Buying a house - Real estate agents

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#1403850 11-Oct-2015 14:06

Aredwood: The other problem is that there are too many real estate agents in relation to the number of sales. This means that each agent has to put alot of effort into getting new listings. When they could otherwise be working on selling instead. Had an agent tell me that if I refer someone to them and they then list their house with them. They will pay me $500 just for the referral. It also means that an agent will have a really variable income.

Ok, Some restate agents have lots of low paid employees who can NOT hold a great estate licence.
THEY get paid an hourly rate to house site open homes etc.

HOWEVER, they can not sign any contracts.

SO, an estate garnet can do sod all work but sign lots of contracts.
Because they sign lots of contracts people think they are more likely to sell their house than someone else.

So that estate agent makes lots of listings, and @ $500 each they can do quite well.

throbb

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#1403973 11-Oct-2015 20:20

So went to the Auction today, and got the house for 50k under the reserve. Wasn't any obvious investors there, maybe the new laws that came in last week has cooled the market a little. Seen worse houses go for a lot more in the last couple of months.

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#1403979 11-Oct-2015 20:39

Nice

sep11guy

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#1403986 11-Oct-2015 20:44

throbb: So went to the Auction today, and got the house for 50k under the reserve. Wasn't any obvious investors there, maybe the new laws that came in last week has cooled the market a little. Seen worse houses go for a lot more in the last couple of months.

Congrats good work

networkn

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#1404013 11-Oct-2015 21:23

sir1963:
networkn:
Geektastic:
sir1963: How about their "commission"

A house takes the same amount of work year over year (on average) to sell.

Just because a house goes up in price 10%, why should the commission ?

This is like your mechanic charging based on the value of your car.

Realestate agents need to be bought under control, they are adding a huge amount of cost for little return.

Realestate agents are the LEAST qualified of anyone involved in the sale (Building inspectors , lawyers, etc) and yet they
make the most money by far.

Based on skill set and qualifications of all the agents I have encountered, I would pay them no more than $30/hour.

If you said that they did an hour a week of genuine, only on your house work for say 6 months, the fee should not exceed $1000 plus expenses to sell a house in 6 months.

How would they reasonably make a living on that ?

Oh I guess the same way shop workers and a whole bunch of people have to reasonably make a living on $15/hr.

They are sales droids, nothing more.

To suggest they are no better qualified or skilled than a bus driver is just disengenuis. There are some ratbag real estate agents, I've had my share, but really...

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#1404016 11-Oct-2015 21:30

They (the high volume sellers) earn way more than most of us combined, drive flasher cars, own more property ... not a bad choice of profession ... !

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#1404028 11-Oct-2015 22:02

joker97: They (the high volume sellers) earn way more than most of us combined, drive flasher cars, own more property ... not a bad choice of profession ... !

Nothing stopping you from going into Real Estate. It's clearly really easy money with no risk or anything! :)

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Linuxluver

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#1404063 11-Oct-2015 23:12

I never buy a house at an auction.

Yes...I have less choice.

Yes...I always get a house at a price I can afford.

I just don't do auctions. I tell the real estate agents that up front. So they then get me to put in "pre-auction" offers.....and that's often all it takes.

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I've been on Geekzone over 16 years..... Time flies....

sir1963

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#1404084 12-Oct-2015 07:36

Linuxluver: I never buy a house at an auction.

Yes...I have less choice.

Yes...I always get a house at a price I can afford.

I just don't do auctions. I tell the real estate agents that up front. So they then get me to put in "pre-auction" offers.....and that's often all it takes.

I don'y do auctions either.
Its a great way to waste money , you end up paying for LIMS/Building reports fro a house you may not even get to own.

Those reports should be done by the vendor from an independent party (i.e. not the real estate firm), be liable for inaccuracies, etc.

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#1404131 12-Oct-2015 09:48

sir1963:

I don'y do auctions either.
Its a great way to waste money , you end up paying for LIMS/Building reports fro a house you may not even get to own.

Those reports should be done by the vendor from an independent party (i.e. not the real estate firm), be liable for inaccuracies, etc.

