As a home seller, when it comes to choosing an agent, is the BIGGEST necessarily the BEST agent for you?

Of course, the answer depends entirely on your definition of “Best”.

For instance. You may think that an office with the biggest team means more buyers and is somehow better than an office with a smaller team. Which is why many real estate companies focus on how big they are, how many salespeople they have. The preached path to market share in the traditional real estate industry is what’s called “bums on seats”. The thinking is: the more salespeople we have running around, the bigger we look. It’s not necessarily about protecting your interests, being more efficient or helping you bank more. It’s about looking the biggest – to gain the illusion of being the best.

When it comes to buyers, as we point out in How To Keep The Most From The Sale Of Your Property the number of salespeople is totally unrelated to the number of buyers in the market. Bottom line, buyers are attracted to your property not the individual agent or office – meaning every office has exactly the same number of potential buyers for your home.

It could even be argued that with traditional agents, more salespeople can result in less buyers viewing your property. After all, as you know, they work on commission-only. Effectively competing against each other for the same pay. This makes it difficult to work together for the benefit of you, the client. Considering this, if we worked this way – would we really be a team or a bunch of individuals fighting for survival? The reality is, in commission-only land, if one of the other so-called team members matches the buyer to the property, the listing agent only gets half as much commission as when they match the buyer themselves. Based on the maxim “what gets rewarded gets done”… I wonder what type of behaviour this encourages?

To attract you as a seller, we could boast about how many sales we make. The assumption being that the office making the most sales is the best. After all, in games and sport the one with the most points wins. There’s no doubt some agents may judge their success on who makes the most sales; gets the most commission. But for you, selling your home is not a game. It’s not a sport. You don’t necessarily win by us making the most sales. You don’t win by being just another notch our belt, another number our big corporate machine can boast about. You are only selling one property. Do you really care about how many sales we make? Or are you more concerned with how much you bank from just your sale?

Further, although a BIG outfit like say ‘The Warehouse’ may sell more shoes than a smaller locally owned store, does that mean their products or services are in any way better?  Not sure about you, but based on my experience… I’ll continue to buy my shoes from Nathan at The Cobblers Inn.

The point is, at Restate we don’t think BIG or the MOST SALES are indicators of whats best for you, our client. So we don’t celebrate or boast about them and we certainly don’t judge our success on them. They are not our focus. They are not what we are striving for.

Instead we are striving to change the world of real estate, by focussing on what we believe is important to you. And that boils down to two things:

1. Trust

We believe you want an advocate in your court. Someone who’s got your back, protecting you from fundamental mistakes. Somebody using their knowledge and experience to your advantage. Empowering you to make informed decisions, by talking straight and advising you what you need to know. Somebody acting and serving in your interests. We think the last thing you want is a sales pitch. Somebody telling you want you want to hear – leaving you wondering for who’s advantage the advice was given. I mean can a commission-only salesperson really put your interests above their own survival? Maybe they can, but how do you know? There’s always that element of doubt. On that note, can you think of any trusted profession that works on a commission-only basis? This is why we have rejected the commission-only sales culture and restated real estate as a ‘Professional Service’. Changing the foundation of our business to align with our core values.

2. The most profit in your hand.

We believe you engage us to maximise your profit – how much you are left with in your hand after all expenses. Getting the most profit is not about us being the ‘biggest’ or making the ‘most sales’. It’s doesn’t involve hype and it’s not about sales gimmicks. After helping you avoid fundamental mistakes, it’s simply about increasing your sale price and reducing your expenses. That’s it. In How To Keep The Most From The Sale Of Your Property we reveal firstly how to maximise your price with the competent execution of eight key steps. Then we show how ‘Professional Service’ based fees have helped clients bank significantly more profit by reducing their expenses, on average by 36% – compared to a traditional commission-only of $500 plus 3% plus GST.

Anyway, that is how we define what’s best for you. How do you?