Posted by Tim Fierro (Tacoma, WA) on February 18, 2002 at 24:32:30:
While cooperative advertising is a way to cut costs, why have the ones who have been using him stopped? If they were making a good chunk of change, then I would ask why they stopped.
Of course the agent likes working with investors and help them buy ‘new houses’ than flip them… He gets a nice check for the sell, and then a nice check on the listing. Slam dunk really if an agent can find a buyer who likes to pay retail and then just do cosmetics and sell retail. Just make sure you are not paying an agent something that you could do on your own. Not that an agent doesn’t fulfill a need for pay, I am an agent, a continual relationship like this would probably net the agent more than the investor. Something to think about. Are your profits going to be enough to pay retail and sell retail? If so, then use the agent. If listing fees and excise taxes and closing costs make it prohibitive, another exit strategy could be used.
But as far as a flyer service, you will need to weigh how much he is going to charge you, versus how much it would cost you to do it yourself. How much are the photocopies going to cost you and will there be a limit? How they work around here is that you can have a company deliver the flyers to all the broker/agents in the region for a fee that includes the paper, ink, delivery etc… Now if he is willing to ‘split’ the cost in 1/2, then it would be a decent deal. If he is charging you for the whole flyer and he gets his portion for free; you might do better doing it yourself and looking for someone for the back of your flyer. 
As an agent, I don’t look too hard at the ones from other agents who use the service. I do however look at the ones from painters, carpenters, cleaners, service type companies, and the occassional miscellaneous flyer. If an agent is using the service to advertise a house, I don’t care because if I had a client interested in the house, it would have come up in my search anyway.
Fo you, it may be a good deal, but I would contact the company who does it and get the costs sheet so you can tell if you are getting a deal with the split, of if you should do it yourself. There are charges depending on how many are delivered also, so if you don’t want to do deals in xxx area, you wouldn’t want the service to deliver your flyers there and thus would save on overall costs of delivery. Just pay for the areas you are interested in.