That's a great point really. I wonder how that would go down if every seller needed to supply a current LIM 2 weeks in advance before being able to go to Auction.

throbb

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#1404142 12-Oct-2015 10:14

Jaxson:
sir1963:

I don'y do auctions either.
Its a great way to waste money , you end up paying for LIMS/Building reports fro a house you may not even get to own.

Those reports should be done by the vendor from an independent party (i.e. not the real estate firm), be liable for inaccuracies, etc.

That's a great point really. I wonder how that would go down if every seller needed to supply a current LIM 2 weeks in advance before being able to go to Auction.

I haven't been to an Auction that didn't have a LIM provided by the seller. Builders report on the other hand is less common to have that supplied.

throbb

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#1404145 12-Oct-2015 10:21

Linuxluver: I never buy a house at an auction.

Yes...I have less choice.

Yes...I always get a house at a price I can afford.

I just don't do auctions. I tell the real estate agents that up front. So they then get me to put in "pre-auction" offers.....and that's often all it takes.

Doesn't putting in a pre-auction offer just effectively bring the auction forward?

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#1404251 12-Oct-2015 12:14

I dont get the anti auction comments. If I wanted buy X house at up to 500k, and it was sign priced at 500k I guess I'd buy it. If it was at acuction and went for 550k I won't buy it, if it went for 485k I would buy it. Being open to any avenue widens the choice. The key factory is the house, not the means of buying it

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#1404289 12-Oct-2015 13:12

tdgeek: I dont get the anti auction comments. If I wanted buy X house at up to 500k, and it was sign priced at 500k I guess I'd buy it. If it was at acuction and went for 550k I won't buy it, if it went for 485k I would buy it. Being open to any avenue widens the choice. The key factory is the house, not the means of buying it

So, I assume you dont get a LIMS or builders report.

Some banks can ask for these as part of the lending requirements

So, if you DO get both, it can easily set you back $2000+

So, unless you get these, you dont get a loan, so even if your $500,000 house goes for $400,000 you can not bid.

If you do pay out $2000 for them and the place goes for 550K, you dont get the house and you are still out 2K

There can also be limited time to get a builders etc report, so these can cost more to do in a rush.

I would never buy a house without these being done, I have see it go wrong for others too many times. And realestate agents deliberately avoid
asking questions, once they know they have to disclose , i.e. if the house down the road has been set up as a 1/2 way house for criminals, house next door sold to a Kindy, etc etc etc.

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#1404317 12-Oct-2015 13:34

sir1963:
tdgeek: I dont get the anti auction comments. If I wanted buy X house at up to 500k, and it was sign priced at 500k I guess I'd buy it. If it was at acuction and went for 550k I won't buy it, if it went for 485k I would buy it. Being open to any avenue widens the choice. The key factory is the house, not the means of buying it

So, I assume you dont get a LIMS or builders report.

Some banks can ask for these as part of the lending requirements

So, if you DO get both, it can easily set you back $2000+

So, unless you get these, you dont get a loan, so even if your $500,000 house goes for $400,000 you can not bid.

If you do pay out $2000 for them and the place goes for 550K, you dont get the house and you are still out 2K

There can also be limited time to get a builders etc report, so these can cost more to do in a rush.

I would never buy a house without these being done, I have see it go wrong for others too many times. And realestate agents deliberately avoid
asking questions, once they know they have to disclose , i.e. if the house down the road has been set up as a 1/2 way house for criminals, house next door sold to a Kindy, etc etc etc.

How does an auction make a difference for the above? I could buy a house off a mate, off a deadline treaty (I hate them) off an agent with an asking price that the seller accepts, or by auction. All of those allow you to carry out due diligence. If it was a standard agent sale, you would need LIM etc, or you could be conditional on the LIM etc, either way you still have to pay for it. In our case, we sold one of our two houses at auction last Thursday, we provided the LIM report. I'd say thats standard, you cant have 28 people paying for one house's LIM report, nor could you have one person like you or me, going to auction with our eyes on 5 places, and have to buy 5 LIM reports. What if you were looking at 5 houses by non auction?

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