Real Estate Agents

Does anyone know of a good agent that does not charge 5% Commission?

This type of percentage if horrific and grossly unfair. In the UK 1. 1/2 percent is considered excessive. None of my friends in the Uk believe me.

If an agency here got realistic they would surely clean up.

Regards

David Klein

Some charge more than 5%.

 I guess depends which area you are in, here there is an agent that charges between 1 and 1.5%

Viva tried to do it for less but I understand it failed they tried to copy the UK model more closely ,one of my clients is a real-estate agent and has worked on the CDS for many years ,the work he has to do to get a sale nowadays is in my opinion is financially reasonable else people would not put up with it now or in the past and a lot of homes have been sold on this 5% basis lets not forget.

Its all about ones perception is a Bentley worth 250000 is a decent rolex worth 15000 it depends on your view.

The main problem  he says is this----the buyer has this figure in his head and the seller has a much higher figure and neither are realistic.

He is spending a lot of time mediating between the two he says he can nurture a client over 12 months and more without success at the end

Personally I would not spend hours working with the risk of not getting paid.

I said why don't you just charge an hourly fee to the buyer that I thought would make sense, I certainly would pay if I was investing a few hundred thousand to get the right property for myself.

I do however know from my own personal experience that a lot of idiots did set up in the late 90s and early Noughties hopefully now they have all gone and a genuine buyer will get better results.

Heres hoping

Rod

Does anyone know of a good agent that does not charge 5% Commission?

This type of percentage if horrific and grossly unfair. In the UK 1. 1/2 percent is considered excessive. None of my friends in the Uk believe me.

If an agency here got realistic they would surely clean up.

Regards

David Klein

Where are you in Spain?

The agent i used was fantastic., i wont ever use anyone else ever again.   I have no idea if it was more then 5% and good luck to her if she got 20%,   to be honest i dont care either, after all i got exactly what i wanted and she sold it in no time at all.

If any agent put 1/2 a percent on, any buyer would still make an offer. Agents fee's have no bearing on a house selling if theirs no buyers.

Interesting comment. However we all have to work hard at any job to earn money but I feel personally that agents here take a higher commisson than eanywhere else in Europe.

Best wishes

David

The more informal 'corredores' often charge more like 1 1/2 - 2%, but I too find the estate agents' rates of 4 or 5% or even more, objectionable.  Lawyers often charge 1% and, depending on the individual details of the transaction, they can put in a lot more work than the agents and even face possible legal action against themselves if they don't do everything properly.  Our bank even took a 0.5% cut when we deposited our sale proceeds - the cheeky b**st**ds.  I managed to get a bit back, but not much.  If they'd asked for it, I'd have said no, so they just stole it, because they could.  It seems when you've got a bit of money, there are quite a few people around trying to get a cut.  This is the case for buyers and sellers.

Rod  

                   Viva tried to do it for less

One of our agent charges 2% the other 2 1/2. A thread on EOS went on for weeks about this and I never did discover how some of them justified what seemed to me exorbitant charges. They are not regulated and charge what they like. I 've even heard of 10% commission! 5% is a massive chunk of your proceeds, and there are other expenses, plus valia etc. and the exchange rate to consider if you are moving back. By the time you are finished a large slice of your money has gone.

baz1946-you must have more money than sense if you don't care what your agents commission was! Just ask any seller if they care what the commission will be! IVA is charged on top of that too!

 3% is about the norm over here for comms,more than the UK (no regulation either) and less than the USA (massive regulation).

I was an agent in the UK from leaving school and the fees reflect the work put in and also the volume of sales done through any office.

It will always be a bone of contention because if you sell a house too quick you haven't earned the fee and if you don't sell it, you haven't worked hard enough.

Sometimes people should look at the money rather than the percentage.

In the UK the average house price is around the 200k mark,the average sale price on the costas is about 80k and in our village 60k.

Would you rather have 1.5% of 200k (pounds) or 3% of 60k (euros)

It takes a lot more work and finance to sell a house in Spain for an agent than it does in the UK.

On camposol the agents charge less because there are quite a few of them in competition,from what i hear they are also selling in reasonable volume because it has always been a cheaper product.

anyway....

 You may be right Georgia but when the average property prices were around the 200,000 mark in Spain, no one was charging 1,5%. They were all charging 3% as  a minimum. The problem is they all became to accustomed to the big commissions and many haven't moved with the market and still want that minimum rate of 3% or even more. Why would they increase their comissions unles it wasn't to claw back some of the losses from the falling house prices. I'm not saying that isn't fair for those who really work but for many it is just daylight robbery.

I don't think it is any harder to buy a house now than it was before, you either have the money or you don't or you have credit or you don't. It is certainly harder to sell houses nowadays as there are less buyers. However one could say everyones prices should move with the market but not all estate agents are the same and some will actually invest time and resources into finding you a buyer as opposed to waiting for one to turn up as the majority did before. I think the issue now is that estate agents actually have to work and invest to earn money and what they received before for doing comparatively little has driven them to boost their comissions to either maintain their business or lifestyle.... as you say ... anyway..

baz1946-you must have more money than sense if you don't care what your agents commission was! Just ask any seller if they care what the commission will be! IVA is charged on top of that too!

Oh i have plenty of sense when it comes to my money.

Maybe something has been misread in this somehow, i didn't pay a commission in as much as sold price to me, less the agents fee, i wanted X, they put on their bit, the house got sold, i got my full amount of X...As i said i don't care if they charged whatever so long as it sold.

Every house i have sold in Spain has been sold in the very same way. I will go so far as to say in all honestly i dont know for sure what she put on the price,  i expected it to take up to two years to sell and if it didnt i wasn't to concerned. Wished it hadn't now.

Everyone has to make a profit otherwise they shut up shop and the service has gone,  i work on "Do you want to have it for sale or do you want to sell it"....and also "One percent of something is better then 100 percent of nothing", whenever i do a deal, selling or buying.

I made a profit on the house, the agent made a profit, hopefully the buyers if they sell make a profit. Now i buy the next one.

Personally I wouldn't mind paying a slightly higher fee for the house to sell quickly with good marketing etc as I would be saving on mortgage repayments etc.

Angie