IS YOUR ESTATE AGENT A TRUE ESTATE AGENT OR JUST A SELLING AGENT?

So, i have a little bug bear. I class myself as an ‘estate agent’ not a ‘selling agent’, does your estate agent? Read on…

The reason for this is because I help my clients ‘move house’. I don’t just sell their current house for them.

Your estate agent is the property expert, a professional, and has a whole host of ‘inside’ tools and knowledge which he or she used to find a buyer for your house. But, in my opinion, that’s only 50% of their job done. The other 50% comes in helping you get the keys to your next house.

This includes using all of their tools, knowledge and skills to help you negotiate the best possible price/terms on your next house. Those same skills they used to get you the best price for your current property.

Obviously your estate cannot choose or buy the house for you, but they can help you, and on many occasions I have helped my clients save literally thousands of pounds.

Here’s how they can help (but be warned, not many agents are willing to do it because they probably see themselves as ‘selling agents’ but call themselves estate agents)

So, you would go and view houses. You maybe find 1,2 or 3 that you could see yourself calling home.

Usually at this point, you would make an offer on one of those properties entering into negotiations with the sellers estate agent who is a professional negotiator and who is paid based on getting the client the highest price… and all the time, you are having to battle with your emotions because you really want this house. Your emotions will sometimes cloud your judgement and overrule your head. I don’t really see this as a level playing field do you?

How about this…. Your estate agent negotiates for you! Yes really. Put your estate agent (also a professional negotiator) in between you and the house you want to buy and so removing the emotion and helping you make the right decisions.

Us agents have many useful tools that can help with the negotiations.

Take this example:

I recently agreed the sale of one of my clients houses. She then went out and looked for suitable properties to buy. Found one and fell in love with it. I told her to come to me before doing anything and to not say too much to the estate agent (we are trained to hear buying signals). We had a quick discussion about the property and I asked her how much she would be willing to pay for the property. She said ‘the asking price’, which was £380,000. Clearly she wanted the house and I wanted to make sure she got it but the difference was I wasn’t emotionally attached to the house like she was. I asked her to give me a few hours and I would do some research, get back to here and discuss the next steps.

So, using all the tools us agents have in our tool kit, I done my research and could see that this very house had been on the market 6 months previously for £360,000 but hadn’t sold so the owners took it off the market, fitted a new cheap kitchen, and put it back on the market for £380,000. £20,000 more.

I called the client and fed all this information back to her and explained that I would love to negotiate on her behalf. She was happy for me to do so. So i rang the selling agent, introduced myself as the clients estate agent (which ensured the usual sales patter didn’t make an appearance) and we got chatting, professional to professional. I explained that I had seen that the property had been on the market previously bla bla bla.

Anyway, the long and the short of it was that I managed to secure the property for my client for £370,000… a whopping £10,000 less than she was willing to pay for it.

Clearly the client was OVER THE MOON and I have had many many clients come to me from her recommendation ever since.

Had I not offered to help her, she would have paid my fee to sell her property and most probably paid £10,000 more for the property… instead, I actually saved her a lot of money and I like to think that I paid my own fee :)

Too many ‘estate agents’ don’t offer this service to their clients and they should. Why don’t they? Well, the only reason I can think of is that they can’t be bothered.

All the best,

p.s. Would you like more impartial advice? Head on over to my FREE eGuides page by clicking here.