The influential National Association of Realtors and several brokerages were ordered to pay damages to home sellers who said they were forced to pay excessive fees to real estate agents.
www.nytimes.com
Long overdue IMO.
I understand seller agents. They have to stage your home, list it, hold open homes, do showings, take offers.
What the eff does a buyer agent do?
We can all use realtor, zillow, redfin, etc, and find homes. I'm the one who finds the home. I'm the one who goes to the open house. The few times I've asked a buyer agent, how much should I bid? I NEVER got an answer that was market-specific and competitive, it was always a "the highest you feel comfortable with." Some of them even allowed me to bid list price, knowing they had offers at or above list price (what's the point?!). So I'm the one who found the home, went to the open house, and decide what price to bid.
The ONLY thing the buyer agent will do is submit the standard California Association of Realtor purchase offer form (16 pg document) with my offer numbers, a proof my downpayment, and a pre-approval letter. That is it!
After that, the next "tough" thing a buyer agent can do is negotiate on your behalf for seller repairs/credits after the home inspection.
THAT. IS. IT.
Everything else, the seller agent and the escrow office can handle. I just have to sign, sign, sign.
For this home purchase, it was listed at 1.375m. Knowing the market, I felt it was purposefully underlisted to drive more bids. So I decided to use the seller agent directly and told him, YOU be my buyer agent and as the seller agent, you tell me the price that would win this place and make the seller very likely to accept offer, and not have any bidding war situation. He is the one who suggested (well, directly said) that 1.425m would be a winner. To me, that still seemed underpriced for this house. I asked him if he was sure? He said yes. Offer accepted.
In the end, my first buyer requests for repairs/credit was accepted by the seller at full value (all 18,437 I asked for). There was no negotiation here. Had I used my own buyer agent, this would have been the same result.
So what good would a buyer agent have done for me? I was ready to offer 1.5m to 1.550m for this home. And my buyer agent would have been ABSOLUTELY thrilled to submit that offer. After all, they get 2.5% of that value.
The sellers are happy. I offered nearly 50k above, their father is dead, the house is empty, and the adult children are all getting their windfall. Why would they say no? I'm sure they aren't happy giving me back 18.5k to my closing costs, but the dollar signs are still too high for them to truly care. They still got 50k - 18.5k = 31.5k over their asking price.
And this seller agent said that since he's representing both sides, he would gift both sides, each 3.5k towards our closing costs as his way of saying thanks.
Looking at the paperwork, it looks like the agent commission is 64,125. On a 1.425m house that is 4.5%. I know per the listing the buyer agent fee is 2.5%, which means the agent only took a 2% seller commission (one of the lowest I've seen here). Usually, seller agents take 3-3.5%.
en.wikipedia.org
