Second Mortgage

So you want to part of the new trend where FSBOs list homes on MLS system?

The flat fee mortgage allows the broker to be paid a flat fee for their time and expertise.
According to Stephen Frater, recently wrote in HeraldTribune, that Bravo Real Estate of Sarasota has launched a $199 “Flat Fee MLS Service.”

The service is specifically targeted toward the FSBO or “For Sale By Owner” home seller. For $199, Bravo will list the property on the local MLS system for up to one year.

A menu of low-cost additional services is also available from Bravo, including professional photography, virtual tours, contract negotiation and closing services.

Flat-fee MLS home sellers can at any time upgrade to Bravo’s 2.99 percent full-service program, in which case they receive full credit for any fees paid under the Flat Fee MLS program.

He further added that there is widespread cooling in housing market. The economy continued to grow in the early fall despite a “widespread cooling” in the once-hot housing market, the Federal Reserve reported earlier this month.

The Fed’s latest survey of business conditions around the country found the economy expanding, with growth being described as “moderate or mixed.” But the report found there was a distinct slowdown in housing, with the majority of the Fed’s 12 regions reporting lower asking prices for homes, a softening in sales and rising inventories of unsold homes.

The Fed said that reports from around the country “indicated widespread cooling” in housing markets, with financial institutions finding that mortgage lending activity had tapered off.

That decline in lending was being offset to some extent by an increase in lending for commercial projects in several districts. The latest snapshot of the economy, based on reports from the Fed’s regional banks, will be used when central bankers meet this week to consider what to do with interest rates.

It is widely expected that the Fed will for a third straight meeting leave rates unchanged, preferring to wait and see if the economic slowdown brought on by previous rate hikes will be enough to keep inflation under control.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently said that housing was going through a “substantial correction” that he estimated would trim economic growth by a full percentage point in the second half of the year.

The economy grew by just 2.6 percent in the second quarter, less than half the pace of the first three months of the year, as it was battered by soaring gasoline prices, rising interest rates and the cooling housing market.