Recently put our house on the market. We did a lot of comps beforehand and had a pretty good idea of where we should list the house to sell quickly. Two houses on our street have been on the market for a few months, so we didn't want to mess around. The listing agent has been great.
Included cleaning and photos; organized staging. House looks great, and the process has been super professional. Her contract states that she takes a 5% commission. 3% goes to the selling agent, and 2% to the buyer's agent. The exception is if she is both the buying and selling agent; in that case, she takes only 3%. Seems fair.
So, the house went live this past Friday. We've had 4 showings already and at least one more scheduled for tomorrow. The feedback we've gotten so far is that the house shows well. One of the buying agents turned out to be an old neighbor of mine; he told me he thinks we were priced right and that the house shows well. We'll see if his buyers make an offer.
Ok, so our listing agent called today and said there is a weird situation and she's not sure what to do. Apparently, she has a family that she's been working with for several months, trying to help them find a place in our area. She didn't think they'd like our place because of a few things we can't control (yard size, no pool, no 3rd car garage), but I guess they liked it and want to make an offer. They want to come in about $10k below asking.
The weird situation, as she explained, is that her contract says she would only take 3% if she reps both sides, but the intention was that if someone without an agent called and she ended up repping them, she wouldn't essentially double dip. That agreement wasn't necessarily intended for a situation in which she was actively working with buyers. Moreover, she had her assistant (a licensed realtor) do some of the showings for this family (including our house). The assistant expects to get a commission for the work that she's done.
Now, the offer came in under the assistant's name. It's unlikely that we had ever made the connection, so I'm glad she called to tell me the situation. It also feels a little off.
Now, if she were the agent for both sides and only took 3%, we would have a little wiggle room in negotiations. For example, a 500k house would have a 25k commission at 5%, but only a 15k commission at 3%. We could technically lower the price by $10k with the lower commission and walk away with pretty much the same amount. That's not the case here; she's essentially suggesting that she should get her 3% and her assistant should get 2%. So, we'd be doing $10k under and another, let's say $10k in commission for her assistant.
I imagine we could argue that the contract we signed would be for 3%. She could argue that the buyers belong to her assistant. Other than what she's told me, I don't know if we could prove otherwise.
Of course, we can counter and just let her know that the offer is good if we do 3% commission, or we can do the asking price at 5% commission - she can work that out with her buyers. I'd have to do the math, but the results would be pretty similar.
We can also give it some time to see if anyone else makes an offer. Two of the buyer agents said they were looking at a couple of places and would be making a decision soon. That doesn't mean anything, necessarily.
We're a little unsure because the market doesn't have people grabbing houses right away...but the initial interest has been good. If the house sits for more than 2.5 months, the 10k we'd lose in accepting this offer would just go back into the mortgage, HOA, and other payments.
It seems like this is all on the up and up, but I also don't want to get played. She originally suggested that we list at the exact price her buyers offered. After discussing, she suggested that we list about 10k higher.
No expiration on the offer, so we have a minute to see...but it also seems like buyers aren't in a hurry.
Not really sure if I have a question...just curious if I'm missing something. I suspect we'll counter and see what they say, but also don't want to jump too early just in case...but don't want to miss an opportunity and end up selling for less or dropping the price down the line.
What's your take on all of this?
[link] [comments]
source https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/1uuxnv6/when_the_selling_agent_is_also_the_buyers_agent/
Comments
Post a Comment