Today, we're going to go through six mistakes that your real estate agent might be making right now.
All right, Adam, let's dive straight in.
Number 1, not getting offers in writing. Why is that a bad thing?
Look, if you're trying to get a buyer to commit to a property, they might be saying, you know, after talk on a weekend,
which is absolutely crazy, if they're not committing in writing and they're taking the time to make that offer,
one, your offer might just be off the cart or two, you're not getting them to commit emotionally to the property
and it's the emotional commitment to the property
that actually allows you, as an agent, to negotiate them up in price.
So it's a good one to look out for. So even on the buyer side, I guess,
the agent will know you're much more serious if you're putting an offer in writing, rather than just saying,
"Yeah, mate. I'll give you $500,000 with that finance," you looked like a bit of an amateur.
So that's definitely one to look out for.
Mistake #2 that your agent is probably making is not getting enough info from the buyer.
Why is that important? Look sometimes, agents can be a bit like order takers.
They'll just take the offer and present it to the owner.
As an agent, you want to find out the intricacies, so you might find out some important things like are they pre-approved?
How likely they actually get financed? Even the timeframes that they want to buy,
you might find out the buyers, their rent is expiring or they’re have a kid
and they need to be in the place to find and as the agent, you can presumably use that
to help negotiate and sell your place for more. So I think that's a pretty good one.
Yeah, as an agent, make sure they're asking the questions. Make sure they can explain to you
who's the buyer actually is, not just, "Here's an offer. This is what the offers for."
Number 3, this one happens all the time. I know it happened to me
when I'm trying to sell place in Sydney a few years ago.
It is agreeing to list your place at a price that will never sell.
So why do they do that first? Why does agents do this?
Why is it such a common mistake they make and how do you protect yourself?
Look, it's a shame that some agents do that but some agents will go in with the idea of,
"I'll list property at whatever price and work out selling later on."
You don't want that as an owner because the property's going to sit on the market, it's going to become a bit stale.
So best things you can do is jump into the sold section of the real estate website,
have a look for a home that's comparable to yours.
Don't try and work out a price based on something that's completely different.
It just doesn't work. So get a bit of information in your pocket,
so when your agent comes in, you can tell if they're telling you the truth.
What would you look at? If you're comparing my house,
it's a four-bedroom in Stafford, as an agent, how would you compare that?
Would you compare it to a place on the other side of town? How does that work?
Look, you really need to make sure it is four bedrooms. If it's, you know, three bedrooms,
you can try to work out a little bit to give you a lower base for a price but then again,
don't go with the five-bedroom. Is it a two-story? Is it a one-story? Is it brick? Is it timber?
As an agent, we should be able to give you a really detailed, in-depth look of why we think this house
is comparable to your house
and if they can't, then they're just trying to tell you the price that you want to hear.
Mistake #4 and it's a bit of a used car salesman tactic but it happens,
is the agent cutting their commission instantly or straight after hearing you?
So why do they do that? And why is that a bit of a red flag?
Look, some agents will drop commission
and that's okay during a negotiation or something like that, to try and help to get a deal together.
You know, they're kind of working for you then. But if an agent's willing to drop any commission straight away
as soon as you ask, when you're there listing presentation and you're deciding to sell,
just imagine what they're going to do when they actually go to negotiate your property.
They're probably, you know, not selling a lot of homes.
Hopefully, then you've research but they might be selling an amount of homes in the area that they need to
and they're probably a little hungry, they need some money,
who knows what's going to happen at the other end of the transaction.
When they're selling your home and they're trying to negotiate that last $5000,
are they going to push for that $5000 for you or are they going to ask you to come down?
As one to remember, you know, when agents just starting off, one thing I know I've heard people do,
is they just want to get listings to make it look like that they're bigger and more busy than they actually are.
So they use these tactics, so they've got lots of listings under their belt
but listing isn't the same as selling, so you need to make sure you look through their history
and what they've done because you could be probably sit on the market and get stale and not sell.
Yeah. Mistake #5 that a lot of agents
might be making right now is not preparing you as a seller on how to prepare your property, how to present it.
Why is that a big deal? Look at the moment,
when the market is pretty buoyant, it's pretty easy.
People will come in and buy the house but you really got to think, look at the unit market, it's okay
but the best way to get a buyer in the unit market at the moment is to make sure the property is looking fantastic.
They're mostly first-time buyers. First-time buyers fall in love with what they see.
They don't think about what it could be. They haven't got the experience,
so if you walk into a two-bedroom unit that's been painted, fresh carpet, it's nice and tidy,
it's got many staging furniture, that's going to sell a lot quicker and for more money than something that...
So yeah, hopefully you're not doing that anyway but a little bit of thought from the agent, at the outset,
just to think what can we change, do we need to do the gardens, does the grass actually might for the photos, basic stuff like that.
If they're not doing that, then they're not presenting your home as well as it could be.
I see my fair share of selling a house in Australia and I know they say like, even the first five seconds
of where you walk through that first gate into a house down the path, that you open the front door,
that's always more important than the next five minutes because they've already kind of made up their mind by then,
so definitely, think about how you presented a property, make the beds, tied up the kitchen, it's simple stuff like that.
It might sound silly but people don't do that and agents won't do that.
They also go through that, they might be too and just try and hold the property.
And the last mistake which it's a bit of a tough one to gauge
but you know, sometimes agents might not be telling the truth. So how do you work that out?
Well, it's a tough one. It takes a bit of research.
You've probably, you know, as we spoke about earlier, go and check out sold properties
on RealEstate.com to make sure they tell you the truth on price.
Go and check out RankMyAgent.com.au or other review sections to make sure
what they're saying about themselves -- other people are saying about themselves
and make sure when they're negotiating, that you get it in writing
so you can actually see this is what they are, this is what they've done and other than that, good luck.
So yeah, there's not much else you cannot, unfortunately do but I hope you got a good judge of character.
That's it for today. How did you find the video?
What mistake do you think your agent is making? Let us know in the comments below
and if you'd like to hit Adam up, we'll going to leave the details below there and that's it.
See you next time. See you next time, guys.