Beycome is an online FSBO platform and flat-fee MLS listing service that helps home buyers and sellers work without a real estate agent. Read on to learn how the service works, what it costs, some advantages and disadvantages, and other options you should consider if you’re buying or selling a home.
Buyers can browse listings, submit offers, and close deals right from the Beycome dashboard. When a sale goes through, Beycome collects and gives the buyer the commission a realtor would have received for the deal, less a service fee.
Sellers pay a flat fee upfront — between $79 and $299, depending on the package — to have their home listed on the local MLS. They also gain access to online tools for marketing their home, scheduling showings and open houses, managing offers, and more.
By cutting out realtors and realtor fees, Beycome claims to make the process of selling or buying a home easier and cheaper. However, buying or selling on your own is never going to be as easy or as successful as working with a professional, experienced real estate agent.
Clever connects home buyers and sellers with top-rated agents who provide their full service for significantly discounted commission rates. Clever Partner Agents can take over the whole hassle of buying or selling while still helping you save thousands in fees — up to 50% on average selling costs or $1,000 Home Buyer Rebatefor buyers.
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Read on to learn more about how Beycome works, its pros and cons for sellers and buyers, and alternatives to consider before signing up.
What is Beycome?
Based in Miami and currently operating, as of September 2019, in Florida, Illinois, and Rhode Island, Beycome is an online platform for selling your home FSBO (For Sale By Owner).
Beycome provides a flat-fee MLS listing service for sellers as well as a set of tools to schedule showings, manage negotiations, and close deals.
This platform is also available to buyers, who can use Beycome’s website to browse listings, arrange walk-throughs, and submit offers online.
Whether you’re selling or buying, Beycome will spare you the 3% commission cost that would otherwise go to your real estate agent. By replacing realtors with do-it-yourself technology, the company seeks to make the home buying and selling process easier, faster, and less expensive.
How does Beycome work?
Buying a Home with Beycome
Buying a home with Beycome means using its platform to search for listings, sign up for showings, and submit offers.
When you successfully close a deal through Beycome, it collects a 3% buyer’s agent commission from the seller and refund it to you, less a flat service fee of $999. To paraphrase Beycome’s reasoning behind this, since you’re doing all the work of a buyer’s agent yourself, you should receive the agent’s commission.
Here’s how this works in practice:
- You register for a free Beycome account.
- You sign a Buyer Broker Agreement (BBA) with Beycome, legally registering the company as your broker of record. This is how it collects your commission when a deal closes.
- You use Beycome’s platform to browse local properties, book showings, and discover open houses.
- When you’re ready, you submit a formal offer online. This document is prepared by Beycome in regulation with your state’s laws. Beycome’s specialists will also advise you during negotiations and counteroffers.
- You close the deal right from Beycome’s website. It’ll collect a 3% buyer’s agent commission, subtract a $999 service fee, and refund you the rest as a credit on your closing costs or a check in the mail.
There are some important caveats.
Obviously, you won’t receive a refund if your 3% commission is less than the service fee of $999. The total refund you do get is also dependent upon lender approval.
The company imposes another condition you might not expect: if the home you buy through Beycome was listed For Sale By Owner, you do not receive any commission refund whatsoever. Because many of the homes Beycome lists are FSBO properties — it is, after all, a FSBO platform — this is not an unlikely outcome.
Selling a Home with Beycome
For home sellers, Beycome provides a flat-fee MLS listing service in conjunction with its For Sale By Owner platform. In theory, these tools are an easy and effective way to sell your home without a real estate agent and save thousands in realtor fees.
Here’s how it works:
- You sign up for a Beycome account and select one of three packages it offers: Flat Fee MLS, Flat Fee MLS Premium, or Flat Fee MLS Max.
- You submit information about your home with photos and a desired listing price. (Beycome provides two automated estimations of your home’s value to guide you.)
- You schedule your availability for showings so potential buyers will know when to drop by.
- Beycome lists your property on beycome.com and your local MLS. Your listing is also syndicated to over 100 websites like Zillow and Trulia.
- If you paid for the Premium or Max package, Beycome will mail you customized yard signs, open house brochures, and a lockbox you can use for showings.
- You stage your home, market it, show it off to potential buyers, and run open houses.
- If all goes well, you’ll receive legal offers for your home on the Beycome platform, which you can then accept, counter, or reject. Your listing fee includes the support of Beycome’s real estate specialists to advise you during this process.
- When you’re ready to close, Beycome provides you and your buyer with a legal contract to review and sign digitally.
Though Beycome’s seller tools make things easier, the platform does little to address the major drawbacks of listing FSBO. Sellers still have to manage the entire sale on their own, without a professional realtor to manage logistics and handle pricing, staging, showings, negotiations, and closing.
This process takes time, work, and money — and even with software to lighten the load, selling FSBO is a challenge.
And it’s important to remember that even if you save the 3% commission you would otherwise owe your realtor, sellers are responsible for paying a commission to their buyer’s realtor, too.
