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Canadian here. Sadly, it's common practice around these parts for buyer agents to completely ignore listings that don't have a selling agent attached; it's thei

Canadian here. Sadly, it's common practice around these parts for buyer agents to completely ignore listings that don't have a selling agent attached; it's their form of industry protectionism. As a result you end up losing out on a large surface area of buyers who rely on their buying agent to find properties, which puts you at a disadvantage.

dixie_land 3y ago
A "selling" agent IS the buyer's agent, a "seller's" agent (listing agent) works for the seller. That tells you how the agents view their job responsibilities, the buyers agent ultimately sells a house (to the buyer), the sellers agent advertises (lists) it.
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
Are the buyers not getting a feed of every MLS listing in their target area? That entirely solved our purchasing problem - we got automated daily or sometimes hourly emails parametrically filtered by school district, build date, price, square footage, and lot size whenever a new listing went up. It would have been stupid to have our agent filter them based on the deals that were better for him or his industry. We had a uniquely good agent who spent hundreds of hours with us filtering hundreds of listings, visiting probably 60 different houses at all times of day over the course of a year before we finally bought, submitting a dozen offers, and helping us through the closing process, and then using his builder's license to help us ready the home we bought for move-in. He was extremely knowledgeable about all kinds of building inspection issues and the procedural minutiae. We happily paid him the 6%, it would have been far more costly to bring along an inspector/attorney/general contractor at an hourly rate.
tverbeure 3y ago
Whenever we’ve bought a house, we told the agent to not bother sending us listings or set up viewings. We simply checked open houses on Redfin and Zillow ourselves, and if we liked a house, we’d ask the agent to prepare an offer, at a price we set. It is not to figure out what a house will sell for if there are enough other sales in that neighborhood. For their reduced work, we’d ask a reduction of their commission.
- kube-system 3y ago
  In the US, this will severely limit your options. Most houses are posted to MLS first, and don't make it to public sites until later. If you want to get the best deals, you gotta have an agent send you MLS listings daily, swoop in and make an offer on the first day before anyone else sees it. When I bought my last house, my agent was able to send me dozens of listings from MLS for homes that weren't listed on public websites.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    Then this is why agents exist. That’s gate keeping to protect their patch.
    - kube-system 3y ago
      Definitely. But if you want to get a deal, for now, you have to play the game.
  - tverbeure 3y ago
    That was not our experience in California. One of our agents would still send MLS postings to us. We usually got that email after we’d gotten the same email listing from Redfin. And not once was there an MLS listing that wasn’t listed on Redfin.
  - poulsbohemian 3y ago
    I'm curious about your location and whether your agent was engaged in pocket listings*. When I push new listings to the two MLSs I belong to, they syndicate to all the various sites almost instantaneously. *Pocket listings are something more of the public should understand, as they are almost universally bad. Listing creates a market and gets your property in front of the most potential buyers.
  - dilyevsky 3y ago
    You can pay a flat fee to put your house in mls without an agency - it’s couple hundred bucks
lotsofpulp 3y ago
Websites have obviated the utility of a buyer’s agent “finding” houses for 90% of buyers. Setup alerts for the type of house you want, draw the geographic boundaries on Zillow, and spend 2 minutes looking at the listing and maps to find out everything an agent would have been able to tell you.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  I have routinely found more homes by looking around the neighborhoods I wanted to buy in than what I found on Zillow. They don't seem to capture all data sources well (or something else may be afoot, I'm not sure)
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    I presume their data source is MLS. Perhaps the homes you are finding are not listed in MLS?
    - no_wizard 3y ago
      Its possible, but I don't think thats the only thing, the reason being that they are listed via Realtors (usually) and I can sometimes find them on other websites (e.g. Redfin) or in the local real estate flyer booklet, but it simply isn't on Zillow for some reason. I wish I had a recent example, but I tested this theory multiple times when I was house hunting, and I don't think I'm hallucinating the issue.
      - yencabulator 3y ago
        There are multiple MLSes and Zillow only has deals with most of them. It's possible you're in a region with prominent "local MLSes" that decided Zillow wasn't paying them enough for access.
      - cudgy 3y ago
        The following video explains some of the possible discrepancy due to pocket listings not appearing in Zillow. It also suggested that realtor.com had more listings in its database in some neighborhoods. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_emO4Dl8sUM&t=1740s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_emO4Dl8sUM&t=1740s
j45 3y ago
Canada is typically 7% commission on the first 100k and 3.5% on the balance. As average prices have increased commission has also gone up. Realtor fees are high for their low level of digital literacy and competency. Realtors will be disrupted by tech folks who take a simple licensing exam and make software work for the customers. Running anything more than a basic level of search is usually impossible for Realtors. It’s this old realtor exchange which has more than had its clock tick past expiry. A software dev buddy had some decent parameters (distance to school, work, family, etc) and it seemed to boil Realtors brains to find a way to map this. It was more about making a sale. It was almost to the point where my friend almost was going to become a realtor to get access to the data to run his own searches. He calculated getting a license was cheaper than the commission. Realtors are like lawyers, too many don’t know everything but act like they do. The ones who specialize and actually are experts are worth it. Most sales are not that specialized
TexanFeller 3y ago
Not showing houses that don’t have a selling agent is a great reason for buyers to avoid having a buyer’s agent.
bilsbie 3y ago
But if the buyers see your property on Zillow wouldn’t they insist on seeing it?

dixie_land 3y ago

A "selling" agent IS the buyer's agent, a "seller's" agent (listing agent) works for the seller. That tells you how the agents view their job responsibilities, the buyers agent ultimately sells a house (to the buyer), the sellers agent advertises (lists) it.

