To Realtor ®, or NOT To Realtor ®?

By Michael Allen

June 22, 2008

When you begin your house hunting in earnest, most people might tell you the place to start is to go find a Realtor ® to lead and guide you through the process. The reasoning being that the Realtor®/real estate agent is a pro and knows “the ropes” and will keep you out of trouble, help you get the best deal and, hey you don’t have to pay them anyway since their commission is paid by the seller, right. So WHY NOT?

Well, there are several “myths” in the above reasoning:

1. If the seller pays anything on “their side”, it is going to be in the price you pay. SO, in reality YOU PAY!
2. This comes from several brokers I have dealt with who operated big shops with lots of agents: “over 96% of my agents do less than one side of one deal per month.” That equates to only 6 complete transactions PER YEAR! So I ask you, how many years of FULL TIME work will an agent have to put in before they have enough experience for you to be sure you are actually getting “professional and knowledgeable” guidance?
3. After over 20 years of experience dealing with real estate agents, I can assure you, their number one goal is to get the deal closed so they get paid. So if it comes to aggressively negotiating they do not want to push too hard for fear of losing the deal and you as a client. One reason is, to quote the big-shop brokers again: “About 5% of my agents do over 85% of my sales. All the rest account for only about 15%” So if you get one of the “95%” are you getting someone who really knows the business, or is just dabbling? And if so, can you now see why their hunger to “close the deal” is so high? Sure, they just don’t get very many sales per year to be able to make a decent living at it.

So, you saying, “well, Michael, if i don’t use an agent to represent me, how will I know what to do and be sure my interests are protected?” Glad you asked! That is the whole purpose of this blog and the Easy Homebuyer’s Toolkit!

We will go into more detail in the next posts on each of these issues and more. For now, suffice to say, there are many more options in your favor than you might have imagined, so stay tuned”