i’ve been buying and selling residential RE for years. When I started, I used realtors. My first house, I bought with a buyers agent. Over the years, I came to realize that when buying a house, an agent really isn’t required at all. Frankly, I think the realtor dude who replied to you is being quite disingenuous. What guides buyers agents to particular homes to show are the seller-side incentives offered. The buyers agent will invariably guide you to those listings which offer a greater commission percentage to him/her. Realtors are not bound by any legal fiduciary duty to you. Indeed, when you begin to sign a boatload of paperwork to close on the deal, your so called buyers agent will pull out a bunch of stuff which he/she will ask you to sign that does nothing but protect them from being sued by you! You see, the whole business of realtors is to skim both sides, the buyer and seller, and make good.
OK…so much for my bias. Today, with various internet tools, you dont really need the services of a buyers agent. Here’s how I’ve done it the last couple of times (within the last 6 months, in Ventura county and in Santa Barbara):
1. All MLS listings are available on the internet. Sign up with realtyTrac, or use any of the following: yahoo realestate (updates daily), trulia, realtor.com, etc.
2. Research the areas you want to live in. You can get all school scores from greatschools.net. Then you can go and drive around the towns you want to buy in and get a feel for them.
3. Now here’s the cool part: sign up with a discount realty service. like Redfin. You pay a flat fee, they hook you up with a local guy who will handle the paperwork of the transaction. For a newbie this works great. I used them in my last transaction in SB, and they credited back 2/3 of the buyers-agent commision to me, which I used as part of my down payment. I saved more than $25K. This is a sea-change in the way RE is conducted, and will likely sweep all the RE chaff off the floor within a few years. See, YOU are paying for your buyers agent AND for the seller agent. What not take at least one of these skimmers off the books?
4. Make appointments to see the homes you like directly with the selling/listing agent. Redfin charges you per home shown, so its not worth using them for this. But who cares? Every selling agent is dying to show you their home directly – the greed factor (getting both buying and selling commissions) kicks in, you see!
5. To make an offer on your home, use the Redfin guy – he’ll do all the paperwork and help you with escrow. I found their system to be clean, relaible and no-nonsense. Do not use services provided by the seller. If they insist – walk away fro the transaction. The Redfin pre-negotiated value is better, in my opinion.
6. Remember, the REAL people behind the trnsaction are the escrow and title companies. You can deal with them directly, but if you are doing this for the first time, learn by using someone like Redfin.
7. Always, always bid lower than what the seller wants. My last purchase in SB was in a good part of town, lots of interest, but the house needed work. So I summarized what needed to be done to the house on a spreadheet and the Redfin agent submitted it with my offer at 12% below. They rejected it, of course. I then came in again at 7.5% lower, having already seeded the sellers mind with what ought to be done to the property, and my bid was accepted. Remember, when buying a home, especially an older one, there are PLENTY more where this oe came from…so be prepared to WALK when things aren’t going your way. It may take a couple of times for you to get used to this, but you’ll figure out how much bargaining power you really have.
8. Over the years, I have come to have a rather low opinion of realtors. Out fof 8 transactions, I was involved with only one couple who had some integrity, and that was because they were both 7th-day Adventists – very sincere folk. The rest were people like high-school jocks, ex-car salesmen, housewives looking to make a fast buck, bible-thumpers, and whatnot. The more educated ones were cynical and actually the worst – they were smart enough to know how to make the most money. There are very few requirements to becoming a realtor. My gardener became one last year (he was a house flipper!), and he had no formal education beyond grade school.
