I am here to preserve your price!

In all my years of real estate I have never heard anything more ridiculous. Let me tell you the experience my brother has had trying to sell his home recently in Melbourne.

Now one would have thought that as his sister is in real estate and well-connected into the Melbourne market that perhaps a referral to an agent would have been the sensible thing to do. No that wasn’t the case – he is of course the idiot younger brother.

A well-known agent was appointed – I will be fair and not mention any names and a price point quoted that I found quiet interesting.

I suspect it was the quote them high…. listing process!

Auction date was set, open for inspections were conducted, groups of 16 plus went through, 8 section 32’s were provided for but not one offer was made. One would have thought that the listing agents would have had conversations with my brother week two about the expected price…- they didn’t.

My brother leading up to the auction asked the agents if perhaps they should review the price. The response was – we are here to preserve your price and ensure that your property is sold.

One week prior to auction they had a bite – an offer was made which in hindsight was quiet reasonable, however the agents advised my brother to reject the offer as they were confident of selling on auction day for the listed price.

Their company had listed other homes in the area that had sold, were on par to my brothers home however no referrals were made from that sale, the agents never had the conversation on the fact that the market was perhaps still soft given that similar homes in the area were not selling for the price that had been quoted, in fact they knew very little about the homes listed by other agents from their offices. I suspect that this is a company where agents protect their buyers, don’t share information or data to the detriment of the clients.

On auction day guess what – there were no bids!

Can I also add that during this whole time my brother was the one who rang or emailed the agents, they were never on the front foot on communication.

A few weeks later a cheque was forwarded to them by a contact in the UK who said that their agent had been through the property and that when the cheque had cleared from the bank account they would sign the sale contract. My brother rang me up and I nearly choked on my coffee – I did explain to him that it was probably a fraud or laundering syndicate and best he not get involved in it. Plus where is the signed offer/contract that the agent is supposed to get.

Guess what, yes it was a fraud syndicate and I won’t go into the details but quiet interesting how it works. The only thing that saved these agents from not losing a 10% deposit was that they didn’t bank the cheque within 24 hours of receiving it. Yes against our regulations but it saved their bacon.

My brother then called me and asked for a referral. Thank you Toby Parker and his team at Hocking Stuart in Balwyn, they did a great job in getting in touch with my brother and stepping in. 

It amazes me how many mistakes these agents made; they:

• got the price wrong
• didn’t share data and information across their network
• did not communicate with their clients on a regular basis
• went on a campaign to preserve the price as opposed to understanding what the market was willing to pay
• did not use their database effectively
• lost a buyer due to their efforts to preserve the price
• did not work the buyers who attended the open home
• accepted a cheque without a signed offer/contract
• did not bank the cheque within the required time frame
• were close to becoming victims of a fraud campaign that was obvious

What i find incredible is that these agents are from a well-known Melbourne brand, I know the directors and if they actually found out this is what was occurring in the field I suspect they would turn very grey.

I do have to ask however what levels of accountability are in place in this business for agents to get away with the above. You have to question the type of culture the office has where buyers are not shared across their network.

These agents are used to working in a market where listings have been easy to get, buyers are easy to find and all they need to do is fill in the paper work.

Negotiation is a skill, from the moment you take on a listing your role is to negotiate the best possible price for the vendor as well as ensure that they understand what the market is prepared to pay for their home. Buyers in this market are too valuable and any agent who is being trained to “preserve their vendors price” may be in for a short career in real estate.