In a sellers’ market, such as the one currently prevailing in many of the high-demand greater Cape Town areas, a seller can make no bigger mistake than to allow a large number of estate agents to simultaneously try and sell their home.
With multi-listings, the buyer’s goal, not the seller’s satisfaction, it is likely to become the paramount consideration, says Schoeman.This is according to Louis Schoeman, the Rawson Property Group’s franchisee for the Durbanville area, who says this is particularly relevant when the home is in the middle or upper brackets.
“To those not familiar with property, it may seem obvious that the more agents you involve in a sale, the better your chances will be of selling it successfully. In reality the exact opposite is the case,” says Schoeman.
He says the pool of potential buyers for any one home is much the same for all the agents. By and large, agents will be dealing with the same group of people because buyers today do their homework, and consult the same websites and read the same advertisements.
Competing with other agents to be the first to sign up a buyer will almost invariably lead to the offer they negotiate being not as high as could be expected, says Schoeman.
With multi-listings, the buyer’s goal, not the seller’s satisfaction, it is likely to become the paramount consideration.
Even more detrimental to the seller’s success is the fact that the agent will quite often divert a promising buyer from the multi-listed property to a similarly priced home in the same area which he is marketing on a sole agency basis.
The obvious reason for this is that on the latter the agent will not be sharing his commission with other agents, and the commission will, therefore, be far higher.
“It is also very tiresome to many of us who do comprehensively advertise properties that smaller or less successful agents, who possibly have done little or no advertising, benefit from the media coverage and advertisements generated by the bigger and more successful agencies,” says Schoeman.
“Often, too, where the less competent agencies do find the funds to advertise, there is a good possibility that this will be done with a serious lack of expertise.”
With a sole mandate in place, Schoeman says the agent, knowing that he will be the sole beneficiary from the eventual sale and will be paid at a good rate, will advertise the property thoroughly and take time to liaise with all the potential buyers to ensure that they understand the seller’s expectations and to ensure that the best possible bid is submitted.
He says the agent will not be anxiously looking over their shoulder to see if a rival agent with persuasive powers is getting in ahead of them on a sale, quite possibly with a less than satisfactory price.
Asked how it is that sellers sometimes end up appointing less competent agents, Schoeman says despite much media coverage on the subject, a small minority of the less competent agents still obtain mandates by overvaluing the homes and encouraging unrealistic price expectations.
When these are not met, he says the agent will very often have a good line-up of reasons to explain this, but in the meantime many genuine potential buyers will have gone elsewhere.
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