House sale: multi-listing advice

Arzy

Arzy

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So, long story short, been trying to sell my house on a sole mandate with a reputable estate agent and unfortunately things just haven't clicked so far. To top it all off the agent wasn't as observant as you would expect and at some stage during our last show day 4 people came into the house at the same time of which 2 dissapeared with a bunch of stuff. I'll accept that this was more than likely planned but still blame the agent for not doing their job.

Now, does anyone here have experience with selling their house on a multi-listing? ie. not having a sole estate agent doing the sale but opening it up to multiple agents.

How did you go about this?
What was your experience like?
Would you do it again?
Did you have a single contact who made the house available to all agents?
or did you engage with the estate agents individually?
 
We listed our apartment with about 4 agents. If you do that, you will quickly find out who the good agents are and who are the lazy bums.

Some agents brought people almost on a daily basis (I wanted to scream at having people traipsing through my house every day).

In the end, we had 2 agents in a bidding war of sorts for their respective clients.

Your chances are better if you go with more than one agent.
 
blunomore said:
We listed our apartment with about 4 agents. If you do that, you will quickly find out who the good agents are and who are the lazy bums.

Some agents brought people almost on a daily basis (I wanted to scream at having people traipsing through my house every day).

In the end, we had 2 agents in a bidding war of sorts for their respective clients.

Your chances are better if you go with more than one agent.
Click to expand...

My thinking as well at this stage on the bold part.

How did you handle the commission though? Did the agents share the commission or was it based on which agent brought the offer you accepted?
 
Arzy said:
My thinking as well at this stage on the bold part.

How did you handle the commission though? Did the agents share the commission or was it based on which agent brought the offer you accepted?
Click to expand...

Only the agent who brought the offer we accepted, got a commission.
 
A single agent lists on RNS and then it is open to every agent who has access to RNS. You may get a lot more interested folks to look at the property. We sold our property like this but the original agent that listed actually sold it.

Half of the Agents commision goes to RNS
State in the forms what times an an agent can call you and give the number of somebody that can be available for a show.

Sole mandates work if you get a self motivated agent, My fathers next door neighbour sold his property in less than 2 weeks with a sole mandate from Harcourts and he got his price of R1M plus. The properties in his area are only pushing those boundries but you do get agents that are so motivated to sell if you give them sole mandate.

Ours we gave to X and they did not perform, so we did a RNS where it is listed to every agent. The agent that originally listed was lazy but after a few phone calls to their boss, they pulled up their socks and sold our property 2 days later. Although they said we were asking for an unrealistic price and after we realized that and dropped we sold with in 2 days.

The agent is working for you and they should earn their commission, so if they don't follow up phone their boss....

PS. Remember to phone your bank and give them notice that you are intending to sell. Otherwise you may be left with three months penalities for late disclosure. Also don't listen to the Agent that you can backdate a letter, rather inform the bank yourself to avoid this.
 
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katangeleus said:
A single agent lists on RNS and then it is open to every agent who has access to RNS. You may get a lot more interested folks to look at the property. We sold our property like this but the original agent that listed actually sold it.

Half of the Agents commision goes to RNS
State in the forms what times an an agent can call you and give the number of somebody that can be available for a show.

Sole mandates work if you get a self motivated agent, My fathers next door neighbour sold his property in less than 2 weeks with a sole mandate from Harcourts and he got his price of R1M plus. The properties in his area are only pushing those boundries but you do get agents that are so motivated to sell if you give them sole mandate.

Ours we gave to X and they did not perform, so we did a RNS where it is listed to every agent. The agent that originally listed was lazy but after a few phone calls to their boss, they pulled up their socks and sold our property 2 days later. Although they said we were asking for an unrealistic price and after we realized that and dropped we sold with in 2 days.

The agent is working for you and they should earn their commission, so if they don't follow up phone their boss....

PS. Remember to phone your bank and give them notice that you are intending to sell. Otherwise you may be left with three months penalities for late disclosure. Also don't listen to the Agent that you can backdate a letter, rather inform the bank yourself to avoid this.
Click to expand...

RNS seems to be an answer, its just not available in my area. Seems to only cover Boksburg, Benoni, Brakpan and Kempton if you look at their members.
 
if you multi list you'll probably be getting the lower end of the agent scale, most good agents aren't interested in multi-listing because it gets messy, the buyers market is only so big so those people that come on show days will come irrespective of agent, however, good agents will have a personal pre-qualified buyers list that they will be tapping in to
 
Ol' Mean Bastid said:
if you multi list you'll probably be getting the lower end of the agent scale, most good agents aren't interested in multi-listing because it gets messy, the buyers market is only so big so those people that come on show days will come irrespective of agent, however, good agents will have a personal pre-qualified buyers list that they will be tapping in to
Click to expand...


If an agent is any good, s/he would have the self confidence to compete against other agents. It is untrue to say that only bad agents multi-list. If an agent wants the chance to get a possible commission on the sale of a property they must get off their backside and compete against other agents. Work for your commission !!
 
Well as indicated I've been using a reputable agent on a sole mandate thus far and it hasn't resulted in anything spectacular. Thus the decision to move to an open mandate with multi-listing. Just need to figure out the correct procedure to do this.
 
In terms of the stuff being knicked, surely you have claim against the agent since they were in "possession" of the property at the time.
 
Arzy said:
Well as indicated I've been using a reputable agent on a sole mandate thus far and it hasn't resulted in anything spectacular. Thus the decision to move to an open mandate with multi-listing. Just need to figure out the correct procedure to do this.
Click to expand...

Good move. If an agent has a sole mandate there is no competition and they often rest on their laurels if they think the possible commission is not that spectacular for them.
 
Also get a report from PropIQ to see if your asking price is in line with the rest of the market.
It's a buyers market so don't expect top price for your home.
 
Also get a report from PropIQ to see if your asking price is in line with the rest of the market.
It's a buyers market so don't expect top price for your home.
Market it at a realistic price and it will sell.
 
Having being a buyer and seller, what will sell your property in JHB is price.
If your price is right, then it will sell.
You could even sell privately.
But when i was looking in JHB, most properties were 25% overpriced, esp when you compare to property reports.
Its a buyers market!

BTW: why do guys not try and sell prv. Instead they look at giving away 5-10%.
 
I will never let an agent convince me to give them a sole mandate on the property.
I will multi-list, including several private listings.
I will only make the property available for viewing at times when it suits me, to avoid having people traipse through continuously. I will enlist additional security if I have things of value that can be stolen.

Sole mandate is usually pretty rubbish.
 
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