Hi all,

we are planning to sell our house, we haven't done this before so if anyone has any recommednations for a good real estate agent it would be much appreciated.

I have read all the articles onhow to choose one, but the main advice I got was that they are all very keen to get your business so they are of course going to appear wonderful until they get the contract.

Any experiences or advice would be great. PM me if you prefer.

O

What side of town are you on? I can recommend a few but have always liked Robert Peaker from Peter Blackshaws or if you are in south Tugerranong area then Betty Wark from Lanyon Real Estate.

My parents recently sold my grandparents house and used LiveIn. They were very happy with the outcome and with the service (and price they had to pay the agent).

Do all your negotiating before you sign the contract. Remember you're dealing with professional negotiators so don't feel pressured into signing anything. My parents and some friends both signed on for a six-month contract when selling their houses -- crazy!

Go for shorter contracts, a sliding scale with the commission (for example, the difference between say $500k and $550k sale for you is $50k; for an agent at 2% the increase is a commission from $10k to only $11k, so how hard are they going to work to earn that extra commission?) and reduction on advertising costs.

Just a couple of tips

Andrew Thorpe at Peter Blackshaw Erindale was fantastic. He got us a price above our expectations and did the same for a friend. He is young, but very enthusiastic and most probably the most honest real estate agent I have ever met.

I'd go to a few open homes around your area and see the agents in action. See if they are good with chatting to the potential customers, or just standing in the corner on their mobiles.

Hi,

We used Will Honey from Independant. He was great. We negotiated our own contract and could do what we wanted to do rather than what they wanted us to do. Couldn't be happier with him.

On the down side we have tryed to buy from Lanyon real estate and have had nothing but trouble. So if you don't want buyers turned off i would not use them (could just be our experience though).

I agree with what Seepi said, go to some open houses and talk to the agents, this is how we found Will.

I would have to recommend Paul and Robyn Sutton from Peter Blackshaws Manuka.

They sold a house for us a few years ago. They were very professional.

Have you considered selling it yourselves? We sold ours through AllHomes without an agent and it was so much easier! I did the open house bit which was the worst part, but not dealing with an agent and having an extra $15000 in our pocket at the end was great! We spoke to 3 agents before we put it on the market (while we decided what to do) and we sold for the highest price they told us).

If you sell it yourself, go and look at lots of houses for ideas on how to present it, it's so important to declutter and be tidy!

Good luck.

We also sole our through all homes we only ended up having 2 open homes and sold for $20,000 above what the agent had told us we would get. We found when we were selling most agents say its 2 - 3 % commission and then advertising was on top of that.

MJ