iaink

IIRC when you sign that initial precontract offer, you also hand over a healthy deposit. If you renege on the deal, that deposit is lost.

Smokey

I personally keep saying it because its true... I've bought four houses now and having not needed to sell any of them at the time, its cost US, as buyers, absolutely nothing. We sold our house in Saskatoon as a sale only and paid our realtor accordingly but the purchases were 'free'.

iaink

You are missing my point entirely. The realtor in your buying case, if you used one, is paid half the commision that the selling agent gets. Fine, thats not in doubt.

In the example at the beginning of this thread there is NO selling agent (or at least doesnt seem to be) , its a private sale. So in this type of case where is any agent employed by the buyer going to get his money from?

Where's Ray when you need him...catching up on his sleep I hope!

stepnek

I guess that's what puzzles me because we paid a deposit of only $300 which didn't seem such a lot to lose really. We did of course complete the sale.

iaink

I think I paid $500? I guess you are right, its not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but enough to cover any fees for lawyers or survey the seller may be out of pocket??? Better than the English system anyway.

ray1968

Ok this is how comission works in Ontario (and probably other provinces) I haven't read all the posts.

A "listed sale" has 2 comission ends one paid to the listing agent one paid to the buying agent who brings a buyer, this is paid by the SELLER of the house
Typically it is 2.5% points each BUT its up to the seller to determine what he wants to pay, if he pays less then 2.5% then he'll end up getting less agents viewing, since they could get paid more elsewhere.

A private sale again depends on the seller he may offer to pay a BUYING agent only a comission if he/she brings a buyer , on the other hand he/she may not.

However if you sign a buyer agency agreement and during the period of the contract you buy a house privately, your agent has the right to request a commission from YOU. (not sure that they do pursue that in reality though)


SO Buyers never usually end up paying their agent a comission except in the last circumstance mentioned

Hopefully thats clearer.

By the way a typcal deposit is around $3-4% of the value of the house



Now back to bed


Ray

George-Ang

Now that we have this cleared up, to a certain extent......... i ask on the quote ?
i use mls to do a lot of house hunting, just to get the feel of things..... am i to assume this "telephone directory type book" is listing's on a whole and that the properties i see on mls are paid to be listed on the www, if so can i assume there are 1000's more properties available than what me and the wife look at?

wife keeps moaning because i always use lower case iiiiiiiii's as opposed ti I

Glaswegian

Not really ... sometimes properties sell before they get onto MLS.

There are private sale websites too .... welist.com is the only one I can think of right now, but most (not all) people who try to sell privately seem to give up and go with a realtor.

Smokey

Now you know why I'm going to be a chambermaid and not a realtor

colin wilk

[QUOTE=George-Ang]My wife Ang does a lot more surfing than me, tonight after i think a 5 hour stint on the internet, avidly searching Saskatoon area, at the same time i was on my pc surfing mls.ca. she turns and says ive found a lot more properties at far less prices from people who are selling privately........ the question i ask is.
Is it more or less risky..... or are these people just trying to avoid the realtors fees? if it can be done are there more risks, and what laws are in place to help the buyer if the property turns out to be a


Hi there,
we have lived in saskatoon since october 2004 and i am already on my second move. The reason not being that we don't like the house we love it.
It is brand new and everything we dreamed of.
The reason we are moving is that the school my son attends is only a 7minute journey by car, but because of the ice the roads are very slippey and they don't get cleared very often so the ice builds up and after slidding and having cars and trucks slid towards me i have now lost my nerve to drive.
I gave my son the choice of moving school or moving house and he chose to move. Anyway getting back to the subject. We have a wonderful realtor who we have dealt with on both occassions now, she is reliable and honest and very patient after all she did drive me all over the place viewing houses everyday for a whole month in the summer.
I am not sure about private sales all i know is that i am covered if anything goes wrong because i have used a realtor and their prices are only the same as you would pay in the uk. You dont pay them for showing you houses and you can always say no at the end of it, but i definitley reccomend Karen Clouthier at remax saskatoon (the mad english women) Her email address is [email protected]
She will email you any info that you require, give her a whirl,
regards linda

Pretty Flowers

I've bought my house through a real estate agent.

A property on the same subdivsion I was looking at was up on a private sale. I paid just over $400k for mine, but the private sale property - same no of bedrooms etc, was having $550k asked for it.

My folks who live out here in Ontario said that most private sales are on offer at vastly inflated prices.

One advantage of using a good realator is that they know the areas much better than you do, and they can give you a very good steer on fair market value for the place you want to buy...