Take it only where your state allows it, only with a written scope the seller reads aloud back to you, and only at a price that covers the work you will actually end up doing, which is more than the arrangement says. In seven states the version most agents picture is not lawful at all. In the rest, the money is small, the duties are not, and the seller who paid four hundred dollars will still call you at nine on a Sunday about an inspection, because you are the only licensee whose number they have.<\/p>\n
That is the short answer. The long one is worth having, because the FSBO who asks for it is a seller you have already reached, and saying no without an alternative hands them to the next broker in the search results.<\/p>\n
The category exists in MLS policy. NAR’s Policy Statement 7.84<\/a> lets a multiple listing service, at local discretion, mark a listing as entry-only when the listing broker will not do the things a listing broker normally does: arrange showings for cooperating brokers, accept and present offers, advise the seller on their merits, help develop counter-offers, take part in negotiation. The broker enters the data and the compensation, and the seller does the rest.<\/p>\n To the seller it is simple. They get the syndication that follows an MLS entry, which is the thing a yard sign cannot buy, and they keep the listing side of the commission. To the broker it is a few hundred dollars and a database entry. The FSBO lead piece<\/a> covers the other end of this arrangement, the one that matters to your prospecting: a seller who has taken an entry-only listing is exclusively listed with a broker, which is why they come off your call list rather than onto it.<\/p>\n Before the economics, the law, because in some states there is nothing to decide. The DOJ’s Antitrust Division, which dislikes these statutes and says so, counts seven states<\/a> with minimum-service requirements on the books: Alabama, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Texas and Utah. Four more considered them and did not adopt.<\/p>\n Illinois shows what such a statute does. Under 225 ILCS 454\/15-75<\/a>, a sponsoring broker under an exclusive brokerage agreement must at minimum accept delivery of and present offers and counter-offers, assist the client in developing, communicating, negotiating and presenting them until an agreement is signed and contingencies resolved, and answer the client’s questions about all of it. The section states the floor. It does not offer the parties a way to write underneath it.<\/p>\n So in those states the entry-only listing as most agents imagine it, data in, hands off, is not a product you can sell. You can discount. You can unbundle marketing. You cannot contract away the negotiation duties, and an agreement that purports to is a license problem rather than a business model.<\/p>\n Even where no minimum-service statute applies, the limited agreement limits services, not obligations. South Carolina’s regulator makes the distinction in one line of guidance<\/a> that every state’s version of the rule echoes: the scope of services may be disclosed and narrowed in writing, but it is incorrect to present in any form that legal duties are reduced or waived because the agreement is limited. Agency duties, disclosure duties, the duty to account, the duty not to mislead a cooperating broker about compensation or showing instructions: all of it rides along at four hundred dollars exactly as it does at four percent.<\/p>\nSeven states where the picture is illegal<\/h2>\n
The duties that survive the fee<\/h2>\n