Genesis

....after this??????

https://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rc...42059868,d.dGc

Do they not gouge the general public enough? And before anyone says 'this practice is of benfit to those who are selling', it is not. It is bent, corrupt, wrong, wrong, wrong on so many levels. I know folk who have sold houses without using an agent here and in the UK. In my experience realtors are nothing but a hinderance.

They have no special powers and simply show people around houses. They are in my opinion a total and utter waste of money.

I have had so, so many bad experiences with agents and generally I have found them to be lazy, fickle, unhelpful and untalented. I know there are exceptions but I can only go from my frame of experience and references.

I would not mind if they took the bother to match a house to a client but every single time I have tried to buy a house through an agent (where alas 98% are listed..why why why why??????) they just engage in a throwing mud at the wall campaign.

And more......

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/304386/real-estate-agency-fined-$1-point-25m-for-price-fixing

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/busine...d-set-landmark

The hard part of selling a house is the prep. for open homes. You do that!! The easy bit is listing it and welcoming people at the door. there is no 'selling' a house. It is a myth. No one has ever, ever made me or anyone I know buy a house that they did not want. I appreciate double glazing, holidays, cars, time shares, watches etc can be 'sold' by a good sales person. But selling a house? It sells its self. You buy it cos you wanted it, not because some pushy, vacuous person 'sells' it to you.

Be fair, they do have the most awful reputation. I think we all know why.

Robbie2010

Here's another reason not to use them ... Fees of 4% +

Genesis

And don't forget, over here in NZ, the cheeky gits expect us to pay THEIR advertising costs UP FRONT before they have done nothing (which is pretty much all they are good for anyway). Their gall beggars belief. I would never, ever use an estate agent, any human, with no particular skills can shift their home. All you have to do is present the home well, have a realistic price and someone will buy it. YOU DO NOT NEED A REALTOR!!!!!!!!

Even in a bad market place agents are unwarranterd and do nothing but charge a totally unwarranted commission and for what????? Selling your own home via Trademe has never been easier or cheaper.

Become part of the movement to avoid estate agents and their shocking immoral practices (and fees) noted above. They clearly cannot be trusted with our most valuable assets.

MrsFychan

Charismatic

Tradition mostly.

You could cut out the middle man (or woman) but that only means you'd have to do the footwork yourself.

MrsFychan

I do get your point about lots of agents, especially the older ones. But since the new rules and accountability has become tighter why wouldn't you? Most agents are now doing the fixed fee and I no agent doing anything near 4% and even if they are you negotiate.

Even though this is an estate agent and should of well known better, this is why you either better known all this stuff before selling or you get an agent.

The berm ultimatum: Wellington woman told to rip up hedge or pay council $850 a year | Stuff.co.nz

It has become clear to me that just down my road that most of the houses have a fences that encroach onto the council land. 1 meter in from the pathway. If you don't know that when buying and then the council comes along and state they are removing your fence and will not be replacing and it may well cost you for them to do that,I think you would be pretty peed off. As the women in the article she is required to pay and I have seen a previous report, months ago, where someone had put a small shed and green house on what was actually Kiwi Rails property despite it was bought with a fence encroaching in the Kiwi rails land so they just assumed that was their their border was, but it wasn't.

Rule of thumb to know roughly where your border is, its behind the public services covers, if that is on what you consider your land then it is not your land.
You can get the council to come round and check placement of the services and confirm you border and they will do that at no charge.

Charismatic

Who knows where anyone's boundary is with all these earthquakes? Can't even trust the land to stay stationary after you measure it .

Justcol

I guess it depends on where you are and which agent you use.


When I sold my place in may I considered selling privately. My friend had just done it and he got what he thought was a very good price for his house, which was newer and bigger, and on a much bigger section than mine.I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted for my place, I'd followed prices in town on similar houses and was thought I was pretty up to speed with the way prices were going. In the end I decided I didn't have the time to spend doing it myself.


Long story short


The agent already had contacts around the country of people who were looking to buy and villa in the town. It was listed for 5 days only with a best and final offers deadline.
even after her fee's were taken out, I was still over 80k up on what I would have settled for.
It was the 3rd time I had used the same agent and company and would have no issues using them again.

