You’re on the market for sale, you haven’t sold yet, you know that your selling agreement with your agent is about to expire and guess what… so does your agent! Could this have anything to do with the sudden interest your agent miraculously starts to show in you and your property and the sudden arrival of…the phantom buyer?

A sneaky tactic

If you are on the market at the moment keep an eye out for this tactic. If you are about to come on the market you’re now one step ahead of your agent. If you have recently sold file this away for your next move!

You are in the last week or so of your listing agreement and suddenly an interested buyer appears on the scene. You think to yourself gee that was just in time but suddenly the “buyer” starts stalling for time, you get the line… They cannot 100% commit until the sale on their place goes through or, their money is stuck in a term deposit and they can’t touch it for a few more weeks or, they have been suddenly called away they will buy it as soon as they get back they are definitely interested and will buy…. Blah blah blah.

All these excuses leave you wondering who is actually stalling for time the “buyer” or the agent?

Agents are prepared to use this technique in order to delay the inevitable, you taking your business elsewhere. This is especially true in cases where the agent has done little, or nothing, to achieve a sale and or where the level of service to date has been dismal to say the least and the agent knows their time is up.

Some agents even go so far as to lead you to believe that you need to sign another agreement so that they can continue to deal with the “buyer” and complete the sale. If I had a dollar for every time a vendor re-signed an agency agreement under these circumstances and suddenly the buyer fell through….

Don’t fall for this trick. There are avenues available to you should this scenario present itself. Handled correctly you can still change agents and ensure that if indeed this “buyer” does exist you can still sell to them and have no fear of being hit up for two lots of commission… one from the old agent and one from the new agent.

Independent Real Estate Consulting…. helping you stay one step ahead of the agents!

Click here to get iREC's perspective on the better agent to deal with >

If you are currently selling, or about to sell, and would like someone independent sitting on your shoulder observing the goings on, without interfering in the process, drop us a line and see how we can assist. We understand that you might have only dealt with agents once or twice in your lifetime but we do it every day! Contact iREC and see how we can help.