Hello

You might think “our course they do” or “why wouldn’t they?”. In fact, the short answer is, sometimes but not really. When an agent pitches for your business you are sure to hear about how their network is number one and they and several of their co-workers are the best agents in the area. Often these statements can be very selective, that is questionable statistics can be used that support their claims. (Favourable short time periods or based on only their best performed suburbs.)

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A lot of people wouldn’t know this but when a house sells, the agent that listed that house will usually make around 30% of the office’s commission. Whereas the agent that sells the house (usually the same agent) makes around 10-15% of the office’s commission. Therefore, if you were concentrating only on selling houses and not listing, you would struggle to make a living. I know of offices that don’t actually let any other agents sell houses that they don’t personally list.

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In today’s real estate it is usually considered a bad use of time running a buyer from house to house. Many sale campaigns will only have open houses and not one buyer through privately. Given the listing agent would normally run all the open houses it would be very hard for another agent to sell the house anyway. The other point is that if a vendor trusts you enough to list their house for sale, then you should spend most of your time trying to get it sold. (and make the full 45% of the commission)

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Some agents work with a personal assistant. This is the exception, in that the P.A is an extension of the listing agent and they do work on the sale. Therefore, when interviewing an agent, it is very important to be introduced to their assistant, as they may deal with your buyers more that the senior agent does. Unfortunately, in real estate the average time span of a P.A is often very short. So, they might not have the experience that you would like. A good agent could have a P.A that has been working with them for many years.

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So, is it an advantage to sell with a network that is state or Australia-wide? The advantage is so small that the simple answer is no. Think about it, is it likely that an agent in Mildura would have a buyer looking for a house in Cheltenham? Even if an agent did, it’s most likely that the agency that is selling in Cheltenham wouldn’t share any of their commission anyway. Would you work for free? I’m not saying a good network can’t have an advantage over an average network, but that advantage is more likely to be in company presentation.

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My main point here is that agents will give you a hundred reasons as to why they are the best, but it really comes down to just a few points. Most importantly, do you trust them? With other important factors being, do they know your area, are they a good negotiator, and finally are their selling costs reasonable? Answering yes to these questions will go a lot further than using a network that sells houses in Queensland if you live in Victoria.

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I was at a real estate conference once and somebody in the audience asked a question that was bizarre and in reality, would never be an issue. The sharp-tounged speaker answered, “how about you worry about the stuff that might happen .1% of the time and I’ll worry about the rest?”. The message here, like many industries is that the answer is inside the box. Suggesting that you will have a team of 10 people from your office working on a house and that your Australia-wide presence will give you a huge advantage, is at best deceiving and at worst a blatant lie. Therefore, I’ll go back to my earlier point when choosing an agent. Do you trust them? If the answer is yes to that question, I’d say that you are more than halfway towards hiring a good real estate agent.