Selling a home/Real estate agent questions
 

1) What's a reasonable estimate of the kind of commissions a real estate agent is going to want to list my condo (about $175k)? If they quote 2.5% will I be expected to give 2.5% to the my agent AND another 2.5% to the buyer's agent?

2) If I sell my home privately and a person with an agent buys my home, I assume the real estate agent will want a cut- how do we determine what kind of cut he/she gets?

1. There is no standard commission structure, but typically the seller will be paying 7% on the 1st $100,000 and 2.5% on the balance remaining. The listing agent will split a portion of what you pay gross to the buyer's agent, typically 3.22% on the first $100,000 and 1.15% on the balance, or roughly 46%. If you sell your home for $175k, you'll have to pay $8,875 plus HST based on these figures.

2. Private deals work a lot like MLS listed properties, but to get the most traffic I'd offer typical competition rates, 3.22%/1.15%. Of course, all these figures are negotiable and you could reverse the payout and have them back loaded so it encourages buyers to give you a higher price.

There are quite a few realtors who will list your home on MLS for a flat fee and allows you to choose the amount you want to offer to the buyer's agent, which could be at least a 50% savings, but you will have to handle much of the work.

I would list it for a flat fee on MLS and offer 2.5% to the buying Realtor. Sales are way down, so you want to encourage Realtors to bring buyers to your property (despite their "ethics").

The buying Realtor does all the work by showing the house to potential buyers and writing up the offer. All you have to do is get your condo on MLS (many flat fee listings available now), take some decent photos, and follow a checklist of how to stage your condo (google, there's lots of tips).

no need to negotiate these "terms"....
two scarenios
1) you can write down 2.5% FIXED fees, but damn, you better be damn sure you are going to spend A LOT of time going back and forth to find the target price. why? cause the Realtor is already stuck at 2.5%, both side of the party must negotiate like crazy to meet in the middle.
2) you don't mention fixed %, and what happens, there are a lot of room for the realtor to play ball, they will AUTOMATICALLY cut their own commission to make the deal work. say both parties are short a few thousand dollars in meeting in the middle, the realtors already have the math all done out. they would have volunteered to cut both or one side of the commission just to close the deal for you.

most times 2.5% works well, but I've seen realtors go way below 2.5% ... no need to put that in there in my opinion.

standard answer
 

Were taught in Real estate school that in Greater Vancouver there is no normal commission, or no standard commission.. Strange how the majority of the listings show 3.255% on the 1st 100K for the selling agent and total commisson both ends is usually 7% on the ist 100K and 2.5 on the Balance.

I thought HST was only based on new or "newer" homes and only need to pay the property transfer tax on older homes? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Commission payable pre-HST was subject to GST. Now that HST is here, it is subject to HST. This is on the selling side. I think you're referring to the buying side :)

You're right..however there is HST on the commission paid. This is expensed to the seller, not the buyer.

And to answer #2 to the OP...

Technically speaking, if you were to sell ur property privately, if another realtor is bringing in a buyer, you have say whether or not you want to pay them commission.

However...you can say this:
"All i want is to net (example) $173,000. If you can sell it for more, you can keep the difference. Let the other realtor do the work to make their commission. This advice has worked for anybody i know that wanted to sell their property privately. You're not saying no to the commission, plus you are keeping it open ended to make whatever commission they want.

Lastly....realtors will bring in BOGUS buyers. How this will work is they write up an offer, as well as an MLS listing contract because they want the MLS points. Upon subject removal, the buyer backs out and you're stuck with an MLS with a lying realtor for two months.

Hope this helps...but you posted since september.

There are also realtors out there that take less commissions than others which you need to look out for.

The 2nd thing you need to look for are realtors that put in the work to market the property. There are way too many realtors out there that are too stingy to get a professional photographer and will use their shitty camera and technique to take terrible photos. because out of that $3000+ commission $100-200 is too much to spend on professional photos.

Always pressure the agent to hire a professional to take photos of your property. And if you really want to go the extra mile get it professionally staged too because you wouldn't believe how much of a difference its made on a lot of homes I've shot staging can be the difference in selling the place in a few weeks or not staging and selling in a few months.

never understand how & why a real estate agent can justify earning $20,000+ just for selling a median (<$800K) home.:bullshit:

My last real estate agent earned almost $10K helping me buy a condo. It is the seller's expense, but to me, his service wouldn't have been worth more than $500. (Brought me to look at 4-5 condos, write up some papers in a standardized format, probably took him no more than 10-15 hours)

the problem is house prices went up by so much but likly the comission %'s stayed the same. (But I'm not sure, would be interested in seeing the numbers from say 10 years ago)

so in the past 10 years relators got a 200% raise, well the rest of use got a few %