It’s often said that selling a property can be a stressful experience, well in New Zealand this can be true. Although the New Zelaand Real Estate industry is regulated it is actually self regulated by its own founding companies. Well this was certainly true up until late 2009 when the governement installed a new body known as the REAA – Real Estate Agents Authority. Only time will tell whether this has any effect on making the industry more responsible for its actions but all I can tell you is “your selling experience is only as good as the agent you list with” and their motivation to sell your property.
In New Zealand vendors agents rule covering 99.9% of the market, the other 0.1 percent being mostly companies or individuals who call themselves buyers agents but are actually working under vendors agent companies. What worries me is rightly or wronly these vendors agents often haven’t a clue about marketing and more importantly haven’t a clue about civil or structural engineering.
The number of times I’ve wandered curiously into a open home on any one of my various journeys around the world only to be told that this property is structurally sound and upon further interogation of the sellers agent told that they’ve no actual facts to support this worries me considerably. Afterall, we’re not exactly buying a rubbish book that promised so much and delivered so little that we discarded on the plane like yesterdays newspaper. This is perhaps one of our biggest investments that we could lose dearly on.
So back on track to the selling experience, we tried various agencies only for us to be continually told to invest several thousand dollars in their marketing so that they once sold can charge us around 4% commission. How many industries do you as the owner pay someone else to market your product only for them to charge you a commission when they sell it? Am I missing the point here? Anyway, we confided in an agent who we thought was fairly switched on, presentable and fairly well spoken. During a site visit with a client of mine who was potentially interested in a trade (my property for his) she learned that I had approached my new neighbour but was unsuccessful in meeting him as I rarely visited the Bay of Islands anymore and he was often travelling. So when I left for my 3 hour drive back to Auckland (after buying the agent a coffee) she approached my neighbour and asked if he would put in an offer, and guess what, he did want to albeit way below registered valuation…………….