Thread by @JohnPasalis

The duplicitous money hungry realtor is of course an easy target, but I feel @cbcmarketplace didn’t ask any agents what it’s like working with FSBO sellers to get a different perspective.

So I’ll share my experience here in this 🧵1/

https://twitter.com/CBCNews/status/1448974469511454740

Since defending realtors will lead to some trolling, I’ll start with a reminder that I was one of few people in my industry who supported FSBOs being listed on the MLS back in 2010 and fought with the @CompBureau to make sold data public 2/

Now, I’ll offer you my experience dealing with For Sale By Owner (FSBO) sellers from when I was selling more actively.

The first and biggest problem was that it was incredibly hard to schedule an appointment to see FSBO properties. 3/

Most agents will schedule 5-6 showings for their clients with a very tight timeline.

When a home is listed with a brokerage a buying agent usually knows if a home is available to be viewed real time (either by calling the office or booking online) 4/

FSBO properties are harder to book because the seller manages the viewings & usually insists on being there.

Some FSBO sellers are savvier, would respond quickly and would have a lock box to make it easy for buying agents to show their house.

They were the minority 5/

The other common problem I experienced is that these properties were often overpriced.

And here’s the misleading part of @cbcmarketplace methodology.

Good agents will steer their buyers away from most overpriced listings, even ones listed by real estate agents. 6/

But if the only overpriced listing CBC is testing is a FSBO listing, then of course it looks like agents are steering their clients away from FSBO properties, when in reality agents are steering their clients away from any overpriced listings 7/

From my experience, buyer agents don’t particularly care if it’s a FSBO listing as long as:

1⃣ it's easy to view it
2⃣ it’s fairly priced &
3⃣they’re getting paid a typical commission (between 2-2.5%)

which of course leads to the last argument made in the article 8/

Why would buyer agents steer their clients away from a FSBO listing that is only offering them 1% vs the typical 2.5%.

CBC made it sound like this is happening because the entire real estate industry is a bunch of greedy hustlers eager to make as much money as possible 9/

While there are of course a lot of those types of agents out there, that’s not the entire story.

Firstly, many buyers are working with their own real estate agent and in some cases they have signed a Buyer Representation Agreement with their agent 10/

These agreements normally require the buyer to compensate their agent if the commission offered by the seller is less than 2.5% (as an example).

Most buyers don’t have extra cash to pay their agent’s commission if the seller isn’t covering the full amount 11/

But here’s the more interesting part.

My brokerage @RealosophyRE policy with our buyer clients is that our agents will accept whatever commission the seller is offering, even if it’s just 1% & our clients don’t have to worry about covering the difference. 12/

We do this because I don’t think it’s fair for our commission to get in the way of our clients buying a home they love.

I also don’t think it’s fair to expect our clients to assume the risk that they’ll have to pay our agent if the seller is offering less than 2.5%. 13/

For our agents, it’s more important to help our clients navigate this market safely and help them find their dream house.

If we happen to make a big less money on one particular transaction, it’s truly not a problem for us.

That being said...14/

The rare time a FSBO listing would come up that was paying less than 2% (for example) I always remember my clients trying to steer us away from seeing it because they felt it was unfair to me – which I always found interesting 15/

So even though I was fine accepting a lower commission, it was our clients insisting that I/we deserve the full 2.5% commission.

This may sound hard to believe but it’s true and it’s due to our clients valuing what we do and the advice we offer 16/
realosophy.com/reviews

Finally, there are of course problems with our industry and there are a lot of terrible agents out there.

Just last week our agents and clients experienced two highly unethical actions from agents at other companies. 17/

I would say that at most, 20% of agents out there are true professionals.

So if you’re a buyer doing what @cbcmarketplace did – calling a bunch of random agents to show you homes you’re likely going to get the same result as CBC.

A terrible/inexperienced agent 18/

That’s why it’s best to do your due diligence and find an agent you trust.

No professional, principled agent is going to let a lower commission from a seller get in the way of their clients buying a home they love. /