Selling with More than One Agent

Is it possible to have a couple of different agents from different agencies both sell your property? The tricky part would be advertising it and who would be allowed to have their ad on the top 2 real estate sites. Maybe one agent could advertise it on domain.com.au and allow the other to advertise on realestate.com.au and pay commission to the one that gets me the best price. Is this possible?

 

Would you do that if you were a REA?

 

What are your reasons for considering this?

As @kierank said - why would a REA do this?

I think the agents would just be focussed on getting the deal across the line, and you will loose this way.

 

I'm not sure you understood what I'm proposing? Agents get paid a commission right to sell the place. How can they be losing if I hire 2 different agents to sell my place? If there are any costs like advertising then I'm happy to pay that for the one that does not get the sale.

There is not much difference to putting an item for sale on 2 different classified websites and when the item sells the website that sold it gets the commission.

 

Selling the house is the easy part. Getting the listing is the hard part. Effectively you're asking one of them to work for nothing.

 

ha, yeah that's the problem! In fact I will be doing a lot of their donkey work anyway, I will be promoting it and sending potential customers to the ads. All they have to do is sit on their backside and take a few phone calls that the receptionist judges as important.

 

How are you going to promote it? Bikini car wash out the front?

 

If that's all they will be doing, why not take the calls yourself rather than paying one of them an exorbitant commission for sitting on their backside?

 

Get 3 agents in for a listing presentation. Pick the one that you think will get the best result for you.

 

I have thought of advertising it myself for the first few weeks with the website that places it on RE and domain for $50 but maybe it will come across as a bikini car wash when the customer asks where is the agent to complete the sale?

 

For my PPOR sale in early/mid 2016 the way we chose our selling agent was to bring up a listing of all the recent (~last 5 months) sales in our suburb. (Note: very few units in our old suburb, virtually every property is a freestanding house)

We (my partner and I independently) looked at the ads and the sales prices, hiding the info on who was the agent. Keep in mind high side/low side of street factors, what the home is made of, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms and any significant negatives for location or block size. We each independently gave each property sale a score out of 10. The way I scored it was all strong sales prices scored above 5, (anything from 6 to 10) anything that was sold too cheaply was given less than 5.

Once we both did this exercise my partner and I then compared notes and scores and anything wildly divergent was discussed.

Then we revealed the names of the agents and calculated the average scores by agent. Any agent with 3 sales or less was basically ignored. We then interviewed the agent with the highest score and another one (and interviewed a third one too). Turns out the one with the highest score had the better advertising offer, the better commission fee and we liked her manner. So she got the job... and I was happy with the communication throughout and the end result.

 

SEO mainly, articles, press release, social media, social networking, FB groups, twitter, online discussions, etc

 

That sounds like an interesting strategy. I have a problem as i have 2 agents that I have contacted and they both are good and I like them both but now I do not look forward to tell one of them they missed out. I feel almost guilty for wasting their time. Both have good points so it will also be hard to choose.

 

Look at both agents recent past sales and go through the exercise I did. If one appears to have had better recent sales results.... to me that is what matters at the end of the day.

 

Any realestate agent with self worth would shake your hand and wish you well. Asking another person to work for nothing tells me what a potential vender will be like during a negotiation......

I would also ad.... Too many people base their decisions on the price of the commission not knowing what they are going to get. When I worked for one of the best reputable companies many years ago we were trained to encourage an owner to engage in a role play with us, then we would ask them to do the same with the next agent.

Our strike rate was above 80% because others would panic under pressure and have ordinary dialogue. The key to getting a great result is the negotiation skills your agent possesses.

 

Why don't you hire them both (as you originally proposed) and pay both of them their commission when the property is sold?

In this way, both get paid for their work.