One or more estate agents

Jeanne Gallagher

Hi there,

I need to sell a house in Kildare and wonder can you ask more than one estate agent to try and sell your house? I know i would have to pay both to advertise it etc but legally can you use two??

Thanks
Jeanne

killers1

Jeanne Gallagher wrote: »

Hi there,

I need to sell a house in Kildare and wonder can you ask more than one estate agent to try and sell your house? I know i would have to pay both to advertise it etc but legally can you use two??

Thanks
Jeanne

There's no legal problem having your property listed with 2 estate agents. Majority of properties sold are found by prospective buyers on myhome.ie or daft.ie so I'd be inclined to stick with just 1 EA and not incur the additional cost.

At the end of the day you need a certain element of luck to sell your house at a good price e.g more than one bidder, your property to go on sale at a time when buyers who'd like to live in your area are receiving mortgage approval etc.. etc... Ultimately if the house is realistically priced it should sell. There are many unrealistic sellers out there thinking their property is still worth what it was in the boom years but also some unrealistic purchasers, so be prepared for some bids way off your asking price...

ProudDUB

When I sold a house last year I had to sign a contract with the estate agent that they were the sole estate agent charged with selling my house. I imagine that most estate agents would ask you to do the same. Why would an EA want to do all the work of valuing your house for you, getting it ready for sale, arranging for the advertising and marketing of it, dealing with enquiries from the public, showing people around it etc etc if they have to split their commission with someone else, or not get paid at all?

Advertising the property is an additional expense that has nothing to do with the estate agents professional fee. That fee is usually a % of the sale price. The marketing/advertising fee is normally a set amount that is asked for upfront so that the EA is not out money (such as paying for an ad on Daft.ie, or having a professional take pix of it) if you change your mind later on about selling the house. There would be no need to pay for adverting twice. These days, most buyers find their homes on the internet. Having your house listed twice on Daft will not make it sell any quicker.

Having 2 different EA's would also be hard to work out logistically. Whose name and phone number would be on the For Sale signs? Whose name and phone number would be on the online listing. Once the house sells, who gets paid what? There is no legal rule stopping you from hiring 2 estate agents, but it is a lot of additional trouble and expense and complication that I can't really see the point of, unless there are very specific reasons for wanting them.

pawnacide

Rule No1, never pay an advertising fee .. Daft and Myhome are negligible costs per house for an estate agent unless you want premium adds.

Media advertising is a waste of money, I would guess nobody buys a house these days without looking at daft or myhome.

If you pay their advertising fee it's money in their pockets and they'll just tell you what they think you want to hear to get the listing. Any agent worth their salt will tell you within 10% what the house will sell for and be able to sell the house .. problem is you might not like what you hear and be inclined to go with the agent telling you what you want to hear.

So, you might ask, why are there so many unsold houses dotted around the country ?

Coz they're overpriced.

gigino

ProudDUB wrote: »

There is no legal rule stopping you from hiring 2 estate agents, but it is a lot of additional trouble and expense and complication that I can't really see the point of, unless there are very specific reasons for wanting them.

often when you see 2 for sale signs on the same property, it belongs to 2 or more owners, who may or may not be getting on / agree to trust one estate agent. I agree its better/cheaper to use just one, or none at all.

ProudDUB

pawnacide wrote: »

Rule No1, never pay an advertising fee .. Daft and Myhome are negligible costs per house for an estate agent unless you want premium adds.

Media advertising is a waste of money, I would guess nobody buys a house these days without looking at daft or myhome.

If you pay their advertising fee it's money in their pockets and they'll just tell you what they think you want to hear to get the listing.

I disagree. My EA gave me a breakdown of the advertising/marketing fee. I wasn't just paying money out with knowing what it was for. In my case the fee was 525 euros. Considering how quickly the house sold, it was money very well spent.

The breakdown was as follows;

50 euros for the erection of a For Sale sign in the front garden with the agents name and phone number on it.
50 euros for a large pic that went into the window of the EA's office for passing foot traffic to see.
30 euros for brochures and leaflets about the house for visitors into the office to take away with them.
175 euros for the Daft ad.
100 euros for pix taken by a professional photographer. I was reluctant to do this initially. I wanted me or someone from the EA's office to take them, which would be standard procedure. But there were loads of houses similar to mine being sold in the area. I wanted mine stand out from the competition, so I just said eff it and ponied up. It was money VERY well spent. The photographer was FABULOUS. She really knew her stuff. She used a telephoto lens for the pix. The rooms looked mindblowingly bigger than they were in real life.
50 euros for a 3D, 360 degree virtual tour of the listing on Daft that you can only get if the pix were taken with a telephoto camera.