LoCarb

Sold our bach recently and we got what we thought was a much better price using an agent. At least 30K more.

If you are smart, use the agent as a lever in your negotiations over offers as they are dead keen to get their commission

Genesis

was offered 80k over RV for my last home 3 yrs ago, alas some idiot house inspector said there was damp issue with the house (there was not), the buyers, totally understandably, ran a mile. They were the only ones who wanted it at that time. Sold it over a year later (my ex wife insisted we move to an agent after the above debacle) and in a climbing market we finally got $515k thru an agent. So, after their fees we got 497!! The RV was 560, the buyers had a much more thorough (and invasive) inspection, in exactly the same month as the one a year previously and he found no issues with the house whatsoever. Had we sold it privately we would have netted an extra $143k. Agents, in my experience do not always get you best price. In the uk my last house was valued by an agent at 295 pounds..I sold it privately for 317.

LoCarb

We've bought and sold a few houses.
This is what we do.

Go for hand-picked older lady agents who have been in the game for 15 to 20 years.

Get three different agents to do appraisals and pick the one you have most confidence in.

Two of our last three gave lower market valuations, so we went with the one who was confident she could get another 40K, and she did!

I would have privately marketed the house at 30k less

SSky

I dunno, I'm undecided.
We've also bought and sold a few properties over here and honestly I've been glad just to stage the house and let the agent do the work. I don't really want to get into all the cr*p of telling potential buyers how lovely such and such is and I don't want to do all the negotiating of the price.
I found it refreshing to come here and be able to just walk away from my house and let someone else do all the smiley cold sell of my property.
I don't like the fees though, I feel robbed.
I don't get bullied by the agent though, as far as I'm concerned they are working for me and I will tell them what I expect and I absolutely won't accept an offer just because they are telling me it's brilliant and I should take it.
This land we built our house on we bought privately without an agent and it was easy peasy so it's not like I don't know how it's done. All you need it a solicitor so like I say I dunno I'm undecided.
My hubby is very ill and I think we'll be selling soon so I'll maybe do a bit of thinking about this in the coming weeks and see and maybe come back to this thread.

MrsFychan

The pit falls of selling privately and then the new owner finds problems you have not disclosed even if you are unaware, example boundaries, the cost to you could bankrupt you. Least with an agent the Company and or agent take the hit, especially with the new laws in place

Genesis

I really do not feel this is a reason to use an agent. Lawyers are paid to deal with this stuff and obviously if you sell a lemon, knowingly its gonna cost you, probably even so if you have an agent. I got sold a '4 bed' house upon arrival in NZ in 2005. It turned out to only be a '3 bed house'. Guess who was told to 'wear it'??? So using an agent was of no benefit to me 'not our problem, its your problem' was their refrain. The 4th bed was built outside the 'build envelope' and as such did not 'exist'. Nice to see the building inspectors were onto it when the house was built in 1991!!! There is little or no accountability for anyone when it comes to anything these days.

So, I will always sell my home privately. Estate agents have been nothing but a pain in the arse to me, everytime I have had to use them, my entire life. They have lied to me, have no idea about customer service, I have found them lazy, thoughtless and unable to carry out the simplest of tasks..like leaving my home secure after an open home!!!!!

Bo-Jangles

Telling porky pies or not disclosing stuff that you know about is one thing but I doubt anyone could get sued for not disclosing something of which they were totally unaware. My house has potential to be leaky, I don't know that unless I knock some walls down to find out and I'm not about to do that. The buyer may of course wish to get a report from an 'expert' who will give the buyer an informed opinion on which they may or may not be able to rely, but usually even that is well buttoned up with caveats and get out clauses that removes any responsibility from said expert.

Boundaries is a non-issue as it is the buyers obligation to find out exactly what they are buying - it's a very stupid buyer that relies on the vendor or real estate agent to advise them on where the boundaries are or whether the house is leaky etc. But still plenty of dumbarse folks that never do their homework or simply fail to understand.

The standard sale and purchase agreement includes vendor warranties which impose the same obligations on the seller regardless of whether there is an agent involved or not and the vendor is still obliged to point out any known issues to the agent. The agent would have some comeback on the vendor if it were later found that there had been some misrepresentation or information provided by the seller upon which the agent or the buyer had relied anyway.