Frequently Asked Question: Do you reduce your commission?
Real estate is this funny business where customers want to hire you but before they do they want you to reduce how much your are going to be paid. I don't know how many of my clients' bosses ask them to reduce their take home pay before take on a job. I understand no one likes to pay more than they have to pay. I also understand that the price for selling a home in America is high compared to other countries.
I posted a blog yesterday about how much we charge which explains the process and how a real estate agent gets paid. This is worth reading because it explains some of our answers to today's question.
As a real estate agent or in our case a Realtor, we get paid only if we are successful in meeting our clients goal or purchasing or selling a home.
So, it seems odd to me that before we even start a customer is trying to get me to reduce the amount I am going to get paid to help them be successful in achieving their goal. Now they may believe I am going to get paid the entire amount of the commission, please read yesterdays post linked above.
Yes, ultimately as I explained yesterday our fees are negotiable depending on several different things. How many homes are you selling and buying? What price point is your home? Are you going to be buying a home locally as well as selling the one in which you are currently living? The answers to these questions will affect how much we charge.
Will we reduce our commission? The simple answer is no. You are hiring me to negotiate on your behalf and maybe this is simply a test to see how I handle the objection because you want to know if I am going to do a good job representing you and getting you the best price and terms for your home.
Another way to look at this is to ask your self what would you like me to drop out of the representation I am giving you. I note just a few below.
Buyers
Communication
Confidentiality
Negotiation skills
Pricing data
Data analysis
Public Records information
Neighborhood knowledge
Mortgage contacts
Home Inspector contacts
Contractor contacts
Title Insurance contacts who can offer you discounted rates
Movers
Which of these do you not want access to?
Sellers
Advice on staging and preparing your home for sale
Marketing
Communication
Confidentiality
Security of your information
Protection of your Escrow account
Negotiation skills
Advice on market data
Contractor contacts
Movers
Conveyancing, obtaining tax certs, home owner or condo association documents
Obtaining the pay off amounts for your mortgage and making sure it is closed correctly
These are just a few of the things we do for clients which if any of these do you not want in your representation. We offer outstanding customer service as is evident from our testimonials and frankly we don't want to lower our standards of service. We may offer you a lower commission because of one of the reasons mentioned above but we don't want to give you shoddy service and therefore we charge what we do as this enables us to meet your expectations.
Buying or selling a Main Line home, call us to represent you and know that you are hiring one of the top Main Line agents with many positive testimonials over the years.
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