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- Are there any fees that kick in based on the Illinois minimum services laws?

- What fees are charged to the buyer's broker at closing?

- How many people do you have listing properties for a flat fee at your company?

- Are you the local broker or a referral service?

- Who gets the leads from the Tribune and Realtor.com? If they come to me what is the process for each?

- Do you ever answer the phone or does it always go to voice mail first?

Some flat fee brokers have a small up front fee and a percent commission (usually 1/2%) on the back end if the property sells. With Berg Properties there is no back end commission if the property sells.

Are there any fees that kick in based on the minimum service laws?

What fees are charged to the buyers broker at closing?

In traditional full service real estate (Coldwell Banker, ReMax, etc) about 95% of all listing brokers in Chicago charge the buyer's broker a back end fee of $75-$200 at closing. Many of our competing flat fee brokers charge a back end fee to the buyer's broker of as much as $500. We feel that this is not a good practice. Our fee to a buyer's broker at closing is $200 which is in line with what traditional brokers charge.

How many brokers do you have listing properties at your company?

Many other flat fee companies have only one person listing properties. As this is a volume business, this means that there is only one broker to support many clients. Our company has 3 brokers dedicated to serving clients in Illinois full time.

Are you the local broker or a referral service?

Only a real estate broker licensed in Illinois can list your property on the MLS. If you are not speaking to the local broker then you are probably speaking to a referral service company. Many times they will not let you speak to the listing broker or see the contract that you will need to sign. Here are some questions to consider when working with a referral service: What does the contract look like? Are there back end fees? What kind of person is the local broker? Do they answer their phone? Can I speak to the local broker? We are a local broker in Illinois and not a referral service.

Who gets the leads from the Chicago Tribune and Realtor.com? Are they passed to anyone else? If they come to me then what is the process?

Some flat fee brokers have a business model that is based on them taking all buyer leads that come in for your property and trying to represent those buyers or selling the lead to another broker. Thus you lose a lot of opportunity to sell with no commission. Berg Properties passes all leads to you for as long as you are still accepting showings. We even have an phone system that automatically routes calls to our sellers via our 800#.

Do you ever pick up the phone or does it always go to voice mail?

Some brokers never answer their phones. You will always get a voice mail when calling their office. What happens if you need immediate help?