Real estate tends to attract many fly by night get rich quick types, and just because somebody has taken the 40 to 80 hours of training necessary to get a license DOES NOT mean they know ANYTHING about the real estate business. Not ALL real estate agents are morons…but there are enough of them out there who lack basic social graces not to mention actual knowledge about their business that it often gets in the way of a sale. Here are the ten top things I have not necessarily heard a realtor say, but certainly have experienced in working with them
1. Your open house is really just a networking party for me.
One of the first things your realtor or agent will likely suggest is hosting an open house so that potential buyers can casually check out your property on a weekend afternoon. But while open houses are promoted as a great way of finding a buyer, a National Association of Realtors study found that their success rate is a mere 2 to 4 percent.
No matter. Holding an open house serves another important purpose for the realtor. It gives him a database of clients. At open houses, you get all kinds of people walking in. Some are trying to see how much they should sell their own places for; others just want to get a look at what’s out there. All are perfect pickings for the realtor looking to increase his roster of buyers and sellers. Think about it. The realtor is devoting a couple hours of a weekend. He won’t do that unless it helps him in a big way. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that a seller should forego an open house altogether, It’s still a real good way to showcase your house.
2. “My fees are negotiable.”
Realtors like to make it sound as if their fees are engraved in stone, but that’s rarely the case. During the housing bubble, for example, as the number of realtors sharply increased, so did the competition for listings. Some realtors I know lowered their fees by a full percentage point just to give themselves an edge. But even in the wake of the recent crash, you have a good chance of negotiating a better deal that same surplus of realtors is still out there competing for even fewer listings, giving you something of a leg up.
My realtor says that sellers should always shop around for better terms and has some suggestions for the best conditions to induce realtors to lower their fees: If somebody’s willing to commit to me for selling one place and buying another,” or If you’re in a particularly desirable neighborhood with a house that will bring a lot of traffic for an open house. And with a lot of smaller realtors, all you need to do is ask and they’ll lower the commission. As an investor, If I come in with a buyer, and she merely does the paperwork and holds their hands, she works for 1%.
3. “Think you’ve had no offers? Actually, there have been several.”
Legally, the realtor you hire to sell your home is obligated to tell you about all offers that come in. In reality, some do not. Perhaps he thinks the offer is insultingly low for you, but more likely, the realtor thinks it’s too low for his own purposes. He wants to hold out for a bigger commission. Another possibility is that there’s an outside realtor or co-realtor circling your house, and the primary realtor is waiting for one of his own clients to make an offer so he can keep the full 6 percent to himself.
You must be clear with your realtor that you want to be informed of all offers. Otherwise, you may be leaving him to make decisions that you should be making. Check the listing agreement drawn up when you hire the realtor; if the promise to disclose all offers isn’t listed explicitly, insist that it be added.
4. “I’m not obligated to keep my mouth shut for you.”
You spot your dream house as you’re driving through a neighborhood and call the realtor listed on the “for sale” sign. That’s how a lot of buyers stumble on a realtor who, in turn, happily shows you other houses, asking about your needs, laughing at your jokes. It’s easy to get loose-lipped and forget whom you’re dealing with: someone else’s agent. Legally, realtors are obligated to provide their sellers with any information that can help them get the best prices for their homes. If you tell the realtor that you’re willing to pay $500,000 but want to offer $450,000, they’ll pass that on to the seller. They have to.
Also, some realty companies encourage prospective buyers to get pre-approved for loans. While that can make a buyer more attractive to a lender, it also tells a realtor whether a buyer can afford a $600,000 house when he’s trying to haggle on a $400,000 property. When somebody asks for a pre-approval, find out who they’re representing, such details can short-circuit your negotiating leverage. If they represent a seller or someone in their office does they shouldn’t have it. The realtor may tell you she will be impartial, but how can she be?
The bottom line: You need to hire your own realtor. The only safe way to go about it is to have an agent who represents you.
5. “Sometimes I forget whose side I’m on.”
