When the time comes to sell or lease your property, would-be vendors and landlords often look to the internet to help shortlist agents that might meet their needs.
Well established methods of choosing your agent such as re-employing an agent previously used, adverts in the Herald, recommendations from friends and relatives or visiting Home Opens to meet agents are other effective methods of finding your preferred agent.
In the on-line space, REIWA offers reiwa.com Agent Finder; a free, independent, credible source of finding professional agents. Also occupying the portal space are a myriad of commercial operators that purport to “find the best agent near you”.
Conducting a Google search of ‘Real Estate Agents Fremantle’ for example will throw up paid for adverts for www.localagentfinder.com.au, www.whichrealestateagent.com.au, www.openagent.com.au and www.agentselect.com.au
These so-called “intermediaries” (read parasite) claim they can find you the best agent. Sadly, this is not the case. The truth is they merely run a portal and a call centre whereby they contact local agents offering them a lead for a property listing in exchange for about 20 per cent of their sales commission. Participating agents competing for the listing seek to cover the cost of the referral by demanding a higher commission– hardly a consumer benefit – and clients are astonished to learn their agent is paying a referral in the first place.
A major problem with these intermediaries is that successful, leading agents (the best ones) don’t use these intermediaries to get business and why would they? The best agents get business on their merit with no need to pay a referral to an intermediary for running a portal and slick advertising campaigns. Consumers should know that in using these sites, you’re not getting access to the best agents, just the least experienced and most desperate.
These intermediaries are not the vendor advocates they purport to be. They don’t interview or thoroughly research all agents and they only put forward those who’ll pay them a referral.
Disturbingly, the biggest, most popular portal, realestate.com.au has (at no surprise to me) now moved into this space charging agents for leads from would-be sellers. At $199 per lead, realestate.com.au will without doubt seek to increase this should it prove a successful venture with all these additional costs passed onto consumers of real estate services.
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