Deciding to Use a Realtor

"If knowledge is power, then a realtor is the most powerful professional ally you can have when it comes to selling or buying your home" according to the Canadian Real Estate Association, whose members are called "Realtors®".

When you haven't yet found the property you wish to buy, the first obvious advantage of utilizing a realtor is that usually they can efficiently find suitable properties for you to consider. In the Lower Mainland this means applying knowledge of the market together with computer technology that is not fully available on the Web as yet.

If what you want isn't currently on the market, a realtor may even locate suitable properties by mail-outs or knocking on doors in selected neighborhoods.

A realtor can also provide you with actual selling prices of the types of homes you are interested in. There is plenty of information publicly available about the asking prices of properties, but for selling prices (past, current and estimated future prices), which are key, a realtor is the best source.

If you aren't fixed on one location, a realtor can give you advice as to which locations are best from the point of view of future appreciation potential. Different locations and properties vary greatly in this respect.

One would think that buying or selling a property ought to be fairly straightforward most of the time. However, in practice almost every transaction seems to have a novel quirk or problem to be dealt with and resolved. That's one reason having a professional real estate salesperson on your side can be a tremendous asset.

One of the trickiest areas is the negotiation of price and terms. Experience has found that having the buyer and seller negotiate face-to-face is often disastrous. A lot of money is at stake, and the naturally high emotions can overwhelm the facts and create obstacles to finding a win-win agreement. The process works much better with a good realtor providing advice and passing information back and forth during the negotiations.

In our area, a purchaser normally gets their realtor's help for free, so it's probably wise to take advantage of this fact and use the services of a realtor. The buyer's realtor is normally paid a sales commission by the SELLER. This may seem surprising, but the seller pre-arranges to pay this when they list their property for sale, in order to attract realtors with buyers in tow.

You may choose to have the seller's realtor represent you in addition to representing the seller. This is called "dual agency". You might expect that using one realtor instead of two would result in a lower sales commission being paid, enabling you to negotiate a lower purchase price. However, in the case of dual agency one realtor has to do the work of two. For this reason, in the listing agreement the seller usually provides for both commissions to go to his or her realtor when the buyer does not have a separate realtor, instead of the commissions being shared between a buyer's and a seller's realtor. This means the seller is unlikely to be able to reduce the price just because the buyer has not engaged a separate realtor.

Also, if you bring your own separate realtor to the table they may be more aggressive in negotiating on your behalf than the seller's realtor would be.

Besides helping you with searching for properties, with evaluating the pros and cons of specific properties, with negotiating favorable price and terms, and generally providing advice to help you make informed decisions, a realtor can also orchestrate the many details of a real estate transaction as your advocate.

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Prudential Sussex Realty

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