Agents poaching sales

Does anyone know whether agents who work within the same agency can poach sales from each other?

Here’s what happened- I put an offer in on a house with the one and only agent listed selling the property, the sellers accepted my offer and I was waiting for the agent to bring the contract to me that evening to sign.

A couple of hours before our meeting, he calls me and tells me another agent in the office took someone else though and they put in an offer higher than me, and whether I could come up and meet that price. I said no and felt like he was just trying to squeeze more money out of me. But he then said that the other agent will get the comission so he’s missing out as well.

Is that right? The other agent wasn’t even selling that property. Can they just poach like this? Or was this a dirty little trick to pressure me into paying more?

 

I think they are trying to squeeze more money from you. There's also the tactic of "we have a better offer". This is a variation of the same theme.

Or it could be legit, but what does it matter to you personally if the agent gets this commission or not?

Anyway, keep rational, don't get emotionally attached. Unless it's a PPOR purchase, and there is something unique/special with it then you can include some heart too. But generally speaking, there's always another IP.

 

Sounds odd.
Marg

 

The sales agreement is linked to the licensee or other licensed agent. If they are willing to share the commission with the agent who brings in a signed contract that is a business decision of the licensee. Not your problem.

So you've made an offer without full knowledge of the conditions of sale? Why haven't you got a copy of the contract by email? Was your offer in writing?

 

Depends on the agency structure. Sometimes the listing agent is the exclusive selling agent, other times any sales agent can show and sell the property with a split commission with the listing agent.

A typically commission structure is
1/3rd to licensee
1/3rd to listing agent
1/3rd to selling agent

 

Yep pretty normal amongst some agency structures as @DaveM said. You see it with the likes of agencies such as Barry Plant and Hocking Stuart.

The extra commission an agent gets if you pay say an extra $2k is so miniscule it almost doesn't exist. They'd generally rather just get the sale done and move on to the next property.

 

Hi Scott, I made the offer over the phone yesterday morning and had the agent lined up to bring the contract over for signing that afternoon. I didn’t get an emailed copy. I just thought it was a done deal, I didn’t realise they could still take other people though and take offers

 

The vendor forgets that an agent is also working for themselves, working on a buyer to achieve an extra $2000 may take a few hours for a mere 2% or $40 extra, to achieve that extra is insignificant to the agent but also costs them more to achieve. No different to having a tradie perform work then you want extras at no charge - price and terms agreed but you then want more.

 

A lot of agents also take pride in getting every dollar out of the buyers to keep their vendors happy. Personally the negotiation is the best part of my job. I go back to the buyers on a regular basis even if the vendor is happy if I feel that the buyer will pay more.

 

Just one of the differences between a good agent and an average one

 

Get the agent to email you a contract. Most agents work that way anyway but always good to have a contract signed by you. Still doesn't matter until the seller communicates their acceptance of the offer

 

Happened for us when selling mum's house. Agent brought us very good offer which we immediately said we would accept. He told us not to be too quic to accept, went back to the buyer and got an extra $14K!
Marg

 

Go higher with the first sales agent if he's willing to split his commission with you

 

This is where the value of a good agent comes into play. Depending on the commission payable it is more than possible that the agent made you money after talking their fee into consideration.

 

If what you are saying is true the agent stuffed up.

A REA should never tell their offer is accepted until it is signed by the vendor, however if the agent said I will take your offer to the vendor to see what they think and you interrupted it differently then that is your problem.

No matter which way it is right now your options are;

1. Leave offer as is - it will either be accepted or rejected/negotiated.
2. Increase offer - will then either be accepted or rejected/negotiated.
3. Walk away - let them deal with it and if they come back to you then you can decide to put a new offer in (higher or lower than before) or the same one as previously put in.

The second option will give you the greatest chance to secure the property and the third option is the way to give yourself a lot of negotiating power but comes at the risk you lose the property. The first option is the middle ground where if you were happy before to lose it at that price then you may as well leave your offer unchanged and see what happens.

When you get a call back from the REA the call will likely either go 'Congrats you purchased' in which case you will not believe that there was another property - even if you ask what the other offer was they will say yours was only a couple grand above theirs, again this could be true or false as I have seen offers with x0,000s difference but no one wants to know they over paid. Or you lose out and then you will know for sure there was another purchaser and you will know have a good idea how much higher your offer had to be (could be conditions) but in this scenario the purchaser may feel there wasn't another purchaser.

Best of luck

 

The problem I have is that my offer was accepted by the vendor and the contract was signed by the vendor at $890k, there was no more negotiation required, I was just waiting for the agent to bring the contract to me to sign in the afternoon.

During that time another agent took another buyer through (apparently) and they offered $900k, that’s $10k more than my offer. That’s when I got the call asking to come up to $900 otherwise theure going with the other party.

So as you can see, the negotiations had finished and the contract was signed by the vendor just didn’t make it to me in time.

 

Did they communicate their offer of acceptance to you?

 

Do you have any written communications that the offer was accepted? Or better the actual contract? (I know this answer is no).

If it was a phone call how can you prove that they said it was?

 

Yes they did, and they signed the contract at the agreed price, but I just didn’t get a chance to sign it