Estate agents

Graham

Mumm_ra wrote: »

When I was buying the EA caught wind that I was trying to do a deal with the seller and threatened not to deal with us. I had arranged to meet the seller and had agreed with the wife we would offer them x to take it off the market. The EA caught wind and I had to go through him - it ended up 10k cheaper and the seller paid 5k fees - enough said

So the sellers sold for €10k LESS by allowing you to sidestep the agent and deal direct with them?

Dolbhad

Daniel Quick Diner wrote: »

Have to say, when I was browsing DAFT as a buyer, where 95% of properties are advertised by an agent, I almost always skip past the for sale by owner ones.

Bad descriptions
Outrageously unrealistic values (they haven't had the reality check of an agent telling them they do not in fact own the best house in the neighbourhood)
Terrible photos, no plans.
Don't want to pay an agent so what else have they skimped on? etc..

Time is money, if you are unemployed / off work then I can see how you have time on your hands for attempting to sell it yourself. But good luck chasing contracts / solicitors from the other side, without the use of an agent.

Also for viewings I’d be uncomfortable as a purchaser dealing with owner.

q85dw7osi4lebg

Imagine someone showing you their master bedroom. Horrible haha. Also imagine being honest with them the same way you would be with an agent.

"Your house is overpriced and needs X y z. I'll offer you 20% under asking. "

Queue slaps.

Sleepy

astrofool wrote: »

Your basic assertion is "why should the sales profession exist", it's nonsensical, some people are better at creating, some better at selling, a good EA will most likely get a better price for a property than you will for a number of different reasons.

If I was buying a house, I'd much prefer to deal with the vendor directly, as I believe I'd get it at a better price than if they were using an EA (better being 5% or >).

No, it's slightly more nuanced than that: it's why use a sales agent that's working off high commissions unless they can demonstrably provide more value than they cost.

We live in the era of digital disruption. Middlemen and sales agents are having their professions wiped out by technological advances at a phenomenal rate.

On-line property listing sites like Daft have become the defacto standard means of prospective buyers finding properties they're interested in. This changes the market landscape as the sales agents position as a funnel through which a prospective buyers must be sourced by a vendor has been eradicated.

An EA can add value by taking some of the hassle out of the transaction for a vendor and saving the vendor's time. If that's all they offer for a 5k plus commission, you'd have to place a very high value on your own time to make their value proposition worthwhile (particularly when they'll be billing you separately for any expenses they incur in providing the professional photographer, listing your property on Daft / MyHome etc).

If they can fully offset the cost of their fees (or exceed them) by achieving a 5% or greater variance in a sales price, an EA represents extremely good value for money. However, we've seen no evidence that any EAs assertion they can do so are demonstrably true.

If, as jimwallace197 seems to be insinuating in his last post, EAs benefit from a greater level of access to Property Price Register data than the general public (or have other sources of data which they can merge the register data with), and the data points exist to determine the average variance in prices achieved by EAs versus those listing properties themselves or even via the smaller "fixed fee" (mostly) on-line agents I'd have thought it a bit of a no brainer for them to crunch the numbers and issue press releases or advertisements demonstrating the value they provide to their customers.

I've never seen such an analysis which leads me to believe that it's either unquantifiable or that the metric doesn't back up agents assertions as to the premium prices they can obtain for vendors.

Ortiz

It's really quite simple - a good EA will be able to achieve a higher price for a property. They will have strong negotiation skills, good knowledge of market values in the area, be able to set the asking price correctly to generate maximum interest, present a high quality marketing campaign and be approachable and contactable to potential buyers.

A good EA should also be able to limit the stress of one of the most stressful moments of someones life. If a buyer starts messing around at sale agreed stage a good EA will be able to firmly put them in their place and progress the matter, or be able to identify issues and put a plan in place for the best way to proceed.

A good EA will be able to pressure solicitors at contract stage in order to bring the transaction to a close, therefore minimising the risk of the sale falling through.

A bad EA will be missing some or all of the above skills.

I'm not saying Joe Bloggs can't do any of these things either, I'm just saying a good EA will have most or all of these skills which will result in achieving a stronger price and making the transaction less stressful.

I would say a good EA is well worth the money and a bad EA isn't - simple

Mumm_ra

Graham wrote: »

So the sellers sold for €10k LESS by allowing you to sidestep the agent and deal direct with them?

Seller sold for 10k by going through the EA and paid 5k fees

Auctioneera

<SNIP>

Graham

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Thread closed.