The past 15 years have seen the proliferation of the buyer realtor, agents who are supposed to work strictly in the buyer’s interest, helping him get a fair price on a home as well as avoid pitfalls along the way. Unfortunately, things don’t always unfold so nicely. While buyers may think they’re getting a realtor who isn’t commission-hungry, many buyer agents are just that: They usually get about 3 percent, the same amount any realtor typically earns when he gets involved with another agent’s listing. Buyer realtors are sometimes too focused on closing the sale and getting that commission, so it’s often in their best interest to see you pay as high a price as possible.
Even worse, some realtors who call themselves buyer advocates are actually working for companies that also represent sellers. Many times realty companies offer bonuses to buyer agents if they sell an in-house listing.
6. “I know zilch about zoning.”
Real estate agents love to suggest big ideas to prospective buyers say, removing trees to enhance a view, or even squeezing a rental unit out of a roomy garage meant to happen once the deal is done and they’re out of the picture. But just because it sounds like a good idea doesn’t mean it will work or even that it is legal.
According to one source I read about, a New York City based architect recalls a client who bought a dilapidated house with a beautiful piece of property on a marshland. The realtor told him that he could fix the house up however he wanted, insisting that this was a sleepy little town where nobody would care what he did. The client built a $15,000 shed in the backyard, took down some trees, and had some of the marshland filled in only to have the town insist he put things back because of environmental zoning regulations. The moral of the story: Before you buy into your realtor’s creative thinking, check with your local zoning commission about what you can and cannot do on a given piece of property.
Yes, we have good realtors out there who really know their stuff, but in my experience, you should not trust what a realtor is telling you when it goes beyond the “offer to purchase”. In my experience, filling out that form is the height of their training.
7. “I won’t let termites or pesky inspectors kill a deal.”
If a realtor is selling a house, you figure he knows the place pretty intimately after all, he talks a good game about the new kitchen, the big closets, the heated garage. What you need to worry about, though, are the home’s features that he keeps to himself.
You’d figure that the home inspector, who comes to check out the place before you close the sale, might notice those things. And he probably will if he’s not in cahoots with the realtor. Realtors give potential home buyers lists of home inspectors. Those are people who will rubber stamp the house in return for repeat business. One time a realtor said the results of my inspection, which is confidential between myself and my client she wouldn’t let me get up on the roof. I got out my ladder and told her that unless she was big enough to stop me, I was going up there she wasn’t big enough.
By the way, I have left things undone on purpose just o see if the inspector catches it. More than half the time the inspectors fail to catch things like unconnected toilets, GFCI’s that are not properly connected, and insulation not installed in the attic.
8. “I sometimes forget I’m not a lawyer.”
Most states strictly regulate the contracts used in real estate transactions, stipulating the use of boilerplate agreements that offer little room for creativity but some realtors can’t keep their clause adding instincts in check. I have seen realtors push the envelope many times with amendments and addenda. They draft language that can have major consequences without really understanding it so that they can keep the sale going.
9. “My website is a dead end.”
Considering that 77 percent of house hunters look on the Web, according to the National Association of Realtors, sellers might assume that using a realtor with a site can help make a sale happen. But some realtors’ sites are better than others, and you need to look beyond a well designed home page to figure that out.
One common flaw: posting houses that sold long ago. While the mistake can be simple negligence, others think that it’s a bait-and-switch-style ploy. It brings people in, but it gets them upset when they find out that the property’s gone. Yet another way for the realtor to build his buyers list…duh. If a realtor has to advertise properties that are already sold, it tells you that he doesn’t have enough inventory to keep their roster of houses full.
10. “You can probably do this without me.”
Realtors like to create a lot of mystique about selling homes, insisting that the process is complicated and best left to professionals. Not so, say homeowners and investors who have sold their homes themselves; about 20 to 25 percent do so each year. Properly priced and advertised, a house sells itself.
When it comes to the negotiations between buyers and sellers, realtors and their commissions tend to just get in the way. Usually, the haggling occurs over a 5 to 10 percent difference. Interestingly, that is more or less the realtor’s cut of the sale price. You don’t need him. Just be sure you price your home well. The way most self-sellers hurt themselves, is in setting either an unreasonably high or tragically low asking price. Hire an independent appraiser for $200, and he will tell you the parameters of what to charge.
