How do you go dealing with agents ?

[RumpledElf]

He answers his emails , sh?t I like him already . And what he even answers your questions in that email , instead of giving you nothing and trying to trap you into the office first , what the - send him over !

Well, his office is 70km away so it saves him a drive, but still ...

I asked that agent to let us know if any other houses in my price range come up in the next 6 months, since the guy with the house that has been listed for $180k for way over a year now aparently won't budge downward on price.

I shouldn't be surprised, that agent's selling fees are much, much lower than both of the local agents. The vendor of this house is trying to squeeze every last penny out of the deal. Thing is, after the good email experience I'm probably going to go with that out of town agent to sell my house rather than the more expensive local one.

... when I asked the local agent to point us at any cheaper 4br houses for sale he pointed out this miniscule 3br hovel with a fibro enclosed front verandah. Sorry, that's not even close to 4br and is probably smaller than our current house

 

[blaster]

The out of town guy sounds a bit like this guy we have over here . He doesn't even have an office . All of his properties go into the PO window and shop boards through other towns, net.
You know what , his one of the few , maybe the only one actually that I don't mind dealing with at all.
He does a roaring trade but his surprisingly down beat about the industry or even a seller that's asking too much , he'll just tell you. Same with a town or something you might be looking at as an investment.
His told me a couple of times , wouldn't buy there or forget that one it's not a safe buy whatever.
Or often I've commented something negative on a property , he'll agree with you.
Could be his game , dunno but his a classic.

Cheers

 

[RumpledElf]

Our other local agent is pretty good at telling it how he sees it (we bought our current house off him) but he's still very country. It really is a shame how the bulk of the listings here go to the same agent - they just have the biggest market share, they're local, people see their signs everywhere so they use them. I had my house listed with them 6 months, they weren't that good. Wouldn't use them again. I mean, if they want $5000 commission for an $85k house (and it wasn't a fixed %, it was a scale written out in arbitrary increments on a piece of paper), what would they want for a $175k one? $15k?

 

[Alien]

I had a similar situation to the OP and decided to use a buyers agent which cost me $1k. Saved me a lot of time and hassle in the end.

I used Scott Durrant from Successful Ways http://successfulways.com.au/ flat fee only if your successful in exchanging contracts

I'd be definitely using Scott again.

ps I have no association with this company nor Scott other than being a happy client.

 

[jaycee]

Alien, the link doesn't seem to work, at least for me.

never mind, working now...

 

[travelbug]

I had a similar situation to the OP and decided to use a buyers agent which cost me $1k. Saved me a lot of time and hassle in the end.

I used Scott Durrant from Successful Ways http://successfulways.com.au/ flat fee only if your successful in exchanging contracts

I'd be definitely using Scott again.

ps I have no association with this company nor Scott other than being a happy client.

I can't find anything on the site about being a buyers agent.

Can I ask what type of property they found for you. $1k sounds to cheap to source, do DD and help you negotiate a deal.

Or do you mean you did one of their courses?

 

[Alien]

I can't find anything on the site about being a buyers agent.

Can I ask what type of property they found for you. $1k sounds to cheap to source, do DD and help you negotiate a deal.

Or do you mean you did one of their courses?

I did one of his first home buyers courses a few years back and have only just used his services.

I had found a property and failed to negotiate with the agent (was a bit of a tool in my opinion......) and the property was given to someone else....so when I noticed the property was still for sale a few weeks later I engaged Scott as a buyers agent who did the negotiating.