Advice on Openlistings service

[Dharini Sukumaran]

I am a first time home buyer in the bay area and I just read about using openlistings.com to represent the buying agent. I need some feedback from people that worked with Openlistings for buying properties. They are basically an online real restate brokerage firm that has a handful of local agents working remotely. With them, the home shopping part is the onus of the buyer and once a buyer decides on a property, an offer is made online(with promises of helping making an offer), and then they claim to assign a single agent after the offer is made until the closing process. Please share your experiences

[Chris Mason]

Hi @Dharini Sukumaran,

I actually strongly believe in the value-add of an experienced real estate agent for FTHB. $50k worth of bad advice isn't worth that commission refund.

When I personally was a FTHB, the spread between what I was prepared to offer for the house, and what I got it for, was indeed about $50k, so that isn't hyperbole.

I've also seen cases where the buyers were 100% happy with the house and negotiation results, and then magically a week and a half before closing I see a contract addendum with a >$10k seller credit. Obviously, the buyer's agent was singing to a different tune when speaking with the listing agent, picking up on where the sellers are at and how motivated they truly are.

A garbage agent isn't worth it, no doubt. A solid agent for a FTHB is worth it each and every time.

Most of the agents working for those discount brokerages are there because they aren't that great at their jobs, meaning no/few past client referrals, meaning they need to rely on a website with a gimmick to get them leads. On top of that, how good is a discount agent going to be at negotiating on your behalf, when they've negotiated away half of their pay before even meeting you? If they will throw themselves under the bus, obviously they will throw you under it to, and you might not even realize it's happening.

Remember that beating up real estate agents, in total, is fighting over at most 6% of the transaction's value. The seller's chunk is ~94%. Keep your eyes on the bigger pie, the 94%, if you want to look for where you can score and score big. Squabbling over that tiny itty bitty 6% pie, and getting 1/4 of it (half of half of one commission), isn't going to be nearly as big of a win as getting 3% or 4% of that big giant 94% pie.

Now, let's suppose you weren't a FTHB. Let's suppose you had a half dozen real estate transactions under your belt. In that scenario, I'd have a slightly different answer for you.