real estate blog for propertynow

Glad you could make it and a warm welcome to the brand new PropertyNow real estate blog where our agenda is Australian property.

This blog will be open to any real estate subjects but will have a special interest and empahasis on real estate private sale or FSBO. The acronym FSBO means - For sale by owner and is largely what PropertyNow is all about.

Since this is the very first post I should give you a link to the PropertyNow website in case you actually need to use our service right away as opposed to just discussing the real estate private sale industry.

You can access our real estate site here, while we build this blog over the coming weeks. The PropertyNow site is geared to Australian real estate at present but we will add international listings soon.

Ok, I suppose I should introduce myself to kick things off. I’m a real estate agent living on Australia’s NSW North Coast. I am a Licensed agent and unlike any other agent I have met, I’m very pro towards FSBO clients. So much so that about 2 and a half years ago I got really angry at the state of the real estate industry in australia and decided to do something about it.

As an agent I saw that many people were really laboured when selling their home.

High commissions from 2-4% and often hefty advertising charges on top off that.

I literally saw many clients signing up with an agent for 4 months, then throwing money at newspapers and still remaining unsold at the end of the agency. I started looking at trends and why people could sell and others couldn’t.

I soon realised that the common factor in all cases was price and market exposure…but mostly just price. I also noticed a strange thing that, when first described to people, appears almost counterintuitive.

This strange thing was the exciting notion that agents don’t sell houses! Now I don’t mean that literally, in the sense that if you list with an agent you can’t sell. No, I mean that whenever an agent “sells ” a house he is really just getting the credit because he was the one standing there at the time.

Now if you think I’m picking on agents then you are missing my point. Here’s why.

In the case of private sellers or FSBO’s they don’t sell the house  either. They too are the people standing there when someone wants to own their property.

To an agent this will be sacrilegious and to you , as mentioned, it’s probably counter to your belief system. But hear me out and see if you don’t agree with me after we dissect this a little.

Do you honestly believe that the words you or your real estate agent speak to a house buyer, will be the determining factor in whether she buys your house?

People….burn this into your pysche -  houses always sell themselves and basically whoever conveys the offer or secures the signature gets the credit. This applies equally if you are selling a house privately with no agent.

Can an agent assist and smooth a sale? Sure. Can an agent spoil a sale?… without a doubt! But can an agent make a sale? Well again, yes, if that sale was going to be made anyhow. Meaning that, the buyer really wanted to buy and had the money to buy and liked this house more than any others she had seen. Then yes an agent can make a sale….but then again with all that in his favour so could a trained chimpanzee.

Well, that should be some good controversy to kick start this blog. May I point out right from the get go, I am terribly and unashamedly biased about this topic and will always take the side of the For Sale by Owner.

I also realise that some people can truly make a mess when selling a house without professional guidance but it’s through factors that don’t really relate to whether private selling is feasible. It’s just because of lack of knowledge or the right advice and assistance with marketing.

Anyway, more soon……. and I’d love to here your comments and that includes the agents perspective to, who are welcome to post comments and to shoot me down in flames.