Listing agent not sharing the listing?

Hi All,

I recently had a property on the market.
An exclusive contract with the largest real estate in the area.
I have never favoured exclusive contracts but now with marketing fees for realestate.com, paying for photos etc, it seems too expensive to use two agents.
In the past using two agents, worked well for me.
Exclusive has not worked out for me.

After some time ( I don't live in the area) I noticed the listing agent appeared to be the only agent in the agency to be showing buyers and passing on offers.
I never saw cards left by other agents in the office.
She never mentioned other agents showing buyers and no offers received by any other agents within the office.

I asked her, why this was so and she said she removed the cards left by other agents because she thought it was not a good look for potential buyers?
I told her it was for me, not the buyers and I liked to know about all inspections and who was coming into my property.

Has it become common within some agencies for the listing agent to... more or less hog the listing?
I wish to avoid this in the future. How do I know if more than one agent will show my property to potential buyers.
My past experience has been several agents within the agency sharing the listing.

Cheers :confused:
 
I think you will find with a lot of offices that the listing agent will be the one marketing and showing your property the vast majority of the time. If another agent has a potential buyer, it would not be uncommon for them to pass the buyer to the listing agent. The listing agent will generally have better background on the property and be in a better position to show the property.

Having the listing agent being the main/only point of contact with you is probably the best strategy also. It allows you to build a relationship with the listing agent and not receive communication from agents you don't know.

That's not to say this is the only way it works, however I wouldn't be too concerned if this is what is happening in your case.
 
I take your point

Suppose two ways to look at this.

It appears about commission and getting the largest piece of the pie.
Personally, I am not convinced this is always best for the seller.

Might be advantageous and in some cases not so, depending on who the agent is, how motivated they are, their negotiating skills etc.
Some agents knowledge is woeful. Recently I informed an agent that a property he was selling had solar panels.

As I said so far it has not given me the best results.

I believe competition motivates people. Using two agencies worked well for me, everybody likes to win.
 
The reality of appointing two agents is that you end up with two agents who don't prioritise your property, rather than one agent that is doing everything they can to sell it. It makes sense really, would you put your effort into the property you are likely to sell or the one you have a 50% chance of being the selling agent for?
 
Also remember the agents in the same agencies are in competition with each other.

Listing agent yes would want to sell the property to the buyer he introduces, however if agent x introduces the buyer to your property he/she isn't going to disclose their price to the listing agent until the last minute when all offers have been gathered. Otherwise they run the risk of losing to the listing agent saying to their buyers we have an offer of x and you get an offer of x + 1k with same conditions.
 
Most agents work off a shared listing. Eg 50% of commission goes to agency, then a split eg 25% to listing agent 25% to selling agent.

So obviously its in the listing agents interest to ensure they are also the selling agent'

Some agencies are different in that only listing agent shows and sells.
 
Now that most people use the internet to search in an area I believe one agent is enough. In the old days when people used to look in agents window or newspapers it was hard to reach everyone so they used to do "conjunctions"
 
When I worked as a REA that had 3 offices I did a sample over a quarter and the percentages made me think twice about the power of having other agents introduce buyers.

Listing Agent sold 47%
Same office but not listing agent - 21%
Other office listing - 32%

So it is about 50/50 if anything more weighted towards a different agent selling it.

Obviously it depends on the agents/agency and how the agents are paid. For us when I was working it didn't matter who listed the property the selling agent will get the same commission if it is their listing or not.

Some agencies do 20% list 20% sell and if you list & sell you get 50% (25% each). Some agencies actually weight the listing higher then selling so it could be 30% list 20% sell. Having it even encourages agents to introduce and sell to whatever property as they are not going to get paid more show x.

I must make mention that if you looked how many buyers were introduced to the property the listing agent will be higher as they would get all the internet/phone inbound enquires. However the agent introducing buyers would be a more qualified buyer of what they are looking for and as such would have the higher success rate.
 
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