Perhaps I am putting too much store in visuals, but I have looked at pix of properties online and immediately discounted them as the rooms looked too small or shabby or cramped or had no visible storage. There is no way that would have happened with my house. The rooms looked friggin' palatial, even thought they were tiny in reality. Foot traffic from day one was huge. Granted, when viewers came to look at the house, they came down to earth, but at least they were actually there. Who knows, maybe the guy who actually bought it did so coz of something else that he liked that he would never have found out about if he hadn't come to see it in the first place, thanks to my great pix of it.

In hindsight, there is not one penny of the advertising/marketing fee that I regret paying. In the bigger picture, my house sold quicker than the competition did. Considering how quickly house prices were tumbling then, who knows how many more thousands that 125 photographer fee in particular earned me?

gigino

ProudDUB wrote: »

The rooms looked friggin' palatial, even thought they were tiny in reality.

I hate it when photos are misleading. I remember once seeing a property for sale ( years ago), and took a half day off work to go and see it. The auctioneers description was very misleading, and the photos were very deceiving too. We were very disappointed. I think its better to be honest with potential buyers in the beginning, because otherwise its like a middle aged person putting a photo of themselves from 5 or 10 years ago on a dating site. It leads to disappointment on first impressions when seen in reality...

ProudDUB

The exact square footage of the house and the dimensions of each of the rooms were listed on the Daft listing for the whole world to see. We didn't hide anything. If people don't check them out before setting out to view a house, that is on them. A room may look wonderful on a listings website, but if the dimensions of it are only 8 ft by 8 ft I am not going to get too excited about it, no matter how great it looks on the website. The estate agents descriptions of the house were accurate. I accept that using the word "palatial" may have been a bit of an overstatement on my part.

I don't feel guilty in the slightest for hiring a photographer to take brilliant pix of the house. Nothing was faked or air brushed or Photoshopped to make it look better than it actually was. The angles that the photographer took the photos from (such as getting up on a ladder and taking a picture of each of the rooms looking down on them, as opposed to how they look to someone walking in the door) made the biggest difference of all. As did her advice on how to "stage" each room and add or subtract certain things that showed each room to its best advantage. I don't feel a bit bad that her professional knowledge of how to do her job helped me to sell the house.

gigino

ProudDUB wrote: »

Nothing was faked or air brushed or Photoshopped to make it look better than it actually was.

Thats not too bad so. Its just that earlier you wrote "She used a telephoto lens for the pix. The rooms looked mindblowingly bigger than they were in real life." My point was that can backfire, as
its like a middle aged person putting a photo of themselves from 5 or 10 years ago on a dating site. It leads to disappointment on first impressions when seen in reality.

pawnacide

ProudDUB wrote: »

I disagree. My EA gave me a breakdown of the advertising/marketing fee. I wasn't just paying money out with knowing what it was for. In my case the fee was 525 euros. Considering how quickly the house sold, it was money very well spent.

The breakdown was as follows;

50 euros for the erection of a For Sale sign in the front garden with the agents name and phone number on it.
50 euros for a large pic that went into the window of the EA's office for passing foot traffic to see.
30 euros for brochures and leaflets about the house for visitors into the office to take away with them.
175 euros for the Daft ad.
100 euros for pix taken by a professional photographer.

15-25 euros for sign erection... Countrywide signs

50 euros for large pic .. He need to change his printer

30 euros brochure & leaflet .. again needs a new printer

175 for daft .. thats 75 euros more than his daft bill for the month (agents don't pay per property)

100 euros for photography .. agent can't take good photos, it's fairly major part of his business .. he should take a class or two.

So what was the fee he charged when the sale closed for ?
He seems to have charged u in advance for just about everything.

You an agent perchance ?

PatA

gigino wrote: »

often when you see 2 for sale signs on the same property, it belongs to 2 or more owners, who may or may not be getting on / agree to trust one estate agent. I agree its better/cheaper to use just one, or none at all.

It'd be cheaper not using an E/A but how would that work? You'd need it on Daft for people to see its for sale.

pawnacide

PatA wrote: »

It'd be cheaper not using an E/A but how would that work? You'd need it on Daft for people to see its for sale.

You can advertise on daft yourself.

