Your realtor should have definitely asked you if you were interested in new homes or resale homes. However, after awhile it may have been helpful for you to tell him/her that you wanted to see new developments as well.
jan777 yeah I do agree with you that the realtor should have asked from the beginning if newguy was interested in new homes verses resale.
As far as commissions go, most of the new home developments (at least down here in SD) offer just as much if not more then resellers. This has been a fairly recent change because as little as a year and a half ago, the majority of the builders didn’t offer any commissions. As soon as the market started to tank they changed their tune.
rus I am sorry for not being explicit in my description. When you described the way you work you were very accurate and I was not.
To answer your questions, yes I list for 1% and encourage sellers to offer at least 2.5% as a coop (for the buyers agent). So yes at the end of escrow I get 1% and that is it. What I do not provide are open houses, print advertising, caravans (unless it is a high end home) and mailers. If people want that extra advertising I will provide it for them and they can pay for it. Transaction coordination is $395.
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Again, just to clarify there are ample choices out there. Help U Sell is one of them. Powayseller and others have used them. They advertise a fixed fee to sell your home however the fixed fee actually varies with the sales price of your home. In reality it is about 1.2-1.5% on the listing side and they to encourage sellers to offer a 2.5% coop commission. I Pay 1 is no longer in the game. Jeff Karchin will list your home on the MLS for a matter of a few hundred dollars. That is about all he does but that gets sellers exposure. Forsalebyowner.com is another alternative for people who want to FSBO.
The degree of service people offer varies of course. Rus I am not sure what sources of advertising you do, open houses, print ads, etc but I don’t do any of that. For 1% I could never afford it. The full service guys do of course provide all of that. I contend it is pricing and the condition of your home that will determine if it will sell. Help U Sell franchises offer different service plans (if I recall correctly) regarding open houses and stuff like that. The large brokerages have such a sheer number of agents that I believe this is where their major advantage lies. However, there is a listing 4 homes away from me that is a Prudential home and has been on the market for several months now. IMO it was simply not priced correctly.
