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Dual Agency fleshed out..
When I was a kid, our family never talked about sex or money at the supper table…. How impolite!..
Today, agents are still that way, about money…
A typical listing, in SF, on a $100,000 property, carries a 5% commission… the typical agent would rather pocket $5,000, as a dual agent, than take $2,500, and see another agent take $2,500.. That “twin killing” is enough to lead people to squeeze anywhere it seems will help close the deal, too much so.
I pre-discuss this with the seller, and we usually agree, that I will not also act as an unrepresented buyer’s agent. I WILL act to protect them from mistakes made out of ignorance. I will not let them breech any term of the contract that I would have written for their signature. I will give them all the data on recent sales, and current competing properties. I will not advise them on what to offer, or how to disadvantage my client.. I do only take the 2 or 2.5% for the “listing agent commission. I do also charge my seller an extra fee for all the extra work that I do, but never more than 1/3 of what a buyer’s agent would have pocketed. In that case, the seller is saving 2/3s of the missing buyer’s agent commission, and I point that out to the buyer, as well as the seller…. so that both principals are aware of who is netting what… Some call this “transactional agent”… I call it “Facilitator”…
I expressly cite all things a “buyer’s agent can do for the buyer, that I cannot. I cite the only clear benefit to the principals as the saving of 2/3s, or more of the ‘buyer agent commission’.
I do think that if a “Fully Disclosed Dual Agent” is taking the whole “commission pie”, they are being patently greedy, to put it mildly.
Finally: I do not believe that there can be such a thing as a “Dual Agent”, anymore than there can be “a square circle”…
One of the prime requirements of being an Agent, is to be totally loyal to the principal, and their goals. The seller wants the top dollar, the buyer wants ‘bottom dollar’. A “Dual Agent” is going to have to betray the interests of one OR the other, if not both.
The only reason that “Dual Agency” is legal..is due to the lobbying of the big brokerages, from what I can deduce.
JackBarry99@gmail.com
415-564-0225/415-235-7897cell
1627 Tenth Ave, S.F.,Ca.94122-3624
“These are My Principles…If you don’t like them, I have others!”
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Re-photographing George Lawrence’s “San Francisco in Ruins” (Be Prepared for the upcoming Big One, even though SF ignores the “NonDuctile” concrete blds…like the Fontana East-West)
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/1906/kap/
Cutting the Commission
Pass the word: Your broker’s fee really is negotiable
By JAMES R. HAGERTY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
After selling a home, real-estate agents often give clients a gift, such as a scented candle or decorative plate. Jeffrey D. Thomas received something more memorable: a check for more than $10,000.
Real Estate Cafe
This guy is honest, creative, and way ahead of the curve…. He predicted the current economic and real estate collapse three years ago. To read him, is to “get inspired”.
The pitfall that is “Dual Agency”
The pitfall that is “Dual Agency”….. The moral: understand the commission cash flow, in any given scenario.
Why would you spend $100,000 to recover a $34,000 deposit? Principle, of course.
The real estate industry is rife with conflicts, incompetence and fraud. And, if Stern can donate a little (OK, a lot) of his boundless energy to reform it, he is more than willing to spend his free time spamming journalists and lawmakers for the greater good.
Joel Stern is a man on a mission