If you’re selling your home, you’ll be on the hook for commission fees whether you work with a real estate agent or not.
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Beycome Fees and Pricing Structure
Beycome Fees for Buyers
Beycome offers its platform to buyers at no cost. Like a standard buyer’s agent, they take no fee until you successfully close a deal. At that point, they collect a standard buyer’s agent commission of 3%. They deduct $999 as a “success flat fee” and refund the remainder in the form of a check or credit applied to the buyer’s closing costs.
In this way, Beycome claims their buyers can earn back thousands of dollars in commission. However, it’s important to note that this refund is only paid out in limited circumstances, and must be approved by your lender. So while it may not cost you anything to buy with Beycome, it may not gain you anything, either.
Beycome Fees for Sellers
As a flat-fee MLS listing service, Beycome charges a single, upfront fee to sellers who list using their platform. They offer three packages to choose from:
- Flat Fee MLS ($79): This includes a basic MLS listing as well as access to Beycome’s online tools for sellers, such as a marketing material generator and a showing scheduler.
- Flat Fee MLS Premium ($159): In addition to the above, this package includes customized yard signs, a lockbox for showings, and featured listing status for your property on beycome.com.
- Flat Fee MLS Max ($299): This package comes with a professional photography session to spruce up your marketing. You can also add on a video walkthrough or drone pictures for an extra $49 and $69, respectively.
None of these packages exempt sellers from standard selling costs, closing costs, or the need to pay their buyer’s realtor fees, which are typically 3% of the final sales price.
Beycome promises there are no hidden or additional fees for sellers. They also offer a money-back guarantee if your property doesn’t sell or receive two legitimate offers within 90 days.
Key Benefits and Drawbacks of Beycome
Pros
- All-in-one online platform: Beycome has tools for all stages of selling and buying, right through to closing the deal with legal, digital documents.
- Large market database: Beycome’s listings are featured on local MLS databases as well as on hundreds of popular property websites.
- Support from specialists: If you need any help buying or selling on your own, you can contact Beycome 6 days a week for advice in English, French, or Spanish.
- Unlimited time and revisions: Beycome lists your property until it closes and lets you update the price, pictures, and description as many times as you need.
Cons
- Narrow service area: Currently, Beycome offers its flat fee MLS listing service only in Florida, Illinois, and Rhode Island.
- Conditional rebates for buyers: Beycome’s commission payouts to buyers are limited to sales not listed FSBO. Refunds are also subject to lender approval, and the company warns of potential restrictions with VA and FHA loans.
- Limited savings for sellers: Beycome sellers don’t pay a listing agent commission, but they’re still responsible for selling costs, closing costs, and a 3% buyer’s agent commission.
- Difficulty of buying and selling properties without a real estate agent: Though Beycome’s online tools are helpful, the reality is that just 11% of FSBO sales are successful. Most owners who try this path eventually enlist a realtor to get their home sale back on track.
Beycome Reviews
As of September 17, 2019, online reviews for Beycome are mixed; they reflect the growing pains of a new technology startup.
On Yelp, the company has an average of 1.5 stars based on just 6 reviews. On Zillow, the same number of reviews grant Beycome an average rating of 4.6 stars.
View Beycome’s reviews on Yelp.
View Beycome’s reviews on Zillow.
Common complaints across these and other review platforms include slow-to-update and incorrect listings, poor customer service, and ineffectiveness of the platform in facilitating sales.
Top Alternatives to Beycome
Beycome provides the same flat-fee MLS listing service that can be found readily online and throughout the U.S. Though these services differ in price and quality, what you pay for is the same: access to the Multiple Listing Service, which is otherwise available only to sellers working with accredited realtors.
Beycome sets itself apart with its online FSBO platform, which allows sellers working without a realtor to manage their entire sale from a single dashboard. While many sites t offer similar services, like For Sale By Ownerand FSBO.com, Beycome purports itself as the “the first and only online real estate company” to put all the necessary tools for selling FSBO in one place.
However, if what you’re looking for is to make your sale quick and easy, there’s no better way to do that than with the help of a professional real estate agent who can handle the entire process on your behalf. If what’s holding you back is the fear of realtor fees, you should consider contacting Clever Real Estate.
Clever partners with full-service, top-rated real estate agents from major brokerages like Century 21, RE/MAX, Coldwell Banker, and more. These Clever Partner Agents provide the full service and benefits of traditional realtors at a significant discount to buyers and sellers who connect with them through Clever.
How significant? Sellers pay a flat fee of $3,000, or just 1% on sales greater than $350,000 — a far cry from the traditional 3% commission fee.
And buyers get on-demand showings and a rebate of $1,000 at closing in states that allow it. And if you buy a home for $500,000 or more, this rebate goes up to 1% of the purchase price.
Unlike Beycome, Clever has no upfront fees for buyers or sellers. There’s no obligation to sign with any of our agents, and you can interview as many as you like to find a good match. And once you do, your realtor will handle all the hard work of selling or buying on your behalf.
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