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Thoughts on Online National Sales Companies

At Pacific Southland, we are all about educating you, and letting you make the best decision for yourself. This is our honest opinion about the subject, whether you select our company to sell your home, or another fine local realtor.

There are some very good reasons not to use one of these online sell-help type companies. First of all, in our opinion, we don't believe they are advertising their services honestly. They say they are a "no-commission" type structure, when in fact, their "fee" is based exactly on that type percentage structure. Some of them have a fee payble in advance whether your home sells or not. This is a "fee for service" type structure, which is certainly not illegal.. it's just that their advertising appears to us to be misleading. No one can sell your house for free.. just like your mommy told you when you were a little boy or girl, nothing is ever for free.

Let's look a little deeper into their structure... now, we don't pretend to know everything about it, and recommend you go and read for yourself.... but when we entered a sales price of $ 300,000 on one of the sites into their "How much will I save by using 'this service' ", they came up with a fee of $ 4,500 PLUS the 3% fee to the local buyer's agent. Well folks, any way you look at it, that's 4 1/2 percent, and that is only a slight savings for the amount of work you're expected to do. You can probably negotiate a 5% commission with a local brokerage, someone who has been working in the neighborhood for YEARS... (especially if you're buying another home with them, or doing a loan, or something) but here's the catch... you'll have someone EXCLUSIVELY on your side! They say you get an agent, but we can't see how what they say is possible. You'll have to decide for yourself. True, your local broker may also bring the buyer to the deal, and handle both sides, but most of the time, your agent is looking out for your needs EXCLUSIVELY. In their system - it seems to us - the BUYER'S agent is handling the bulk of the transaction! Who's really on your side?

Does it work for the buyer?? Well, if you consider answers like:

heating? YES

as helpful... Look, get an agent on your side!! The buyer's services are paid for by the seller through the listing agreement, let an agent show you where to look in the neighborhoods you want, and how to search on the many free services on the internet that show ALL of our listings in an unbiased format.

In a perfect world, an agent should be able to handle both sides of a transaction and be completely unbiased, but is that reality? You'll have to think about the issues, and decide for yourself. At Pacific Southland, even if we handle both sides of a transaction, a different agent is assigned to the buyer at the seller's request. It makes sense to us. Does their system really work for you?

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