Mentioned this before, but decided I'd have better luck with it's own thread. Currently I live on the Southeast side of town, and we're hoping to move to the west side to be closer to work. For selling our house, we'll be working with a realtor that helped us find it, and we reallly like working with him. We met with him yesterday to go over everything, trying to decide when to put it on the market, how much to ask, etc. I'm not sure what we should do as far as finding a house on the other side of town. He said that he has worked with people all around Houston, and that if we found some houses we liked then he could go with us to show them. He also said he could reccomend someone for us to work with on the west side if we preferred that. Now I like this guy, but I'm not sure I like the idea of us making the effort to find a new house and then him just going with us to look at them and collecting the commision. Should I work with a different person that knows this area better, and will be working to find us something new? Or should I do all the leg work and suggest that he splits part of the commision with us? I know this is not really legal from some of the other recent threads, but it is done. He did something similar with my parents a few years back, but they were buying a brand new house so I'm not sure if that makes a difference. For anyone else that has sold your house to move to the other side of town, what did you do in this situation?
If you can get him to split the commission, do your research on har.com and go that way. We found every house we wanted to look at on har.com and the realtor found us a grand total of two houses for us to look at, both of which were outside the area we wanted and neither of which met our needs.
I'd go with the realtor that works in the side of town you'll be purchasing your house. To me, it's all about value. What does XYZ bring to the table? If they bring nothing to the table other than unlocking the door, I say phfft to that. Skills I would consider valuable: Strong negotiation skills Very knowledgeable about a particular area including schools, potential construction issues, neighborhood trends Does the realtor live there? How many houses have they bought/sold in the neighborhood?
I'd let the realtor thats selling your house help you find a new one. Let him have full comm on the house you are buying and ask him to discount his part of the selling comm. 4.5% to sell your home is reasonable IMO Its all nice and legal that way
So he would get the full 3% from the new house, but only take half of the selling commision. Which means I would still be getting back half the commission, but it's all legal this way. I like it. Thanks Codell!
Would the realtor do that? What's the standard commission in Houston? 5-6%? That's split between the broker and the agent. If he reduces that to 4.5% and the other side does not take a commission cut, his current agent would make almost nothing on the case. Basically, he would be doing it just to get the sale on the new house but would have to do the work on both ends. If part of the reduction is shared by the buyer's agent on the existing property, that would seem to be a disincentive to show the house. ? It's a good deal if he'll agree to it and the side showing your house doesn;t take a part of the cut.
I think he meant still give the buyer's agent their full 3%, but my realtor only take 1.5%. Then my realtor would earn 3% on the house I buy, for a total of 4.5%. But I could be wrong.
Im assuming that's what he meant too and that's a good idea except Im not sure your realtor would agree to it. The reason is out of that 4.5%, he splits that with the broker. Im not sure what the split is but out of the extra 1.5% (4.5-3.0), he only gets an extra .75%-1.0%. That's not chump change but now he has to do the work on both sides for only that extra incremental amount. Also, he may not be that comfortable taking the cut on the sale because you may back out of the buying the new house (you can choose to rent if you don't see something you like or afford and then sign with another agent). If you can get him to do it, that's great.
Standard comm for selling a home is 6%, with 3% to the selling agent and 3% to the buying agent. So basically, his realtor would get 1.5% instead of 3% and the buyer's agent would get 3% (which the seller can't really discount). My wife will quite often do this for her clients. In fact, most realtors probably will. If they don't, then they are dumb.
Yes but how much of that does goes to the broker. Unless the agent owns the firm, he splits that with the broker. Out of every 3%, the agent obviously does not keep the entire amount.
www.har.com is where to find the best deals in Houston.... you want to make sure you realator puts your house up there too. I found the house I'm buying in Friendswood on there, and my brother sold his house in Friendswood after putting it up on HAR for one day. As far as the numbers game, that's obviously not my forte so nothing to add there.
Depends on the broker. Some broker's (like my wife's) only require a fixed fee for each transaction. Some charge 30-35% of the agent's earnings (like Keller Williams). Broker's usually give agents carte blanche with regards to how much they will list a house for. Selling commissions are VERY negotiable.
its the MLS for Houston ...not a special site every house in Houston thats being listed by an agent is on that site
