Important Questions to ask your Agent

How is your fee calculated & how much will you negotiate it for me?

We usually charge on a performance basis so the more we get from the buyers, the more our fee, creating a win-win situation & an incentive to drive our buyers to their highest prices. The more we are able to do for our sellers & the higher we drive our buyers in price, the greater chance we will get paid a higher fee, putting a lot of pressure on us to perform at no risk to the seller.

If an agent charging a 1% or 2% fee sells a home for $20,000 less than an agent charging a 3% or 4% fee, they have cost the client a lot more money in lost sale funds than they are saving them with reduced fees. We can provide lots of examples of other agents looking after homes which subsequently sold well under the fair market value; our job is to ensure that never happens to our clients.

If sellers pay an appropriate fee to their agent, the agent will generally pay due regard to the value of their home and actively negotiate with buyers to get as much money as possible rather than jumping on the first offer. It is therefore very important to find out as much as you can about the agent(s) you are employing upfront & whether their skills are worth paying for.

How can you prove the selling price you have offered me is accurate?

The Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) outlines all the homes in a suburb which are currently selling & have recently sold to estimate a potential selling price for a client’s home. However, we have proven many times that comparable homes do not always get comparable prices, so the CMA is simply designed to give sellers a gauge of value & the reality is, no one really knows what final price a home will sell for, no matter what an agent promises.

The other benefit of a good CMA is that it should highlight which agencies are performing effectively and protecting their clients’ sale prices & which agencies are just trying to get a sale at any price no matter how much they have to discount the home (and therefore the seller’s profit) for their buyers. The depth of information an agent presents in a CMA illustrates their knowledge of the area and knowing how our clients home compares to others often allows us to justify a higher price to buyers.

How many agents will be actively working to sell my home?

There are 60+ sales agents in our company spread across 7 sales offices and all these agents have fair and equal opportunity like myself, to contact their buyers about your home, and then negotiate the sale at the highest price. The agents then present that price to me for the final negotiations so we can then weigh up all the offers generated throughout the 60+ agents and present them to you. No other agency in Canberra works like this, and because of this structure I personally sell 74% of the homes I list. This means my sellers truly get to select the best buyers in the entire marketplace as I give my fee to other agents in the company 26% of the time as they have sourced a better buyer than myself.