Selling without an agent

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

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?

Ive worked in the property market as a buyer and seller, and I dont care what anyone says - most agents are incompetent, lazy, and unprofessional. Just cos you wear a suit doesnt make you a professional.

Unfortunately most people dont know enough about property to sell their houses themselves, so they are stuck with hiring an agent.

In Qld, the Agency appointment agreement they all get you to sign is loaded with gotchas.
I routinely cross out 3 of their clauses - and they cop it, as Im probably the only one in Qld who does.

If you want to sell your own house, do the gorundwork on the weekends at pen houses, internet, attend auctions, and LEARN the market. then you have a fair chance of selling your own home. Ie enever found there is much to negotiation. ITs no big deal, unless you have poor interpersonal skills.

I have to disagree with this one, PB. I used to be like Jane Smith down the road, who thought that all real estate agents must be rich... and they only work on weekends! Wish I could have a job like that!
But then I met DP and 18 months ago started doing the bookkeeping for his agency, then doing both that and sales admin about 12 months ago.

The first P&L report I did, I was blown away... the overheads and expenses of an agency are huge, particularly with all of the subscriptions, licence and membership fees that you need.



THere are soo many other costs associated with an agency listing and selling a property, apart from the time spent on Home Opens.
eg:
- Rep viewing the house to do the initial Pre-Appraisal which then leads to time spent researching reiwa (or whichever state applies) and other websites to compile and compare stats with comparitive properties
- Rep goes back to the property to discuss the Appraisal
- Rep goes back to discuss, negotiate and sign the Listing Agreement, if no photos taken now, then done later on either by Rep or pro photographer
- Rep has to prepare advertising text for the window cards, brochures and press ads before the admin person can get to it
- Hopefully the Licensee will check the Listing Agreement to ensure everything is legal and signed properly
- Admin work by the Sales Admin staff at the office - a new file started, title search ordered, property entered into the agency database, window card & brochures created and either sent off to be printed, or printed at the office, some franchises are lucky enough to have one website to enter the listing which then pushes through to other websites (ie realestate.com, domain, homehound, google, reiwa, etc) - time taken to do this depends on how many photos, and how fast/slow the websites servers are cycling. Prepare and post letters back to the client.
- Rep then takes enquiries and hopefully is willing to take potential clients through the property at any time that they ring (the latest call i've witnessed was after 10pm!)
- Rep tries to work around all of their listings and vendors to make a suitable time to open the house (DP opens his for an hour at a time)

Let's assume all goes well, and the house sells at the first Home Open:
- Usually either the Vendor can't do any paper work until whichever day at 8pm, because they can't get time off work (this is a very common situation)
OR
- The rep has other home opens to do that afternoon, so can't get back to the buyer's house until later that afternoon/evening
Negotiations begin...
Offer from buyer - counter offer from vendor - counter offer from buyer - you get the idea, this could go on for ages (again, i've processed contracts with 8 offers).
Finally, its accepted and everyone signs off. Back to the office with the Offer & Acceptance and back to Sales Admin:
- File transferred from Listing to Sale
- Contracts photocopied, letters prepared and sent to: Buyer, Seller, Settlement Agent 1, Settlement Agent 2, mortgage broker or bank if finance is required... then on to the valuer in a couple of weeks.
- Pest inspection ordered
- Building inspection ordered
- Websites amended to show the property is now under offer

While Sales Admin are busy doing all this background stuff that doesn't get noticed, its quite common for the rep to be still answering questions from buyers & sellers... can we get in to measure for new blinds? can we measure the lounge room as we want to buy a new lounge? we're planning on replacing the patio, can we get someone around to do a quote?

There are so many costs involved that the general public just don't know about it:
office rent, office equipment, computers & internet is an absolute must, website subscriptions, software subscriptions, licencing fees, reiwa (or associated institute) fees - both annual fees and then monthly charges), title searches, advertising (believe it or not, there are a lot of reps & agencies that don't get reimbursed for a lot of the property advertising), admin staff costs, printing & stationery costs, phone calls, faxes... its a legal requirement to have paper trails of everything here in WA at the moment.. digital records are not suitable for the documents required in the file.

Reps' commissions splits vary across the nation - some agencies pay a salary, some a retainer and bonuses, others are commission only.

Anyway, I'll get off my little soap box I'm expecting a bit of flack, but that's ok.. cos I've managed the books of 2 agencies, so I know exactly how much it costs an agency to run, and it ain't pretty

A friend of mine used to be a real estate agent and he basically said its a mugs game. You work incredibly long hours and only really get one weekday off per week. The stress can be constant especially with difficult buyers and houses that won't sell. You also have quite a few expenses such as car, phone and clothes. I've talked to a really successfull agent and he basically said that you need nerves of steel and alot of faith in yourself to survive in it. You could say the same about alot of jobs of course but I don't quite see them as the stuff you get growing under a rock that some people do.

I think if you get a really good rep/agent then its worth sticking with them. I've bought and sold 4 times through the same guy who has worked with different agents and had very good results every time. This is all in the same group of suburbs so with a bit of experience a good agent that knows their area should have a very accurate feel of what a place is worth - this guy has been on the mark every time. An example of the last property I sold was a house that was on a main road. He looked at the block and decided that it should be subdividable and gave me a price of 290-300 for a private buyer and 300-310 for a developer. In two weeks he was able to contact a couple of builders that he had delt with in the past and get them interested in the property. In the end he found one who worked quite a distance away (who probably didn't quite understand how busy this road was) and I had two offers. I ended up getting 310k and another offer of 305k. This was only because the house was worth more as a subdivided property and he was able to pressure a builder who had missed out on a couple of similar places in the past. This was a much better price than I'd imagine previously and I had about 6 agents working on my behalf. I just don't see how I could have gotten a result like that myself. Good agents know how people think and what their budget is vs how much they will actually end up spending. For example almost no one sticks to their budget and the best prices are usually obtained from people who have been looking at other places and missed out. I don't think you can have that sort of insight without being an experienced agent. If someone can get a price they are happy with selling their house privately then well done - I personally wouldn't have the confidence to believe I had gotten myself the best price possible.

A good agent is worth their weight in gold.
I recommended an agent to a friend. She rang him plus a few others. She was going to go with him but another rang and pestered her (you know- give me 2 weeks if it doesn't sell blah blah).

Anyway she went with the other guy. The agent she chose said list it $30K more than my guy. It was listed and had several opens. One offer which fell through. 6 weeks later it's dead in the water. Houses go stale after a while. People think there must be something wrong with them. Especially after a failed sale. It also had previous termite damage (now fixed).
In the end she needed to sell and sold it for $50K less than my guy. Now I know that market well and at my guys price it would have sold. Unfortunately she told me about the price drop the day it sold (as soon as she dropped the price). I would have bought it myself.

Advice- NEVER tell the agent the lowest price you will accept. In a lot of cases that's what you'll get.

We sold our apartment without an agent- we used a fantastic lawyer/conveyancing firm (happy to share via pm if anyone is interested) whole process was a dream from start to finish.
Save about 20k in real estate fees.