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Or like me you make sure you get the price lowered because the realtor and the seller have agreed on taking less commission!!!
It worked so far.....and for the people who stated they aren't willing to do so...others are
If you can have a deal close fast and move on to the next many are willing to do that for less.
For another who thinks I want the sellers agent do something for me....no I can do things myself. I can call a home inspector and since I don't need a loan...there isn't much else to do and we are very good in looking at HUD settlement statements and have discovered many mistakes which saved us a lot of money, even being on the sellers side and having a realtor who didn't advised us to look it over....if we have to do so much due diligence and almost have to do everything, why not doing it our self and why would I gget a realtors license.....I don't want work as a realtor, so why should I need one, I only see more negative sides to get it than positive once...in my case.
Let the people with a license do the work and hopefully do it well.
But hiring the listing agent to be both the buyer and seller real estate agent is dumb because they get the full commission and haven't done the full work of a regular buyers agent.
Bentlee is in Florida. Bentlee sometimes will use a Realtor®, sometimes not. In Florida, most of the agents here are transaction brokers and very often handle both sides of the transaction. It is not 'dumb'. Sometimes they get the full commission and sometimes they negotiate the commission to less...but in either case, you are correct. They are not doing the full work of a buyer's agent, they are doing the full work of both the buyer agent and seller agent.
Bentlee..she told you she had an offer coming in. For a house that is in an excellent location at a good price, if you really wanted the house, you could have adjusted your schedule. You didn't. The seller took the other offer. No biggie, no reason to think something was askew. Happens all the time.
You were told that there were 2 other showings, you were told they expected to get an offer, you decided that you would wait.
Now you think the agent did something wrong. In my eyes the agent did everything right.
I'm only surprised that a seller is excepting an offer immediately even if more potential buyers are coming to see the house on the same day...specially since the realtor wnated to know how fast we could close since the lady wants to move a.s.a.p. and we can close faster than waiting until the end of the month and the realtor stated that if the contract will fall through she will call me....that made it sound strange....
For me it doesn't matter, but I never heard that a seller has to decide within such a short time frame...mostly they have the same day to think it over....that made us think the seller isn't aware of all of this.....also we offered to come the day we called which was the day before the offer was made! Sounds like a red flag to me...but there are so many houses on the market so not to much important for us, but just wanted to see what others would think about this....and specially sellers.....maybe it doesn't matter if not all the info gets to them and this is an old widow selling her home....
A seller can take time to think it over, but if they think the offer is good enough, they don't have to think it over and can decide to accept right away. Unless you are privy to the amount, terms, and conditions of the offer that was accepted, you have no way of knowing how good it was.
For all you know, the agent did advise the seller that someone else was planning on viewing the property and the seller decided to accept the offer anyway. Agents can advise our clients; we can't make decisions for them.
As long as you talk the buying and selling agent into less commission, it's not dumb.
I just made an offer on a house that I found on my own. I needed an agent so I used Ziprealty. They prepared an offer, made one or two phone calls, and arranged for me to see the house (I drove myself there). For all that work, my listing agent has the potential of receiving $15,000 in comission! Now let's start talking about dumb!
Ah well, it's a short sale and, while the comissions aren't disclosed to me, I feel it's probably not going to be the standard 6% split fifty-fifty.
A LOT of what an agent does occurs after the house is found and the offer is written. If you're an experienced buyer (as in, have bought more than 3 or 4 houses in the past few years) and/or it's a straightforward deal (not a short sale or foreclosure, unless you're experienced in those, as well), you might not need them and can proceed on your own. Otherwise, trust me, the agents will earn every penny.
Short sale or foreclosure, the bank will pay less commission and demand more work, and they WON'T pass any of those savings on to the unrepresented buyer.
By the way, if you're the buyer, it's not your listing agent that's going to get the commission, it's the bank's.
A LOT of what an agent does occurs after the house is found and the offer is written. If you're an experienced buyer (as in, have bought more than 3 or 4 houses in the past few years) and/or it's a straightforward deal (not a short sale or foreclosure, unless you're experienced in those, as well), you might not need them and can proceed on your own. Otherwise, trust me, the agents will earn every penny.
Short sale or foreclosure, the bank will pay less commission and demand more work, and they WON'T pass any of those savings on to the unrepresented buyer.
By the way, if you're the buyer, it's not your listing agent that's going to get the commission, it's the bank's.
I disagree. The only thing the buyer's agent will have to do is call every couple days to see if the bank has acted on the offer. If eventually the bank and seller accept, then all she will have to do is show up for closing. Simple. Done.
Now, in a regular real estate decision the sellers may not accept my offer and then counteroffer. Rewriting the contracts and faxing everything can take up time. In this case, though, there will be no counteroffers, it's a straight shot.
As you pointed out, though, my agent won't get much. I don't know the commission arrangement yet but I don't believe it's in my agent's favor.
There's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes, particularly in a transaction where a bank is the other party or is sharing decisions with the seller, that most folks don't ever see their agents do. Perhaps we should make it more clear how much work goes into shepherding some of these deals through.
However, that being said, good luck with your short sale purchase. May it go as smoothly as you dream.
My point was that your agent is a buyer's agent; the seller's agent (whether the seller be a bank or an individual) is the listing agent. Here, we don't rewrite contracts, we make changes to them and initial, and that occurs whether a bank is the seller or not. We also don't fax (degradation of quality is abysmal), we scan and email for the most part. That, too, has to be done in transactions where banks are participants - they counter just like anyone else.
There's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes, particularly in a transaction where a bank is the other party or is sharing decisions with the seller, that most folks don't ever see their agents do. Perhaps we should make it more clear how much work goes into shepherding some of these deals through.
What kind of things? Can you name some specific activities? I know that they schedule the appointment with the escrow company. Not sure about anything else that goes on.
I wish everyone would take their fax machines and throw them in the ocean (or sanitary landfill). When I sold my house in Arizona, the real estate agent didn't have a scanner so she had to fax me everything which was challenging for me. The one I'm doing now they can do somewhat electronic but it looks like she simply faxed it to her company to get it electronic. It's still poor quality.
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