in TV
 

Personally, I would use an agent from TV. They have the best & most complete information to share with prospective buyers. If I could recommend someone, it would be Nannette Tolleson. She has 20+ years experience in TV and is very honest.

We tried the agents for the Villages twice. We thought the years (17 years) in between would have improved the service we got from them. Nope. Same practice. They care nothing about the resale homes. No online exposure, unless one is specifically looking at the Villages website for homes for sale. Note: people coming from other states are usually searching through other online apps.
The second time around, we fired the Villages real estate agent, paid the fine gladly since we had had NOBODY come look at the house, got a wonderful agent from Keller Williams (Crystal McCall) and sold the house within a couple of months.

If you want good solid representation choose a Realtor. The village sales agents are not Realtors and therefore not governed by the NAR code of ethics.I suggest looking for your style of house online and decide which agency would give you the best coverage. Buyers are smart these days so overpriced houses do not sell.

We live in central Villages, near Sumter Landing. There have been 3 or 4 houses on our street for sale, all were MLS, and all sold within a month or two, some within days. It is important to have the home properly priced. I do think The Villages gives good recommendations as far as price. I knew someone that went with an outside realtor, who suggested she price her home a little higher than what it seemed to be worth. She was excited that she thought she could get more than what The Villages had told her. It sat on the market for at least a year. After making some staging improvements and lowering the price, it finally sold. I would probably get an estimate from The Villages as far as price, and go with that price when listing it with MLS.

Village agents do not cooperate with outside brokers. This limits the amount of buyers that could see and buy your house.

I would absolutely use a regular mls agent and not the villages. They control who sees your property snd irs not available on the mls listing. Also if you list with the villages outside and regular realtors are NOT allowed to show your house!! I snd many people I know had a nightmare by listing with vilkages. Also it’s impossible to get out of their contract and they try and hold you to it for months after the 6 months by small print! They used my home to sell their new property!!

Sorry for the autocorrects on some words!

Those "Rogue" agents sold our Villages home in less than a week for only $2,000 below asking price. They are honest and professional realtors who had the guts to stand up against mistreatment by The Villages. I highly recommend them!

Call 352-446-6001 Jason. Largest following in the County. He will help you price it right. Jason is honest and very hard working, reference the above post.

We did ours by listing free on ZILLOW and saved $30000.00 that the villages wanted to list for us. Sales people from MLS or The Villages are their to get as much of your money as they can. The only person you should consider trusting is yourself. Research, and be both the seller and the sellers agent. When we listed, we spelled out that we would not pay any commission to any agent on our side nor on the side of the buyer. Users moving to The Villages don't need help. We did pay for Burnsed to handle all closing.

I woipd go with the realtors who broke away from The Villages/Developer. They won their suit. Lots of respect for them.

MLS or Village Agent
 

I sold my home in four hours for 20% over asking. I didn't use a agent from TV because of the experiences my neighbors and friends had. I highly recommend

Cheryl Parisi-Ciolfi at Foxfire Reality
Her mobile is 352-661-4126 or email her at cherylsellshomes4u@gmail.com

Ditto 427dave. We had a beautiful home on the lake, 9th hole of Hemingway, listed it with the villages and couldn’t imagine why it wasn’t selling for almost 6 months. One day our tenant stopped in during an open house and heard the realtor tell the people “I can get you in a brand new home for less money”. Cancelled our listing, went with realty executives at the same price, sold in TWO days!

Definitely MLS. Many have witnessed, Villages sales agents steering buyers to new homes, verses resale of their homes.

I find this discussion very interesting and eye opening. We have a CYV for sale it's been on the market for about 90 days, new roof 2020, new AC 2020, new washer and dryer, new microwave and new refrigerator, extended lanai and master bedroom. We've cut the price a few times and are now priced $17,000 less that we started for are at $215,900. We are using an MLS realtor at times we've asked ourselves should we have used VLS, this answered some of our questions.

We came down last year to buy; I had both a Villages agent and a MLS agent. The MLS person was great! He had a lot more to offer; and he worked FOR ME and not for TV. The woman from TV was very nice but she just didn't have enough inventory of pre-owned homes for me.

Doug Lange with Realty Executives ended up as my agent and if (I should say WHEN) I go to sell this house I will be calling him. When we called him to make an offer on the house, he recommended a LOWER offer. Less commission for him but he understood the market and knew what my home was worth.

One of the reasons I personally don't like to work with MLS realtors is obvious in many posts on this thread. They will say almost anything. They pressure you. They are too often like "Charlie Hustle". I think there are a lot of MLS realtors or retired realtors posting on this thread. I have never heard or read any reliable post that any agent for The Villages ever tried to "push" new homes.

I loved the fact tha when we came here to look there was NO pressure in any way from the sales agents from The Villages. I later learned they didn't need to pressure. People were standing in line to buy houses from them.

We have had built 11 new homes in our lifetime. The first one was when we were 22 years old. We had saved the 20% down payment for four years at the age of 22. We had built a home that cost around 14K. I am not a realtor. Neither is anyone in my family. The last realtor we used was John Boehner's wife in Ohio. Debbie is a professional and was a neighbor and friend. The first thing she said was repaint everything neutral. Tear out those bushes in the front. Get new lawn furniture or new cushions. Get rid of all the extra furniture in the corners of every room. In a down real estate time ten years ago we had a bidding war. (Three bids) The girl knows her business. She is very unlike most realtors I have known. I HATE to be sold anything. I HATE it. But that's me.

I think there are good selling agents and bad ones. If you price the home right here and not try to make a killing, just a tidy increase, and if it is clean and not smelly and not junky...It will sell right away for far more than you paid for it, with or without an agent or a realtor.

That is my opinion.

The villages agents are licensed with the state just like MLS real estate agents. The “realtors” name is proprietary but does not mean much. The realtors for the villages are here to sell NEW HOUSES, that is where the developers make money and that is who their employer is. I listed one house with the villages and was not too happy. Relisted with ReMax, Tammy Freilich, and it sold in two weeks. You cannot know which agent is best because everyone has a different opinion. All I can say is that Tammy was over to my home in a hour and the photographer took the best pictures of a house that I have ever seen.