Coldwell Banker vs. Prudential Preferred Realty (Franklin Park, Franklin: mortgage broker, broker, houses)

[feixiangniao]

I am going to buy a house in West Allegheny (Moon, Oakdale, Montour areas) or North Allegheny (Franklin Park, Seweckly, or Marshall), which realtor would you recommend? Does it matter whether they are from Coldwell Banker or Prudential?

[Copanut]

Pick a good one, and not all agents are Realtors.

[jimmyev]

Coldwell Banker charges a $395 broker's fee on top of the normal percentage of the commission that goes to the buyer's agent. Some of their agents don't tell you this up front.

[hempfield mania]

I had good luck with Howard Hanna. Most broker's seem to charge a fee these days. Ask about it up front before you make a deal.

[greg42]

I think the person matters more than the brokerage, but I don't have a specific rec right now as it seems the one I worked closely with on my purchase is not in the biz or moved away or something.

[subdivisions]

I had a good experience with Prudential Preferred out of Squirrel Hill.

[jimmyev]

Originally Posted by hempfield mania

I had good luck with Howard Hanna. Most broker's seem to charge a fee these days. Ask about it up front before you make a deal.

If this is true, I don't know why. I would have gladly paid a fee to my buyer's agent in Texas when I bought my first house a few years ago. She greatly helped in the process.

It's been my experience here that the rules set down by the Realtor Association completely destroy any help the buyer's agent can be to the buyer:

1. They can't talk about square footage. So you either look at many houses that clearly are not the size you're looking for, or you spend countless hours narrowing down the list using the Allegheny County Assessment website.

2. They can't give you any advice on areas that you might like or tell you what an area is like. Nada. Zip. Nothing.

3. Because of #1, combined with many non-MLS sales, they cannot run adequate comps based upon the age of the house, the condition and the square footage. Again, you'll spend your time scrolling through the Allegheny County Assessment website to do your own comps to come up with an offer.

4. You don't just give them a price and they go off and negotiate with the seller; it's a long drawn out process of contracts flying back and forth. The experiences of my co-workers without buyer's agents was quite different.

I guess this explains why most natives don't use buyer's agents - something I just learned by asking around the office: "When you bought your house, did your realtor charge a fee?" "The person selling the house?" "No, your realtor." "Why would I have a realtor if I'm buying..." They just spot a house they like, make an offer, negotiate, and buy it.

[Copanut]

Unless you are using a buyer broker, both the listing agent, and the selling agent are working for the seller of the house.

[greg42]

Hm. I specifically called an agent who worked with me to find houses. True that I did some of searching myself at times, plus I always drove by houses first before requesting (or not) to go inside. But we narrowed down areas and she helped turn me on to a mortgage broker who knew USDA RHS stuff and steered me with that. At the time (and maybe still) Keller-Williams actually had agents like mine working specifically with buyers only. Different agents did the selling. This I thought was an interesting setup.

I do understand that this agent technically works for the seller and is paid out of the commission the seller pays. It is in her interest to sell me a house, certainly.

Of that list above, 1, 2 and 3 don't make sense to me. We didn't talk much about square feet, but we talked about areas and I didn't see indication of inadequate comps.

4 to me just sounds odd. I've not seen a scenario here or elsewhere where you don't make an offer, then there could be a counter offer, which you then counter, etc. Often the counters can be heard back in hours. Each counter doesn't need to be written up as a full contract. Actually, the more I read that sentence the more I can't tell which one you think happens here and which you think happens elsewhere. I can say I've never seen some scenario where you give one number to an agent like a maximum bid then the agent negotiates without your input. That's not the way I'd want to do it anyway.

It always made sense to me to work with one agent when buying. I mean, these other people, they never look at more than one house? They never like the first agent they see? Typically the first agent if they didn't like that house would want to keep their info and try to be their agent in looking at others. It would surprise me if that were not fairly often the case, and I don't think a couple of anecdotes necessarily makes dealing directly with the seller's listing agent the norm.

Reality is though, if you really want an agent that doesn't work for the seller, you have to use an exclusive buyer's agent and pay them directly. Although there are certain rules that an agent you call from a regular broker should be following, they are ultimately paid by the seller.

The fee in question here is NOT a payment for an exclusive buyer's agent or anything like that. When I bought my house, there was no such fee. This seems to be a recent way of seeing what the market will bear, brokers charging the buyer a fee of some kind.

[hempfield mania]

Originally Posted by jimmyev

If this is true, I don't know why. I would have gladly paid a fee to my buyer's agent in Texas when I bought my first house a few years ago. She greatly helped in the process.

It's been my experience here that the rules set down by the Realtor Association completely destroy any help the buyer's agent can be to the buyer:

1. They can't talk about square footage. So you either look at many houses that clearly are not the size you're looking for, or you spend countless hours narrowing down the list using the Allegheny County Assessment website.

2. They can't give you any advice on areas that you might like or tell you what an area is like. Nada. Zip. Nothing.

3. Because of #1, combined with many non-MLS sales, they cannot run adequate comps based upon the age of the house, the condition and the square footage. Again, you'll spend your time scrolling through the Allegheny County Assessment website to do your own comps to come up with an offer.

4. You don't just give them a price and they go off and negotiate with the seller; it's a long drawn out process of contracts flying back and forth. The experiences of my co-workers without buyer's agents was quite different.

I guess this explains why most natives don't use buyer's agents - something I just learned by asking around the office: "When you bought your house, did your realtor charge a fee?" "The person selling the house?" "No, your realtor." "Why would I have a realtor if I'm buying..." They just spot a house they like, make an offer, negotiate, and buy it.

My experience was the exact opposite of your list. Our agent was a friend of a friend so I don't know if she went the extra mile for us but I know this office in general (North Huntingdon/Irwin - Howard Hanna) has had good things said about many of its agents. I got good comps., I was told the approximate square footage (measured it out myself on the first visit) and was told to jump on this one ASAP (we had been looking for 1.5 months already) as it was way underpriced. It went on the market Monday AM and we worked out a deal by 8pm Monday night. We were one of 3 offers and each got one chance to counter offer and we offered $1k over asking and won the bidding war. The house actually appraised for 6k over what we paid for it.

We knew what areas we wanted so the agent didn't have to do much leg work there. She also showed us FSBO homes which she would have gotten nada on most likely.

It took us 1.5 months because our price point was on the low end of what we could afford and we didn't want to extend ourselves too much. She still found us 3-4 houses per week to look at that were close but not quite what we wanted.

It is my understanding that the majority of the buyer's agents fee goes to the company and not the agent. I could be wrong thoug.