challenge: find me a good real-estate agent

There is something so frustrating about finding a place to live. Actually, that is not true. I enjoy going to see different places and imagining myself in them. I believe I do have a little renovator/decorator inside of me, although that is no statement of the skills of this persona. Anyhoo, in a nutshell, daydreaming is fun.

But here in Sydney, and in most other places, the unfortuate infiltration into the real-estate purchase process by the real-estate agents is something beyond my control and I find hard to live with. They look professional, presentable, and mostly act quite courteous--while possibly lying through their teeth and with-holding information. Granted, sometimes, they just don't know the answers to my questions, but then...... gosh darn it, if that's the case (and mostly it is) then what in the world do you need these people for?! I recently inspected a cute little apartment with no gas heating and in need of a completely new bathroom. The agent said "I don't know if you can put in gas heating, you need to ask the body corporate (e.g. builder)". Well, if that's something an interested buyer can easily figure out, you'd think a pro like a registered agent would have been able to find that out, huh? The same agent also told me it'd be about 5K to get a brand-new bathroom. I challenge you to find someone who is not a handy-man or a builder who installed a fresh bathroom that is attractive for less than 15k. But, I will tell you, the agent looked awefully professional and kind saying these things and confirming my notion that real estate agents can be really inept.

Everyone knows that a pro can evaluate a place and give a somewhat accurate ball-park range of its worth. But, you will be hard-pressed to find an agent in Sydney who will give you an honest estimate. I have to acknowledge that at the end of the day, an agent's job is to get the maximum sales price for a property. However, there should be a distinction between the ability to convince people they should pay more for a place, and the ability to make someone pay a high price by sacrificing morality and honesty. Besides, there are already property auctions that offer plenty of playing ground for a skilled agent. A good agent will be able to retain more interested buyers and pursuade them into bidding, and hence obtaining a higher price. But (and this gets me worked up every time) many of them simply take advantage of the fact that lots of buyers are not as educated in prices as they are, and are easily swayed into paying say 30k more than a fair amount.

Once I had a conversation with an agent (whom I actually liked based on the conversation), who said that normally a price within 5% is quoted. The flip side is, in Sydney, 5% is usually of something like 1M, and is hence 50K. Ridicule-ness #2: they usually give you a quote that is at least 5% LOWER than the real yard-stick. This means someone can be misled into spending time researching a place, going to auctions, and finding out "oops it's really 50K more expensive than what you have". For many people, even an extra 20k is non-trivial, so they should honestly be supplied with this information before they decide on their interest level.

Of course, if you're selling a place, you'd want more money for it, so you might not care if your agent acts soul-less. However, wouldn't a vendor want an agent who's informed about the property, and is hence better able to engage potential buyers in discussions? Secondly, sometimes, the tactics the agents use can really back-fire.

Case in point: we inspected this lovely 2-br art-deco apartment on Wolseley Rd in Point Piper (during its first inspection), and I liked it so much that we arranged for a second inspection with my in-laws to see it 4 days later. We called on the day of the second inspection to confirm, only to have the agent say "there's been an offer on this place for more than 500K, the inspection is cancelled". Well...... 'good to know' was my first thought.. right after 'when were you going to tell us again?' Now, we were ready to pay upto 500k but no more, so we backed off. But weeks after that conversation we see the published sale price of that particular apartment, and it was less than 500k. So what happened? Did the agent unknowingly scare us off while trying to get us to put in a high offer? Was it a trick that ended up being a three-way loss? The vendor got less than what we would have paid, the agent got a smaller sales fee, and we didn't get that lovely place we liked. Maybe it was an honest mistake: maybe someone made an offer but retracted it super quickly. But if that was the case why did no one call us back? Were they too lazy to work for their commission? In this instance the difference was small really, but it was enough for the vendor to have a lovely overseas vacation for 2.

Most honest citizens would like, but do not get an inflated salary for what they do. Doctors and lawyers charge high fees but we all know how specialized their skills are and how expensive it was for them to attain those skills. So, find me more than a couple of real-estate agent who is neither greedy nor inept, and I will repent.