OHIO STATE REALTY

Ohio State Reality provides a flat fee MLS listing program for FSBO (For Sale By Owner). For roughly $500, they provide a MLS listing and promise to direct buyers to you to negotiate a showing and price. In addition to the flat fee FSBO program, Ohio State Reality (OSR) also provides full service realtors at industry standard commission rate. The flat fee FSBO program is supposed to work like this: The seller pays ~$500 to list their property on the MLS. An interested buyer contacts OSR to get more information and get in contact with the seller. If the buyer does not have an agent, then the sellers out of pocket expense is the flat $500 paid to list on the MLS. If the buyer does have an agent, then the seller pays the flat $500 for MLS listing, plus 3% standard industry commission to the agent representing the buyer. What OSR does not tell you, is that if buyer contacts OSR without an agent and is interested in a property listed in their flat fee program, OSR then pushes one of their agents upon the buyer to represent them in the transaction. For the seller, what would have been a flat $500 fee becomes $500 plus three percent commission split 50/50 between OSR and their agent. This is exactly what they did to me. I listed a FSBO house through OSR for a flat fee of $500 to get MLS listing. An interested buyer (not represented by an agent) contacted them to buy my house. OSR then convinced the buyer to use an OSR agent because it doesn?t ?cost them anything?. Not until the buyer signed an agreement with an agent, did OSR put them in contact with me. What was supposed to be a $500 FSBO negotiated directly between two parties agent free, became one sided transaction with the buyer now represented by an OSR agent. Instead of spending $500 to sell my house, I ended up spending approximately $3,500 in combination of commission and MLS flat listing fee. Had OSR not took advantage of the situation and pushed one of their agents upon the buyer, my max commission would have only been ~$500 I contacted the buyer directly during the transaction to confirm this is exactly what OSR did. When I spoke to the owner of OSR, he denied it until he realized that I spoke directly to the buyer (not through his agent). A completely unethical organization; if you believe you are getting a deal spending $500 to list, watch out.

You get what you pay for. Company's agent fairly attentive until contract was signed. Slow to follow through and in some cases didn't follow through at all with their responsiblities. Seemed to be alot of excuses given when contacting them regarding delay in MLS listings, photos, no realtor feed back when home was shown....Overall very unprofessional. We will be listing with a professional realtor in the near future.

Ohio State Realty offers a 'for sale by owner' type listing but with an MLS number. Most of it is done by the home owner, with Ohio State Realty providing the props. We asked for open house signs and a brochure holder for our For Sale sign along with brochures for the open house. The open house signs and brochures were delivered after the open house; we were told we had to buy our own literature holder. Several times after calling to have my open house listed, I would have to call back to remind them to list it. Pictures are taken by a contractor for flyers and the website. The majority of our pictures and the virtual tour were done well, but the photographer didn't re-adjust a pillow that was pushed to the middle of the bed by our dog. The Realtor assigned to us is difficult to reach, does not reply to email promptly and does not perform follow up with Realtors after they have been to our house. Lastly, outside of the minimal This is a true case of "you get what you pay for".