To all Brooklyn agents/brokers who will not co-broke
You are doing a disservice to the SELLERS you represent because not as many people will see the listing, and those that do will not be, on average, the kind of serious, quality buyers who tend to work through agents. Your listings, in many cases, languish for months unsold, listed only on your own website…
You are doing a disservice to the SELLERS you represent because not as many people will see the listing, and those that do will not be, on average, the kind of serious, quality buyers who tend to work through agents. Your listings, in many cases, languish for months unsold, listed only on your own website or, repeatedly, on Craigslist. (I think I have most of them memorized – if that were my property, I would so fire you.)
You are doing a disservice to the BUYERS who are not able to choose a buyer’s agent with whom they can build trust, and who will work on their behalf, get to know what they are looking for, set up showings, and shepherd them through the offer/contract/closing process. Instead, buyers have to jump from sellers agent to sellers agent, limited to the “exclusives†which make up the majority of their listings. And they are hardly interested in customer service or lasting loyalty.
And all because you want the entire commission all to yourself. Lame and selfish.
A higher commission would make co-broking possible. A slight increase in the price would make up the difference to the seller, and the difference is minimal for most buyers when it is broken down into monthly mortgage payments.
Your excuse about how evil and selfish the big name agencies are is a hollow farce – if you charged, say, 6% commission, you could co-broke with them just fine. (You would only get 3% instead of 4%? Oh, no! Now who is the greedy one? The point is, your property would sell faster, which benefits the seller you supposedly represent.)
Your other excuse about how you represent your community, grassroots, homegrown, little guy, local knowledge, blah, blah, is an even more ridiculous foil. You can still specialize in a particular area or property type AND co-broke. Then you would actually be working on behalf of the sellers in your area, not just SAYING you are.
I am not a broker/agent, and I have no allegiance to any of them. I am speaking from the perspective of an actual buyer with excellent credit and financials looking for an actual coop/condo to buy outside of the gentrified areas of Brooklyn – the very buyer you pray for. And, from where I sit, you people suck.
Agreed. It’s not just 1-3 extra hours spent on legwork, it’s 1-3 extra hours per week, at least! Plus visits to houses a broker you trust wouldn’t waste your time with. Whatever happened to that law that began January 1, 2005 that was supposed to force Brooklyn brokers to co-broke, or do I remember this wrong? I seem to recall Brookyn being one of the only place in the country to operate the archaic way it does.
Very interesting article in the Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/business/08real.html
2 Web Sites Push Further Into Services Real Estate Agents Offer
Two real estate Web sites are starting to offer services that could change the way real estate is bought and sold online.
One site, Zillow.com, which will be introduced today, will help consumers obtain more accurate real estate sales information — to the consternation of some real estate agents.
A smaller site, Redfin.com, introduced an unusual new service last week that might be even more disruptive to the real estate industry: the feature automates the process of bidding on a house online…….
Brokers totally suck and their stranglehold on the market will soon come to an end, and none to soon. They are a toll both that they have built for themselves but it will come down sooner or later – markets become more efficient. posting on nytimes websites, internet sales – these things will happen. there are also low barriers to entry for brokers, which is why many of them are morons and sleazeballs.
Brokers are an anachronism. Any wonder the anti-trust people are after them when they try to control listings? They are among the last vestiges of a pre-internet age. A broker holding the hand of a buyer, when they legally work for the seller, is just dumb. The good ones will become your friends, learn your kids’ birthdays, and make sure you think you owe them something. Its just good salesmanship. Buyers need to do the hard work themselves. This blog is a great source of that kind of info and helps disintermediate out the brokers. By analogy, does anyone still use a travel agent? All they had was information that we now have, too.
I never said that raising prices make things sell faster. I said that more people looking at your listings make things sell faster. And I have spent considerably more than two or three hours on the web researching my big purchase. But there is a lot of information that cannot be found on the web, or why would we have brokers at all?
I hear you. I’ve been looking for more than two years, during which time my broker has become invaluable to me. He’s even gone so far as to do legwork for me on houses he knows he won’t get commission on, because he wants to sell my condo when the time comes. But I won’t do that to him. To buy a house at this point that he couldn’t get a commission on, after all of his legwork, would be unconscionable.
The system in brownstone brooklyn sucks for everyone but the brokers. When we were buying, we had stacks of cards from area brokers and we had to call each of them weekly to see if they had anything to show us. Anywhere else, you have MLS and the process is much friendlier to buyers and sellers who have more straight forward access to each other — which is the whole point.
Huh? Higher prices make things sell faster? “…A higher commission would make co-broking possible. A slight increase in the price would make up the difference to the seller…” Are you on crack? And people who don’t go through brokers aren’t serious? “…the kind of serious, quality buyers who tend to work through agents…” Pity to poor buyer who has to talk to more than one broker. Brokers sell information. By doing a little leg work, buyers can get all that information on the web. Must take, oh, maybe an hour or two, maybe three. Using a broker is no excuse for not being educated on what is probably the largest purchase of your life. And when sellers can pay less brokerage, buyers get better deals. Give me a break.
hey great statement. I agree with you, and the thing is I am agent. I think the more deals you can do, the better. Co- Broke if you gotta. Sometimes you have they buyer and they try to steal them from you, so they can keep the whole commission. Email me if need something maybe I can help.