I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has sold (or attempted to seel) their home without the use of a real estate agent.

It's something we are considering, due to the high fees charged by these people.

Cheers
Perry

Hi perryr,

I had an interesting run in with "changing places" a few months back....

These guys are still an agency but not a traditional agent as such.

I rang in regards to a property that I was interested in going through and was greeted by a courteous lady who was in a hurry. It was a wednesday afternoon and she was busy. She asked to call me back later that day.

She didn't call me back until Thursday afternoon after I called to jog her memory.

We organised to go through the property on Saturday morning at 10:00. I arrived at 9:50 and at 10:20 I called the agent and she said she was just around the corner. 10 minutes later she called back to say she was still in a suburb that was 25 minutes away and that she had told a mistruth (her words).

She asked if we could wait for her to arrive and after discussing with my wife we agreed.

The agent arrived at 11:20 and she was rather aggressive considering she had wasted 1 and half hours of our time.

We went to the front door with her telling us that the owners were on holidays and she had had a problem with the keys not working here on other occassions.

Guess what! The keys didn't work. The agent proceeded to show us through the house from the windows.....

In disbelief I asked if we could organise to come through the house at a later date preferably without her.. (I wasn't rude, I just made it clear tha we liked the house but not the service.)

1 week later (the earliest we could get through) I was greeted at 10:10 (another 10:00 appointment) by a male agent who was extremely apologetic about what had happened with his long time friend (female agent) he couldn't believe what had happened himself and purported to be shocked.

I asked him for a business card and he said that he could not give us one as he really didn't work for this agency. He was retired and was simply doing this as a "favour" for his friend....

We looked through the house and decided that even if it was the right one, it probably wasn't, based solely on the experience we had with the company to this point.

My wife rang the owner of the franchise in question and we never received a phone call back.

We were dissapointed and did not look at anymore homes listed with them.

--

Regarding agents:

Although the cost of dealing through an agent is higher most times they are polite, timely and courteous. We just sold with a local agent and managed to negotiate the rate to 2.2% incl GST (plus 2 free teddy bears for the kids) and had a great campaign with a reasonable result.

If you are selling your house for say $300,000 and you can get the rate to 2.5% plus GST it will cost you $8250.

In the scheme of things this is a lot of extra's in the new house but these guys are professionals (most are anyway) and they should be able to get a good price for your house. They do it everyday.

If you sold you house yourself you probably would not do the job as well as them. You would not be as open to critcism of your own home etc....

Thats my 2cents

Matt

I bought my place without an agent. Knew people who knew the owners. The original owners were quite happy for us to meet with them whenever we wanted to or could, and were even nice enough to hold off on selling due to some financial hiccups that was experienced.

Overall, for me being a first time buyer it was a huge learning experience but with the help of other people and especially my conveyancer it worked out well. I'd rather pay the owners the money than someone else get some of it, but I guess that's how it works.

Been there and done both options several times!!

I've bought and sold through agents,
Marketed myself and with no luck handed it to an agent, and then onto another one who eventually sold it.
Listed with an agent, and then sold it myself because the agent was a loser and I told the agent to get lost, and sold it in 2 weeks.
I've also changed who was selling it within an agency - CBLO.
and twice I have bought direct from the owners.

The difficulty comes when as an owner you can get too emotionally involved in the sale (Naturally)
and as a buyer you don't want to offend.

Personaly I'd say in a tough market a good agent earns their keep.
In a hot market, almost anyone could sell it.
So unless it's booming big time, I'd normally use an agent to sell for me.

If you're doing it direct - people won't make a low offer, (Even though it might be truly realistic price people don't want to offend you.)
So you selling for yourself - you don't even see an offer on what they think it's worth!!
An agent will.

Then comes the ?
How often do you chase the people who have been through,
They normally don't like to give you their name, etc etc.
How well do you know the market prices.???
What media coverage can you really get for the $$??
Agents get very big discounts on ads.

Are you really any good at negotiating a sale when 100's of thousands of your real $$ are on the table and someone offers 10K less than you personally want?
How will you overcome someones negative comments about your house. Again people won't say it and they tend to walk away rather than offend you.

Personally I don't have a problem talking to owners, but I did have a looney once who was selling privately, and he proceeded to chop down half the trees on the place after we'd made an offer but before we'd signed a contract. I rang him up and said stop stop I want those trees.
I'll want to buy it as is !! OK.!!!!
He said he was just trying to help us - A nutty one indeed.

Another place we bought direct, but they had de-listed it, and we found it via a friend and mid way through buying it - the agent got in for their cut anyway due to a contract clause.

The best advice I can give is, find a good agent
Is the agent the best in your area.
Have they won any industry awards, do they know how to actually sell a house!! Do you like them ? Can you trust them? You have to be able to do that.
Ask them lots of hard questions, ask them to provide you with the names of some happy customers, what will they do for you, and THEN ring those people and ask them how many houses they have actually sold and how many agents have those reference people had experience with?

Don't just pick someone because they are a friend and are now selling real estate.

Most people sell one or two houses in a life time. and thats how bad agents get away with murder.

And be careful what you sign, be realistic - listen to your agent and trust them once you have a good one.
Don't go for the cheapest commisison but watch those advertising costs.

A good agent is your negotiotor working for you and they can potentially earn you lots more than you'd ever be able to acheive or have to pay them as commission or marketing your property at the wrong price.!!

And others, well they give the industry a bad name and stir up discussions like this one.

My thougths and experiences.
Steve

And no - I'm not an agent, but I've bought and sold enough houses to be educated on what has worked for me

I listed with a friend of friend once, he was an ex teacher, had loads of people through on the inspections, nice guy etc etc, it was all good, but come auction day, everyone expected it to sell for a lot less because he had just said yes come along on the day and he did not set any expectations in them.

So we got mad, the principal took it on, and it sold in 2 weeks for 20% more than the best auction bid and within 3 weeks.

So a good agent is worth the cost.
A bad one is waste of time and money.

Which one can you be?

Real Estate Agents - the profession that makes used car salesman look good!

Sorry to the 1% of honest agents that the other 99% is giving a bad name

I have bought and sold a few properties. I own www.bankonproperty.com.au

We are currently changing our site to make our site available to all private property sellers, builders & property developers to advertise their property for sale for FREE. If you should like to list your property for sale privately email me at info@bankonproperty.com.au and we will advertise your property. Also, you can advertise your property for sale as an open listing with a Real Estate Agent in addition to trying to sell your property privately. However, you should be aware of that if the Agent introduces the buyer to your property you are liable to pay commission and on the other hand if you source your own buyer through your own efforts you are not required to pay a commission an agent. Having said that, you may very well find that a Real Estate Agent will agree to take your listing as an Open Listing and basically do nothing with it in regards to promoting it. If you select a GOOD Real Estate Agent they will be happy to take your property on the basis of an Open Listing whilst you try and sell privately. In my opinion if an Agent isn't willing to take your listing in this situation then they are not working for you, as they say they are. Also, you need to record any potential buyers you introduce to your property under these circumstances for the simple fact that it can not be misunderstood as to whom introduced the buyer to the property. Have the potential buyers sign & date a book. If for some reason a person responding to an enquiry regarding a private property does not want to give you their name, address or phone number, then DON'T GIVE THEM THE COURTESTY OF ALLOWING THEM TO INSPECT YOUR HOME!

Regards Mandy
www.bankonproperty.com.au