I'm out searching for questions sellers have about "flat fee" or "discount real estate listings" and saw your questions. Hopefully your sale concluded with no hiccups a long time ago.
Still, I didn't see anyone really address the questions and since I'm here, I'm the broker for a "flat fee" brokerage, and I have a few minutes so I thought I'd clear the air (responding to your post will shake some cobwebs loose and help me generate some new content for our website too, so there's that). I see you're in Mississippi - I'm in Texas and we currently only handle listings in the Houston area so take all of this with a grain of salt.
Photo count on an MLS listing is an oversold feature - the MLS in your area sets specifics on listings (for example. HAR - Houston Association of Realtors) has a mandatory minimum photo count for single family homes unless the buyer specifically refuses and that requires signed paperwork to do. Some MLSs allow identical photos to make up their required count - I still haven't figured that one out. Either way - it takes a few minutes to drag and drop a whole folder onto a listing photo upload page and then order them in a meaningful fashion (front of house or major feature first, etc) - adding individual photo descriptions is a PITA though.
You're exactly on point about the paperwork - sellers should be filling this out, not agents. Many Realtors will fill out the paperwork (like the MLS data input / property information form) for their clients but never read the fine print. That can be hot water territory - so while it's a lot of paperwork to complete it's a necessary evil.
"Seller has examined the information contained on this Data Input Form, which is attached to and made a part of the Listing Agreement and warrants that it is true and correct according to the Seller's best knowledge."
I don't know how things work in other states, in Texas the TAR (Texas Association of Realtors) listing agreement form is an "Exclusive Right To Sell" listing agreement - stated right there in big print on the top of the form. As a flat fee listing service we always add the "Exclusive Agency Addendum" to the listing agreement that allows a seller to skip paying all or a large part of the buyer's agent commission. That addendum also has provisions that allow the seller to do additional marketing on their own including their own yard sign, so I'm not sure what the fuss was about there - though I can tell you if you put a FSBO sign in your front yard agents driving by will blow your phone up trying to get a listing appointment with you and that's a whole other conversation. As for internet marketing on Zillow - when your listing goes live and if your listing broker ...and... their MLS has a data sharing agreement ..and.. if the brokerage hasn't opted out then the MLS listing data will overwrite your Zillow listing. Zillow can be fun to deal with.
Anyway, the fun part of the Exclusive Agency Addendum" in Texas is this:
"If Owner sells or leases the Property to an Excluded Prospect, Owner will not be obligated
to pay the fees due to Broker under Paragraph 5A of the Listing, but Owner will pay Broker, at the time the sale closes or the lease begins, a fee equal to"
and an excluded prospect is defined in the very next paragraph:
"In order for a person to qualify to be an Excluded Prospect under this Addendum, Owner must send Broker written notice identifying the Excluded Prospect by name, address, and phone."
You just don't see that addendum most of the time because sellers aren't usually aware of it and it's not part of the listing agreement.
Buyer Agent Commission (BAC) in the Houston MLS - the commission in the listing can be changed at any time. https://content.harstatic.com/mls/pdf/MLSRules.pdf Division of commissions rule 5, NOTE 2. We've had clients change their offered commission numerous times during the course of a listing thinking it would make a difference - our experience is that above 3% or with a BTSA (Bonus to Selling Agent) it doesn't have a measurable difference - the Buyer is generally in control and pushing a client towards one home or another based on your payday may land that agent in hot water later. In HAR there's no way to search based on commission but I've heard in other states you can. If you're focused on your clients instead of your back pocket this all works out how it's supposed to.
What we cannot do in Houston at least is put a listing in MLS with no BAC - I've called HAR before and I believe they said minimum commission amount allowable in MLS was $1. Check with your broker or your local MLS - I'd talk with your broker/agent first, but if you're a seller and you're calling BS on what you're hearing - go straight to the MLS and ask. Tell them you're a seller and that you're hearing something you don't believe and that you just want to verify.
As far as how fast MLS updates - as far as I know, updates in MLS are instant (or as "instant" as they can be). Updates on the real estate portals are what take time - HAR has their own MLS portal (har.com) and that can take a few minutes to a few hours to update. The secondary major real estate portals typically fall into the few minutes to a day or two to update - they're normally faster to pick up a new listing but can be slower to get updates to an existing listing.
So - flat fee listings are typically limited service listings where the broker is just your onramp to get your listing into MLS and doesn't provide much beyond the required minimum after that - everything else is an upcharge/upsell - the one big ticket item I think every listing should have is a Supra lockbox just for security. Combinations can be handed out and it happens - with a Supra every access is logged so you at least have a better shot of knowing who was there and when.
We stopped flat fee listings awhile back simply because people would show up, order the least expensive listing possible, and then not really know what they were doing. I just couldn't sit idly by and watch someone try to manage getting a contract negotiated, signed, and moved through to closing when it was obvious they weren't sure what they were doing most of the time.
Instead we offer a 1% full service listing (it's flat fee in that we don't tack on anything else - no technology fees, no transaction coordination fees, no marketing fees, etc) - we're just 100% virtual. Listings scale super easily so we're able to service 4 or 5 one percent listings in less time than it takes to service one 3% face-to-face listing. I expect the crowd here on BiggerPockets is different and flat fee listings probably do make sense.
