Negotiating with agents on their commission

[Solomon Bluzenstein]

Is it worth negotiating commission with the agent selling your property, and if yes how?

[Robert Adams]

Often times you get what you pay for.

You want a discount newbie agent to represent you then you get newbie results. Maybe their marketing plan is weak and gets your property less exposure resulting in less buyers seeing it, resulting is less demand, resulting is less money for you. Maybe the agent hasn't done a lot of business and doesn't  get the disclosures necessary to protect your position and you end up in court resulting in more money out of pocket. Maybe the discount agent doesn't  want to spend time on your discount listing and just wants the deal done so negotiations are weaker resulting in less money for you. Since the commission is much less maybe the agent doesn't take professional photos of your home and uses his iphone pics so the ads look like crap. Maybe the agent doesn't do open houses since their time is being spent on other deal with higher commissions.

I could go on and on. So many sellers especially FSBO get so caught up in what they are paying in commission that they lose sight of the their bottomline being effected by the factors above. A good agent will often times get you more money for the house even after paying their commissions.

We offer a 3% listing package and a 1% listing package depending on what services the seller wants performed. The work, time, and energy that goes into each type of listing is very different. Different strokes for different folks. A good agent knows what their time is worth. 

Also I would like to mention there are experienced agents that do high volume for discount commissions. Many times these types of agents put your listing on the MLS and forget about you until another agent sells it for you. Often times they have assistants that answer all the leads from buyers and coop agents. So now that agent you thought you were hiring is actually just the name on the listing and someone else is facilitating your transactions. Again you get what you pay for.