Blog Entries Tagged: MLS
Found 3 blog entries tagged as MLS.

Team Donovan enjoyed a record-setting year in 2017. The Orlando real estate firm sold over 210 listings, the most sales in its 13-year history. And it set an MLS (Multiple Listing Service) record for the number of listings sold by an agent. CEO and Real Estate Broker James Donovan attributes the strong showing in part to attractive exchange rates, which motivated many European owners to sell their vacation homes to U.S. and foreign investors for a profit. 

Donovan says his firm’s success is unique in the Central Florida real estate market. “On the listing side, I have not seen any other real estate agent with numbers as high as ours when it comes to vacation home sales,” said Donovan. He credits the high volume of listing sales to the company’s…

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Many people who travel to Orlando, Florida from outside the U.S., such as Canada or the U.K., enjoy their holidays so much, they decide to buy a second home here. If you want to make Central Florida your “home away from home,” there are some important points you need to know before you buy.  

1. Decide How to Pay for the Property - Many foreign buyers wind up purchasing a holiday home with cash, since financing can be difficult to obtain. If you plan to finance your purchase with a U.S. bank, expect that a minimum down payment of 30 percent will be required. A U.S. mortgage also generally requires far more paperwork than loans secured in other countries. Another advantage of raising finance outside the U.S. is that your holiday home purchase in…

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MLS stands for Multiple Listing Service.  It’s a live, online database of homes for sale in the United States that is compiled by local real estate agents. Think of it like a giant property warehouse. When property is available for sale, it goes into the warehouse. When the property is sold, it gets removed from the warehouse.

The MLS actually got its start in the late 1800s, when real estate brokers gathered at the offices of their local associations to share information about the properties they were trying to sell. These brokers agreed to compensate each other, any time one of them helped to sell a property to another broker – and thus, the first MLS was born!  

Today, there are hundreds of MLS organizations doing business all across the country.…

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