Open Listing Service of New York (“OLS“) operates the real estate industry’s first online source for openly listed real estate offerings. The Open Listing Service of New York is the happy medium between For Sale by Owner (FSBO) listings and Exclusive Right to sell agreements for property sellers. The Open Listing Service gives sellers the option to digitally upload their property listing and non-exclusively list their property with every OLS registered broker (& agent). If a broker matches a buyer to a seller's property, the seller pays only 3% commission to that buyer’s broker versus the standard 6% to the listing broker who traditionally pays the buyer’s broker only 1-2%.

Brokers & agents typically gravitate towards these open listings, when available, because they earn more commission when selling an open listing versus co-broking (sharing commissions) with a listing broker. Meanwhile, the seller can still market their home on their own in an effort to pay no commission at all. Brokers will make more commission and it has been proven that sellers will have more than four times the activity (showings & inquiries) on their property and pay only half of the industry standards’ commission when it's sold through a buyer’s broker.

Definition: An open listing lets an owner manage the listing of their property on their own. It is a non-exclusive agreement, meaning the owner may execute open listings with more than one real estate broker and pay only the broker who brings an able buyer whose offer the owner accepts.

The big difference is an owner will probably pay only a selling broker's commission, which is about one-half of typical fees. The reason is because the owner is unrepresented. Therefore, owners do not pay a broker to represent the owner, but do pay the broker to represent the buyer. However, if the owner finds the buyer herself, the owner will not owe anybody a commission.

Examples: Mary gave an open listing to three real estate companies: Smith Brokerage, Allen Realtors and All City Agents. Smith Brokerage brought her a buyer who submitted an acceptable offer, so Mary paid Smith Brokerage a commission for representing the buyer.

Real Estate Brokers and Agents in traditional markets often turn a blind eye to the open listing. Although being a competitive industry, they all know once they open listings are encouraged, there will be a lot less exclusive right to sell agreements signed. Broker's want exclusive contracts signed so they can charge up to 6% and comfortably hold a listing for months and sometimes a year or more. Unfortunately, some agents don't cooperate with other brokers in order to pocket the full 6% and some agents simply sit back and wait for a deal to fall into their lap instead of giving their client.

This leaves open listings discouraged by many listing agents and much under- appreciated. What home sellers don't know is how much the right to openly list their property empowers them when the listing is effectively exposed to the Broker community. There are 3 times more Buyer's Agents than Listing Agents, alot of whom would much rather deal directly with the owner. The local Multiple Listing Services have never allowed open listings or unlicensed persons to upload a property into their database, forcing homeowners to list their home exclusively with a Listing Broker and often times, agreeing to pay the 6% industry standard.

In an effort to avoid commission altogether, home sellers sometimes try to sell their home completely on their own, which is very difficult and rarely produces a positive out come. Just read this article about the owner of forsalebyowner.com and his unsuccessfull attempt to sell his own apartment on his own website.

Unlike the Multiple Listing Service, with our website (www.openlistingservice.net) and our OLS platform, we allow home sellers themselves to upload their detailed property listing into our database. These open listings are accessible only to brokers (& agents) who are registered with the Open Listing Service of New York and verified to be licensed in the State of New York. Each property seller digitally signs and enters into a Non-Exclusive Right to Sell Agreement with each broker who is registered and verified with the Open Listing Service.

If a broker matches a buyer to a seller's property, the seller pays only 3% commission to that Buyer’s Broker versus the industry standard 6% to the Listing Broker who traditionally pays the buyer’s broker only 1-2% and pockets 4-5% for just taking the listing. Home sellers save 3% on their home sale and Buyer's Agents make 1-2% more on each sale with the Open Listing Service of New York.

To state that the local Multiple Listing Services in our areas of operation are our competition would not be entirely correct. In terms of a web based listing service for professionally related exclusive real estate information, we are similar in structure; however we offer two separate avenues of exposing our listings to the broker community. We only host open listings while the MLS will on host exclusive listings. The MLS does not work with open listings because it empowers the individual home seller by cutting out the listing agent which would in essence, negatively work against the Realtor® organization. We feel that we have no competition in the open listing sector of real estate listings.

The Greater New York real estate market is a very strong market. With low taxes and a plethora of qualified first time homebuyers under the FHA program, it has become worthwhile for many professionals, especially previously unemployed, to become Real Estate Agents. There are over 70,000 real estate agents in New York with over 45,000 of them in the Greater New York area.

There is estimated to be over 1,000 active Real Estate Developers/Investors in the Greater New York area however due to the non-licensing requirements of this particular trade, there is no data related provisions. Of the over 1,000 estimated developers in GNY, we have contacts with and have personally worked with over 200 of them in the past on separate ventures and will diligently work to enroll them in our listing service.

In the Greater New York Area, there are over 9,000 expired listings (from the local Multiple Listing Services of the GNY area) each and every month. These are home sellers that have listed their properties and either fired their broker or their Exclusive Sales Agreement with their broker has expired due to the non-sale of their property.

Our overall goal is to provide brokers and home sellers with another viable method of real estate listing data exchange which produces a more favorable outcome for all involved parties.

Until we hard launch our site, we are restricting our seller user base to real estate developers in the Greater New York Area. We have already reached our short term goal of successfully launching our site in beta phase. We reached out to 300 real estate professionals and managed to successfully enroll 85% as beta users. Despite receiving an overwhelming amount of positive feedback, we are continuing to further enhance the existing user features while adding new features as well as enhancing our brand, image and marketing deliverability. Our new short term goal (3 months) is to successfully hard launch www.OpenListingService.net by July 2013 and attain 1,000 paying broker (& agent) members. We aim to enroll 75 key real estate developers who collectively have an average of 500 open listings available on any given month.

Our medium term goal (6-12 months) is to attain over 2,500 paying broker (&agent) members. We plan to expand our developer network to over 200 real estate developers in the Greater New York area and begin marketing to home owners who are in the market to sell. Our ultimate and continuing goal is to expand across all 50 states & U.S. Territories capturing 250,000 broker/agent users nationwide and begin marketing to individual home owners who are in the market to sell their homes.

Philip M. Lilavois

Managing Director of OLSNY, Real Estate Professional, Serial Entrepreneur.

I have over 5 years’ experience in real estate and has been working primarily in the open listing market for over half of that time. As an Army Reservist, my strongest qualities are time management, team leadership and mission accomplishment. I attended Baruch College in NYC with a concentration in Business Administration. I have successfully started and sold 2 companies before age 21; a medium sized car dealership that was licensed and bonded in the State of New York and an eBay company that primarily wholesaled and distributed cell phones, mp3 players, cameras, scientific calculators & other consumer electronics in bulk. I am currently a full time real estate agent in the Greater New York area.

We currently employ 2 part time programmers that each hold degrees in Computer Science. They each commit 20-25 hours a week to developing OpenListingService.net do to other full time obligations. Once fully funded they will work full time, 40-50 hours per week. In addition, we will be hiring a part time graphic designer with experience in programming.

We have also brought on an email and social media marketing intern who has experience and specializes in data research. Once fully funded, we intend to hire her full time. Our last short term addition will be a full time receptionist to monitor inbound calls &emails and handle the general day to day office tasks. We currently outsource our other needs however we intend to keep outsourcing to a bare minimum in the future.

Assuming you're an accredited investor and you're interested in our company, I encourage you to find these buttons and click them. We will approve you to view our detailed business plan right away. If you have any questions please feel free to email me at Philip.Lilavois@olsny.net.