Re: What should I expect from my RE Agent ? - Posted by brian, ut
Posted by brian, ut on July 11, 2005 at 12:15:00:
What do you expect of your real estate agent? To hold your hand? To call you every hour on the hour on the hour with an update? Is it a single family home, a duplex, what? Congradulations, you got them to take a 5% commission, what did that accomplish? 80% of sales are cooperative, meaning another agent other than the listing agent will bring the buyer and what does that agent get, usually half the commission and in this case thats 2.5% instead of 3%, so you managed to give 2 agents a 17% pay cut. I’m sure they will come flocking to your door.
If you want to be in control of things then selling it yourself might be and option, you could still offer agents with a buyer their normal %. Just put broker co-op on your for sale sign and you would know everything that is going on. If your property is vacant, an extra month or so on the market will normally wipe out that 1% you saved in commission. The listing agents goal is two-fold (1) to find a buyer himself, but only 4% of homes on the mls are sold directly from signs, ads, or open houses, that means 96% are sold to a Buyer obtained from another source. (2) to get other agents to show his listing instead of someone elses. that is where most of his effort will go and it is something that isn’t visible to the seller.
I don’t know what city your in but generally the listing agents goal is to get an acceptable amount of showings, if things are right the property will sell, if not, somethings wrong, the property is priced too high or its being used to condition buyer prospects for other properties. In one case, I had a tenant that didn’t want to move and when an agent showed it to a buyer prospect the tenant would slip the buyer a note for them to call her later whereupon she would tell them great tales of how horrible the property was and the mean landlord wouldn’t let them out of their lease until the property is sold but she felt it was her duty to save the buyers and she would hold out until her lease was up. She neglected to tell them she was on a month to month and had lived there for 5 years.
Anyway, back to the subject. Ask the agent for a copy of listing as shown on the mls. Review it to see if everything is correct and take special note of what is being offered to another agent to sell it, if it isn’t 3%, or whatever is the norm for your area, you need to have a frank discussion with your agent, secondly he should advise you every week of the number of showings and any comments the showing agents had, no matter what they were. Of course, there is much, much, more but I will end up writting a book if I went on.