ProudDUB

pawnacide wrote: »

15-25 euros for sign erection... Countrywide signs

50 euros for large pic .. He need to change his printer

30 euros brochure & leaflet .. again needs a new printer

175 for daft .. thats 75 euros more than his daft bill for the month (agents don't pay per property)

100 euros for photography .. agent can't take good photos, it's fairly major part of his business .. he should take a class or two.

So what was the fee he charged when the sale closed for ?
He seems to have charged u in advance for just about everything.

You an agent perchance ?

No, I am not an agent. I have worked in the industry (in the US, not here) but it was in the apt rental market which bares no relation at all to the Irish one.

The fee charged by the agent was 1% of the sale price of the house. That was the same amount that I was quoted by two other estate agents that I got valuations from. Two others wanted 1.25%.

The photographer didn't just take kick ass pictures. She removed big pieces of furniture from some rooms to make them look less cluttered in the pictures. She laid down a big white rug (her own) that covered up the horrible floral swirly 1980's carpets that Irish mammys love. When you then clicked on the picture, your eye was not immediately drawn to the ugly pink and purple carpet. She came back a second day to take more pix as she didn't think the light was good enough on the first day. She took down and put back up the heavy velvet curtains at the patio doors that she thought blocked the view of the garden from the inside.

Would the average Irish estate agent do any if that? I doubt it. Photography is a skilled profession just like any other. I don't expect an estate agent to be skilled in it, proficient yes, skilled no. If I am getting married, I'll hire a pro to take and stage and develop the wedding day pix. I won't just hand the camera to my mother and tell her to take a few lessons.

Perhaps I could have shopped around and gotten every thing done for a couple of hundred quid cheaper. But the proof is in the pudding. My house sold 4 months after it was put on the market. A year later, houses very similar to mine are still on the market and for 50 grand less than what they were asking last year. I don't regret spending one penny of my 500 quid.

odds_on

Use two agents and the one that gets the sale, gets the commission. EAs these days still think that to sell a property, they don't have to do much work.
May don't answer emails, their adverts on daft are often pretty useless - plenty of description about the area and just a few lines about the property.
Some agents have no or just one photo. Others like to take close-ups of the furniture and fittings. Often details a sketchy if not lacking in detail.

A few things that I want to know - After looking at 5 or 6 photos, I want to know the following before I consider viewing. Without this information I am not going to waste my time going for a viewing, especially if the property is not near my present location. I don't want to go on a wild goose chase.

Number of beds and baths
Type of living area: separate living/dining/kitchen or what?
Overall size and room sizes.
Central heating type
Kitchen - what's included by way of appliances and gas or electric
Living area - any special features, fireplace etc
Bathroom - what fittings - bath, shower or both, bath with shower over or shower cubicle?
Outside: Front garden? rear garden? patio area, secluded or open, fenced walled with or without rear gate. Type of access.
Garage or type of parking available - off road, secure, allocated etc?
Double glazed?
Furniture included?
BER rating?
management/service charges?

With two agents, the one that does the work, presenting the detailed information with decent photos of the property, and has a good customer attitude and service will get the sale.

If an EA can't accept a bit of competition he is not worth going to. And just because an EA is part of a big group does not mean he is a good EA. If you have one agent, he will be happy to sit back until he gets the sale. In the UK, multiple agents are frequently used.

Let the best man win.

gigino

odds_on wrote: »

Use two agents and the one that gets the sale, gets the commission.

Do they not share the commission in the event of a sale?

odds_on

gigino wrote: »

Do they not share the commission in the event of a sale?

It depends on the contract with the EAs. They either agree to this or don't get a chance to sell the property. Why should an EA get commission if he doesn't sell the property. OK, he has some expenses but that's the name of the game. The EAs may make an agreement between themselves if they want. But to my mind, the EA who does the work and gets the sale is entitled to his full commission.

IMHO, this system might end the situation where EAs don't reply to emails, don't return phone calls, don't appear for viewings etc.

pawnacide

Most buyers are pretty sophisticated and if they're not they can get so pretty quickly by going down the pub.

Chances are they'll have contacted both agents at some point and therefore have a relationship with both. If agent A introduces them to the property but they make offers through agent B and end up buying the house you could be liable for both sets of fees.

I know of one case where a court agreed that a seller was liable for fees because the agent had introduced the buyer to the property but the owner ending up negotiating the sale himself and the buyers refused to deal with agent having met the owner the following day.

Of course you could hope agent A doesn't find out.

odds_on

It all depends on the contract with the agent/s