Estate Agent Fees – What Should You Be Paying?

What to pay your estate agent? How to keep them motivated?

Estate Agent Fees – What Should You Be Paying?

Full transcript below:

So, a bit of an interesting one and this is a bit of a hot topic and I suppose it’s a personal one for myself as well because having done it for 13 or so years you hear all the stories, estate agent fees, I think at the moment, certainly where we are in the UK are notoriously low. Just take a look at what’s happening on the European scene and indeed internationally, over in the US 10%, is a vast difference, but they’re doing a lot more for it admittedly but then you look to the continent, you’ve got France 6, Ireland up at 3, English estate agents are seriously cheap by comparison at 1 or 2%. So the problem that often arises and people often the house seller, get a bit of a kick out of it, is if you squeeze your state agent right down, you’ve got him right down, you’ve got him over a barrel, you’ve got a deal and a half out of him at the end of the day, if he’s under that sort of pressure is he really going to be that motivated to push your property for an extra £5,000, an extra £10,000, is he going to remain proactive, no to be honest, he doesn’t give a monkeys, he just wants it straight off his books because every single day, every single week your property is sat on his books you’re costing him money. If he’s on a very mediocre fee you’re making that even worse so I always say at the end of the day reward your estate agent, incentivise him to think about possibly doing a staggered fee, so you could have a two-tiered system so you say well Fred you know what if you get a mediocre result you get a mediocre fee but if you get an exceptional result I will give you a very chunky percentage of that uplift and estate agents like that because they will then be incentivised. You as the home seller, the vendor know that they have your best interests at heart and they really are going for it and don’t necessarily want it straight off their books, they will push it for everything that they’ve got. It then all comes down to what is sometimes actually a few extra several hundred pounds in commission, you know that you’re getting your agent to push a few extra thousand pounds in end sale figures. I know which one I would want at the end of the day, so again just remember they’re salespeople, keep them incentivised, keep them interested.