LeifCarrotson 3y ago

Are the buyers not getting a feed of every MLS listing in their target area? That entirely solved our purchasing problem - we got automated daily or sometimes hourly emails parametrically filtered by school district, build date, price, square footage, and lot size whenever a new listing went up. It would have been stupid to have our agent filter them based on the deals that were better for him or his industry. We had a uniquely good agent who spent hundreds of hours with us filtering hundreds of listings, visiting probably 60 different houses at all times of day over the course of a year before we finally bought, submitting a dozen offers, and helping us through the closing process, and then using his builder's license to help us ready the home we bought for move-in. He was extremely knowledgeable about all kinds of building inspection issues and the procedural minutiae. We happily paid him the 6%, it would have been far more costly to bring along an inspector/attorney/general contractor at an hourly rate.

tverbeure 3y ago

Whenever we’ve bought a house, we told the agent to not bother sending us listings or set up viewings. We simply checked open houses on Redfin and Zillow ourselves, and if we liked a house, we’d ask the agent to prepare an offer, at a price we set. It is not to figure out what a house will sell for if there are enough other sales in that neighborhood. For their reduced work, we’d ask a reduction of their commission.

kube-system 3y ago
In the US, this will severely limit your options. Most houses are posted to MLS first, and don't make it to public sites until later. If you want to get the best deals, you gotta have an agent send you MLS listings daily, swoop in and make an offer on the first day before anyone else sees it. When I bought my last house, my agent was able to send me dozens of listings from MLS for homes that weren't listed on public websites.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  Then this is why agents exist. That’s gate keeping to protect their patch.
  - kube-system 3y ago
    Definitely. But if you want to get a deal, for now, you have to play the game.
- tverbeure 3y ago
  That was not our experience in California. One of our agents would still send MLS postings to us. We usually got that email after we’d gotten the same email listing from Redfin. And not once was there an MLS listing that wasn’t listed on Redfin.
- poulsbohemian 3y ago
  I'm curious about your location and whether your agent was engaged in pocket listings*. When I push new listings to the two MLSs I belong to, they syndicate to all the various sites almost instantaneously. *Pocket listings are something more of the public should understand, as they are almost universally bad. Listing creates a market and gets your property in front of the most potential buyers.
- dilyevsky 3y ago
  You can pay a flat fee to put your house in mls without an agency - it’s couple hundred bucks

lotsofpulp 3y ago

Websites have obviated the utility of a buyer’s agent “finding” houses for 90% of buyers. Setup alerts for the type of house you want, draw the geographic boundaries on Zillow, and spend 2 minutes looking at the listing and maps to find out everything an agent would have been able to tell you.

no_wizard 3y ago
I have routinely found more homes by looking around the neighborhoods I wanted to buy in than what I found on Zillow. They don't seem to capture all data sources well (or something else may be afoot, I'm not sure)
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I presume their data source is MLS. Perhaps the homes you are finding are not listed in MLS?
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    Its possible, but I don't think thats the only thing, the reason being that they are listed via Realtors (usually) and I can sometimes find them on other websites (e.g. Redfin) or in the local real estate flyer booklet, but it simply isn't on Zillow for some reason. I wish I had a recent example, but I tested this theory multiple times when I was house hunting, and I don't think I'm hallucinating the issue.
    - yencabulator 3y ago
      There are multiple MLSes and Zillow only has deals with most of them. It's possible you're in a region with prominent "local MLSes" that decided Zillow wasn't paying them enough for access.
    - cudgy 3y ago
      The following video explains some of the possible discrepancy due to pocket listings not appearing in Zillow. It also suggested that realtor.com had more listings in its database in some neighborhoods. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_emO4Dl8sUM&t=1740s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_emO4Dl8sUM&t=1740s

j45 3y ago

Canada is typically 7% commission on the first 100k and 3.5% on the balance. As average prices have increased commission has also gone up. Realtor fees are high for their low level of digital literacy and competency. Realtors will be disrupted by tech folks who take a simple licensing exam and make software work for the customers. Running anything more than a basic level of search is usually impossible for Realtors. It’s this old realtor exchange which has more than had its clock tick past expiry. A software dev buddy had some decent parameters (distance to school, work, family, etc) and it seemed to boil Realtors brains to find a way to map this. It was more about making a sale. It was almost to the point where my friend almost was going to become a realtor to get access to the data to run his own searches. He calculated getting a license was cheaper than the commission. Realtors are like lawyers, too many don’t know everything but act like they do. The ones who specialize and actually are experts are worth it. Most sales are not that specialized

TexanFeller 3y ago

Not showing houses that don’t have a selling agent is a great reason for buyers to avoid having a buyer’s agent.

bilsbie 3y ago

But if the buyers see your property on Zillow wouldn’t they insist on seeing it?