In the the glorious state of New Jersey "Price Fixing" is illegal. You cannot force a company to have a set commission rate. Now you are probably wondering why any company would accept anything less that 6% for their commission. There are various reasons and I am not against any company that offers discount brokerage, but you have to understand how that whole concept got started:
- Strong sellers market
- Rise is avg home price.
- Stick a sign in the yard & its sold.
- Make thousands of dollars doing so.
- Everybody wants to be a realtor.
It seemed so easy to be a real estate agent and get paid money for doing virtually nothing. Sellers were not seeing value in our services and to their defense, some of them were not getting any. The market was so hot that the mls was the only tool that you needed and if you threw a lot of "stuff" on the wall, something was bound to stick.
Well thats no longer the case and times have changed. Many of the "discount brokers" are long gone, especially the king of 3% commissions who will remain nameless. Just my personal opinion, but i provide my clients with top quality service and because of this, I deserve to get paid top dollar. Makes sense to me. my standard is 3% on a co-op nothing less.
Now to get to the crux and the whole crux of the matter...
I submit an offer the other day and it has my 3% commission in there, signed by me "Agent for buyer". The agent blows me off and tells me that the MLS says 2.5% for co-op brokers. I inform her that I have a buyers agreement that states my 3% must be in there. The agent informs me that its illegal for me to do that and her seller wont pay it. She has to see something with the buyers signature on it. Just do your job already and persent the offer to your seller with the 3% or we will go elsewhere. She was addamit about the signature as if to imply I was doing something illegal without the consent of my client, so I had my client sign and resubmit the offer.
We go back and forth negotiating and they finally accept our offer, only to go back to the commission. The agent informs me now that we reached a number, the commission is only going to be 2.5%. "No deal" I say, "Thats illegal and I can report you to the board" she says, your buyer has to be the one to say so. Next thing I know she get her broker on the phone and we are back to the beginning. She is explaining to me that what I am doing is illegal and not in the best interest of my buyer and I could lose my license. I inform her that she doesn't know what she is talking about. Not only am I a broker, but an instructor as well. She wants to see my buyers agreement, which isn't necessary because she already has the offer signed by the buyer, but we're in America and you don't have to be wrong to get sued so I send it to her anyway.
They call me back 15 minutes later and give me the "what about your client", "do the right thing", "do you care about your client or the money" speech. The agent slipped and told me she had never even told her client about the 3% commission, so that may kill the deal. I told her i would talk to my client, but I doubt it. To add insult to injury she sent me an article with her point underlined about being ethical and fair to the client. I read the entire article and it proved my point even more. I called my client and he completely agreed with me and backed me as far as getting my commission.
The next morning the agent called me and told me she spoke with her client and if I had to get my 3% then it would come out of her commission, but we had a deal. I spoke to my client, fine with him, fine with me. We get contracts and notice that the property is listed on the MLS and they dropped it to the price we negotiated to...
What are your thoughts about this?
1. Do you think there was anything wrong about what I did?
2. Do you think there was anything wron with what the agent did?
3. How do you handle discounted listings?
Comments(12)