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We've been looking for homes for a few months now with an agent. We found a FSBO property we were interested in (not found by our agent) and we brought it to our agent and asked to see it. She told us it wasn't in her database and that it didn't appear to be available. We drove by and saw the sign up in their yard so my husband contacted the owner and set up a time to see the house.
We informed our agent when we'd be seeing it and we saw several houses that day with the agent, including the FSBO. We contacted the seller beforehand to ask if we could bring the agent and she said we could bring whoever we wanted.
So we fell in love with the house and went to see it a second time before making an offer. We did this sans agent as it was a spur of the moment one-more-look thing to put our minds at ease.
House listed at 157k, we offered at 150 plus agent's 3 percent. We received a counter for 156k and no agent's fee.
Obviously not a lot of budge but most importantly we are left stuck on what to do with our agent in this deal. We don't want her to get the rough end of the deal but WE don't want the rough end for ourselves either. To keep negotiating with an agent's fee in the mix - is this a smart decision? I feel they've made it clear they don't want to pay it so I don't want to offend them and make negotiating further any more difficult. Technically we found the property ourselves, set up the showings ourselves, and the only thing she has done has come along to one showing and helped us draft our first offer. What is appropriate in a scenario like this? Should we try to pay our agent a reduced rate out of pocket?
I negotiate FSBO's often and I call and chat about compensation before a showing that way there aren't any surprises. If you don't have a buyer agency agreement, then it is up to you and your moral center about what to do from there. You need to decide if your agent has brought any value to you or not. The fact that you are talking about how you found this on your own, etc tells me that you don't really value your agent.
So I guess the question is are you willing to pay $156,000 for the house?
Why do you want the seller to pay the realtor. That is just making it more complicated. You offered 150 with 3% fee of 4500. So really seller was netting 145,500. Why not just offer $145,500 and pay your realtor the $4500. Seller is FSBO for a reason so if you want your realtor to get paid do it yourself.
I also have no idea why you got your realtor involved when you found the house yourself. But now you had the realtor do work like show the home and write an offer which probably deserves to get compensated. The whole point of going FSBO is so that the 3% can get cut out of the deal which helps both parties. Involving you realtor in this just created another party to compensate.
You should see if you can agree on a price with the seller and then pay your realtor whatever you feel is justified. Paying the seller and having him pay your realtor is not going to save you any money. If he wall take 154,000 with a 3% commission then he will take $150,000 without any commission.
We value our agent in that we know she has made effort and done a good job of showing us ten - fifteen houses before this. This particular deal was a little off-putting for us because after we found the house ourselves, she basically told us we couldn't see it - we had to do the work to see it. At the time it felt shady or wrong to see the house behind her back so we told her about it. We had a few other houses we wanted to see too all in the same neighborhood, so we saw them all together. We didn't go trying to get her involved. She wanted it disclosed if we found anything. If what we did was the wrong thing, we didn't know.
Thanks for your input. I guess it is a question of etiquette and whether we "want" to compensate her. We can't afford to give her a lot of money out of pocket. We also aren't cut-throat people and it's very hard for us to cut her out of the deal. We don't know anyone who's experienced a similar situation and can't find info on what the best thing to do might be. We'd like everyone compensated fairly. Unfortunately we are just too green at all this to be certain what is fair.
We also aren't cut-throat people and it's very hard for us to cut her out of the deal. We don't know anyone who's experienced a similar situation and can't find info on what the best thing to do might be. We'd like everyone compensated fairly. Unfortunately we are just too green at all this to be certain what is fair.
How are you going to negotiate directly with the seller as the transaction goes on? Are you assertive enough to deal with repairs?
We've been looking for homes for a few months now with an agent. We found a FSBO property we were interested in (not found by our agent) and we brought it to our agent and asked to see it. She told us it wasn't in her database and that it didn't appear to be available. We drove by and saw the sign up in their yard so my husband contacted the owner and set up a time to see the house.
We informed our agent when we'd be seeing it and we saw several houses that day with the agent, including the FSBO. We contacted the seller beforehand to ask if we could bring the agent and she said we could bring whoever we wanted.
So we fell in love with the house and went to see it a second time before making an offer. We did this sans agent as it was a spur of the moment one-more-look thing to put our minds at ease.
House listed at 157k, we offered at 150 plus agent's 3 percent. We received a counter for 156k and no agent's fee.
Obviously not a lot of budge but most importantly we are left stuck on what to do with our agent in this deal. We don't want her to get the rough end of the deal but WE don't want the rough end for ourselves either. To keep negotiating with an agent's fee in the mix - is this a smart decision? I feel they've made it clear they don't want to pay it so I don't want to offend them and make negotiating further any more difficult. Technically we found the property ourselves, set up the showings ourselves, and the only thing she has done has come along to one showing and helped us draft our first offer. What is appropriate in a scenario like this? Should we try to pay our agent a reduced rate out of pocket?
Did your agent get you to sign a Buyers Agency Agreement?
In my opinion, you should do the right thing and pay your agent out of your own pocket if the seller won't.
But no one can MAKE you do that if your agent wasn't smart enough to get you to sign an agency agreement.
But no one can MAKE you do that if your agent wasn't smart enough to get you to sign an agency agreement.
The agent should have also stepped in and done the initial negotiations on a 1 time showing agreement including a fee with the seller before they toured the house.
When you told her that you were interested in seeing this house that was the time you agent should have explained to you the details about FSBO's and found out from the seller if they were willing to pay her. That would have been better than just trying to steer you away from it by saying it wasn't available. I can't criticize her for not finding it for you. She really couldn't have if it isn't on her database.
What I would have done was told you that the seller isn't going to pay a realtor, so if you decide to look at it and buy it you will have to do it on your own. That means dealing with the contract, repairs and all the details without help. Do you even know if you are paying a fair price? Most FSBO's I have seen are over priced.
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