Hey All,
If you sell your own house / property do you also offer a percentage of sales to a buying agent?
When most buyers start using a RE agent to find a home, they’re not expecting to come out of pocket for the agent’s services because the agent’s fees almost always come out of the seller’s settlement at closing. You can tell the buyer’s they’re going to have to pay the Realtor, but that may be a turn off for them.
Yes.
Quite simply, if you aren’t paying a commission or finders fee, any agent with a buyer won’t be bringing him by to see your place.
I pay 3% “courtesy to agents”. That’s the most they are going to get from an MLS sale, unless they have double agency. They still won’t bring buyers around like they would if it was listed, but it’s your only chance of getting a buyer from an agent.
By the way, I’d pay that 3% to anyone, licensed or not, who brings me a buyer. I think I’m high at 3%, but there aren’t a lot of buyers out there and I want to give the agents some motivation.
The standardized phrase to put into your ads is “courtesy to brokers” That means you will pay a commission. The agents understand what you mean and it doesn’t offend the general public with crass public talk of carving up money.
Justin… Buyers always pay the Listing and the Selling agent fees… They are included in the price of the house…
tatertot I think you’re doing yourself a disservice by not willingly paying 6%… If youre willing to pay 3% to a Selling agent why not put up another 3% for the listing agent and get the darn house in the MLS. Youre counting on a Buyers agent having the balls to ask you for a commission as a FSBOer and frankly that is a huge request… Most dont…
By trying to sell yourself your wasting a lot of very valuable time unless youre only making the 3% you would be paying a listing agent… Heck if you worried that youll find the buyer just use either an Open agreement or an Agency agreement. both of which allow you to sell yourself and not pay a commission.
Michael,
Using that mentality, isn’t that like saying the buyer always pays all closing costs no matter what?
:bobble closing costs are no different then carpet and paint…
I’m not trying to be a smarta$$ so I hope you’re not taking any of this that way.
If a seller agrees to sell a house for $200K, don’t you think they at least feel like they’re paying the RE commission when they’re getting a settlement check for $188K?
Who gave the seller the MONEY to pay the costs?
Michael, if you recommend paying 6% then why bother having someone sell their house by them sells as that’s the full commish for a RE? If you sell your house your self, you can buy your way onto the MLS for much less than that 3%. Also and attorney and title company also costs less than that 3%.
I don’t think the additional 3% is worth it for a RE agent. Agents just show houses, they don’t sell them.
You can buy your way on… The issue is within the MLS rules… Most MLS’ require the inputting agent to disclose the scope of service and which type of agreement they have contracted with.
Most of the flat fee services use an Open agreement which most selling agents stay away from in a buyers market because they know that they are going to have to do both sides and only receive half of the commission…
In a sellers market the HELP U SELL and ASSIST 2 SELL work fine…
The point isn’t cost of the agents its cost benefit for you time… We should be buying at a price point where we earn 25-30% and market enough to keep our schedule of 3 appointments a day full with seller calls.
If you aren’t then naturally you’re going to have the time to sell your own house… However you’re one person vs an army of thousands of Selling agents which buyers believe the seller pays…
If it takes you longer to sell your house over an agent selling it then you have to calculate if you saved money from a turn on investment factor.
:angel
;D
Things workout like a chained reaction, it’s the owner of the unit, the agent will sell it, buyer comes, the owner makes money and agent as well. So everybody deserves to be happy.
Silo
I’m a broker and investor. I always co-op and the market place determines what I offer. Currently it’s 4% to buyers agents.
I could offer 3%, but my holding costs average over 1% a month and to sell a month sooner makes the cost the same basically.
Using the MLS in a buyers market is a good tool and makes sense because like it or not, 80% of the current buyers are working with an agent, and I don’t pay less because I want those agents working on my property.
Hi everyone I have known all my life about sellers pay to the agent. Now this post arises confusion in me. Who actually pays and from what point? :rolleyes
Nick Brian
The economic theory I learned and adopted regarding brokerage fees in real estate is that every deal has a built in commission by default. The only question is who is going to end up with the money. Is it the buyer, the seller, or a third party, or a combination of each.
The only reason that it became customary for sellers to pay the commission was that they were the ones selling the property and the ones with the funds in escrow that was easiest to attach even though the buyer was really funding the commission.
Way back when, a delegation of Japanese real estate people toured my office and asked about our commission, I explained our MLS had a 6% rate which was split 50/50 between the selling agency and the buyer agency and funded by the seller.
They asked why couldn’t the seller only pay 3% and the buyer pay 3%, thus each paying for their own agent.My answer was the problem was mainly with the policies of US Lenders, because they lend a percent of the sales price and if the sales price was reduced by 3% by the buyer then that amount couldn’t be financed for the buyer. Anyway I understand they adopted the each client pays their agent directly concept, and their lenders understand the concept…
The confusion arises from “what is included in the price”
Take a car as an example. Most of us know that if we buy a car from a dealer we are probably going to pay more however we also know that procuring financing and getting registration and the ease of doing business is part of the what is included in the price…
If we buy it from a private person we have to set up our own registration, financing and etc. If I knew how to do all of that and had a system in place to make those “Normal” step easy I would never buy from a car dealer…
a different example…
I buy a glass of wine from my favorite restaurant for 8.00 a glass or I can buy it from my wine store for 8.00 a bottle… Is the wine anymore expensive or am I paying to have a long legged blond serve it to me in a nice atmosphere?
Naturally the long legged blond works and is given a check from the restaurant she works for however I am indirectly paying her.
Sellers authorize the payment to an agent however Buyers pay that agent…