chinnybloke

Hi,

I've been searching mls.ca looking for houses in NS and made a few enquires and now an agent is saying they will act for us if or when we buy. Is this normal? They are offering to negotiate on our behalf to get the price down - obviously for a fee. Is this normal or do you typically just make your own offer directly to the selling agent or seller?

Thanks,
CB

Rich_007

Buyer pays no fee, buyer's agent (realtor) gets a split of the fees as paid to seller's agent by seller.

Unless there is some bizarre quirk somewhere I have not picked up on ?

Like, on the basis you see a home for sale at $200k and realtor says "if I can a deal at $190k will you pay me $2k commission" etc. Not sure how this works, if it is legal, transparent, ethical etc. Never heard anyone ever mention this kinda thing happening

Rich.

Atlantic Xpat

No, but a good real estate agent is a boon and makes the process so much easier.

A few thoughts on the housebuying experience in NL (so not so far from NS) as we experienced it....

A Real Estate Agent can show you any house whether it is listed by him/her or another agent. Basically the commission paid by the seller is split between the listing agent and the buyers agent. (Typical commission rates 5% total). The listing agent and the buyers agent can be the same person of course.

A buyers agent SHOULD NOT charge the Buyer a fee. Not unless they are some sort of relocation specialist who is providing a different service. The Buyers agent gets their share of the commission from the seller. They are working for the buyer however and should be advising you about the house and negotiating the best deal.

We had a really great local guy who took the time to show us a number of houses to help us find what we want at the price we were comfortable with. He also had the character to let us know when a particular vendor of a house, who happened to also be a real estate agent was trying to rip us off. Its very easy when you are used to UK house prices to look at prices in Canada and think 'wow, so cheap' and that price x related back into sterling is a good deal. Its vital to get the flavour of the local market and ensure that you are paying the right price for that market. Property inflation, leastways here is not as high as we have been used too in UK so bear in mind that if you sell again in say 2 years you may not make anything and indeed may lose money due to the commission percentage. Buy the right house!

The homebuying process seems to be more structured - written offer with all pertinent details and faster than in the UK. I bought a house here in less than a month.

HTH,
Alan

Rich_007

Have heard so, hope it works well fo us, we are working on 2-3 months basis.

Thanks for info/experiences, having spoken with a handful pre-emigrating you can also get a feel as to whether they're helpful/interested before you even get to meet, in some cases anyway.

Rich.

dbd33

I bought the house we live in without an agent. I found the house then approached the selling agent. There was a period of haggling ending in stalemate with my final offer being just short of what the sellers would take. The selling agent then discounted his commision by the difference in order to complete the deal. Any sort of deal can be made if you're willing to walk away.

andy_sheila

Where in NS ? i can point you in the direction of a great realtor in the Annapolis Valley area. PM me if you want to.

Souvenir

Another advantage of using a buyer's agent is that they have access to MLS data that we don't. In particular, they can get hold of details as to what similar properties have been offered for and subsequently sold for. That can be useful in negotiation. They may also know what the current owners bought it for (unless they've been there for years).

Atlantic Xpat

Good point. The agent we used was able to research prices that houses had sold for in the past which is invaluable when trying to assess cuarrent market value. In the case of a property we were very interested in and when related back to UK pricing looked very reasonable, we found that the price paid 18 mths ago was some 50% of the asking price!

wensamjam

Hi,

we have a good real estate guy helping us out. We have been in NS for 3 weeks now, we still have not sold our house in UK, but we have been looking at properties, old and new. We are talking about, at the moment putting a deposit down on a new build and the builder said he will hold it until Nov 1st, but if we see something in the meantime we like, then we lose nothing. So it could be an option for us. We had a viewer looking at our house in uk today, but still waiting for estate agent to ring with feedback, but as of yet they don't seem to be good at keeping in touch, downfall of living over in NS before selling the house I guess.

sysclp

You already got good info about the agent but I wanted to add that you shouldn't get too excited over a house just by what is shown on mls.ca. When we were house hunting last year, I was searching there and many of the ones I found that looked so nice on the web were absolutely horrid in person. They are presented there in the absolutely best light possible and any pictures will only be the showing what will sell. I had my heart set on one house that sounded just perfect online but when I saw it in person it was such a let down and had to be marked off the list. Our agent was really good about helping with this since she had probably already seen most of the houses on the market in the process of showing other clients around. She also had access to other info like how long on the market, if it had been listed, removed, and then listed again or the original asking price if it had been dropped.

chinnybloke

We are thinking of Antigonish, Guysborough, Bridgewater or Lunenburg areas. Going back for another look hopefully in September or October.

Cheers,
CB