urbanites

Exclusivity… The Golden ticket or Pandora’s box

Exclusivity is the right to have or do something that is limited to only one person or organization. So… why should we allow this privilege? Better yet… in exchange for what?
Society moves forward, our times have changed and so has the real estate business in Spain. In this article I’m going to talk truth about exclusivity and how it can be beneficial – or not – for the owner of a property who is willing to sell.
Nowadays there are more real estate agencies than litter bins in some cities (or almost so). This causes some professionals to work in an ethical and efficient way and many others who are hard to even be called professionals. Internet is a phenomenon that we cannot consider groundbreaking anymore but it has changed the way we interact and it has, for sure, affected the real estate business. At Ûrbanites we have verified that 85% of our buyers come from the Internet, specially from strong sites in the field like Idealista or Fotocasa.
This will help us understand one of the strongest reasons why it can be positive to work exclusively since an agency working this way is willing to allocate more resources on your transaction (because the economic return is safer) and this investment shown on the internet sites implies having more visibility, what increases the requests to visit your property.
There are still some landlords who think that having more agencies working on their properties will get them a better result to sell because they come from an outdated idea that their property needs to be shown in posters all around their neighborhood, when reality shows us that the best possible buyers come from the net. The real important thing is to be shown in the best positions of the best sites with a plausible and well-presented advertisement. And not less important… to have a good agent who can manage properly a request from a possible buyer.
Having an exclusive agent means having someone who knows your product well, with more time available to promote and visit such property and in addition someone you can trust your keys because there is a direct and precise person in charge.
The time that the agent dedicates to your property (to promote it and show it) is also used to keep you posted on the sale process which is key for the owner to make a clever and wise decision.
Having said so, this almost perfect deal can turn into a headache if the agent that you chose to be exclusive with, cheats, lies, does not invest money and time on your property and simply doesn´t work as agreed. So, what apparently was a great decision turns to be the worst decision taken and that agreement turns into an ordeal for months… and in the best of cases you wasted your time and perhaps an interesting transaction.

A single agency

Ûrbanites recommends you to bet for one agency since non-exclusive agencies usually fall into the mistakes mentioned before: lack of work, poor counselling, aggressive and/or non-ethical strategies to get you to accept an offer as soon as possible (so that another agency doesn´t get the sale), poor investment in real estate sites… You can even find your house left with the lights on for the whole weekend, opened windows in rainy days, an open sink, etc.… and not know which one of the agencies that you are working with is responsible because non of them is going to be in charge.
Furthermore, your advertisement could be badly ranked and shown repeatedly even with different prices, since some agencies might modify the price without checking on you so that their add looks more appealing, generating mistrust on a possible buyer and ending in a worse deal for you.
Lastly, as a personal opinion I’d run away from franchise companies since those are the ones that charge more, use more aggressive strategies and have the less professional agents working for them.
We hope that this article was useful to you. We know how hard it can be to trust an agency to be exclusive, so our advice is that you look into details like the knowledge shown by the agent. You can also ask how much that agency invests in real estate sites (note that magazines, flyers, and other types of marketing of their company does not help your house sale, doesn´t matter how attractively it’s done). Check how many featured properties that agency has and how many agents, because to have good enough time to take care of your property, an agent should not have more than 15 properties on sale and an agency that has over 50 properties (as many agents it might have) will surely have difficulties to handle phone calls, clients and to promote such properties.

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