The market for the provision of real estate services is one of the hottest - intense competition neck and neck. An inexperienced client’s head can go spinning - each subsequent offer is more tempting than the previous one, wherever you look, there are professionals in their field, and strong, highly qualified specialists. How to choose an intermediary and not make a mistake in choosing a good one?! Let's try to impartially understand this complex, multifaceted issue - where, if necessary, should you turn to solve your housing problem and what is better: a private realtor or a real estate agency?
Let me say right away that identifying the best and labeling the worst is a thankless task. No matter how much I would like to, I will have to compare segments and operate with categories - in this case, unfortunately, contrasts cannot be avoided. I will try to be as objective as possible in the subject of discussion (even if it is not entirely beneficial for me personally), so I propose to evaluate real estate agencies and private realtors according to the main criteria and consumer qualities of the services they provide:
| Peculiarities | Agency | Private realtor |
| Cost of services | ||
| Efficiency of work | ||
| Confidentiality | ||
| Transaction security | ||
| Terms of cooperation | ||
| Service level | ||
| Ease of communication |
Cost of real estate services
The price for real estate agency services, given the modest appetites of private owners, cannot be called competitive. In any case, the commission in a reputable office will be much higher (from 4-5% for AN versus 1.5-2% for CR) and in this key component, the services of any real estate agency are clearly inferior to a private realtor. The tariffs of large real estate companies are designed in such a way as to justify absolutely all financial costs: office, advertising, employee salaries. When pricing the cost of a private realtor's services, there are no increasing coefficients or extra costs at all, so it is almost always cheaper for the customer, which means that from the point of view of the size of the commission, an agent working privately looks much better, more preferable
What questions to ask about the object?
The main questions to ask before concluding a deal are:
- Cost of the object.
- Whether the sale is a direct or alternative transaction.
- How many owners? Are any of them minors?
- Tenure of housing.
- Who is registered in the apartment.
- Was there any redevelopment? If so, was it agreed upon with the BTI?
- Are you ready for a deal with borrowed funds?
- Technical condition of the object.
- District infrastructure.
- The name of the developer's company, if the house was recently completed.
- Cost of housing and communal services.
Efficiency of work
A real estate agency is an organization with a multi-stage segmental structure; they are often credited with the well-deserved title of a standard or example of heavy, clumsy bureaucratic machines. Until an order or instruction from above reaches the bottom, a lot of water will flow under the bridge, and the direct executor and the customer may lose valuable time and miss out on a long-awaited client. As practice shows, in a deal, sometimes it’s not even days or hours, but minutes that decide everything!
What kind of efficiency and efficiency of a real estate agency can we talk about when it takes 2-3 days to complete a simple action - adjusting the offer in the exhibition or, for example, changing the price in the ad? The urgency of making fundamental decisions that determine the entire course of the process of buying and selling secondary real estate is clearly not the strong point of big-name real estate firms. Painfully long approvals and stuffy meetings are indispensable attributes of business, but in fact they are nothing more than ordinary time wasters. According to statistics, the average time to sell a property with a private realtor does not exceed 2-3 months, while for a real estate agency this figure is much worse - 6 months or longer. Take my word for it and don’t doubt it – in many cases a private owner will actually be able to sell an apartment much faster. Summarizing all of the above in this paragraph, we can confidently score one more point in favor of the services of an individual specialist working for himself.
Warranty and responsibility
Real estate agencies argue their advantage by the fact that they are responsible for the failure of the transaction and client guarantees are included in the signed contract. Is it really? It all depends on the agency; in order to understand in what cases the deposit will be returned to you or the lost funds will be compensated, you need to carefully read the terms of the contract with the chosen agency. At the same time, a realtor, if he is officially registered as an individual entrepreneur, bears exactly the same responsibility as an agency. Accordingly, the realtor can also sign an agreement with you that includes a clause on guarantees and liability.
Confidentiality
Information leakage is a headache for absolutely all managers in agencies of various sizes. It is practically impossible to keep track of the dissemination of valuable personal information of the customer and the company’s trade secrets. In many ways, it is for this reason that the time, money and clients of major market players are slipping through their fingers.
Wide publicity and publicity about the case is not exactly what clients were counting on when seeking services from a white-collar office. Naturally, in such conditions, homeowners go to single competitors who know how to keep their mouths shut. In 90% of cases, real estate agencies are not able to ensure/guarantee strict confidentiality of the process of buying and selling a home - and this is the big disadvantage of this type of service.
What does a realtor do?
A realtor performs intermediary services in order to make life easier for the buyer of real estate. These people must be aware of everything related to the world of real estate, have knowledge of laws and formal procedures, and easily understand all processes. This is the portrait of an ideal mediator.
In reality, all of the above depends on work experience, education and the person himself. A competent specialist can provide significant assistance, especially if you have a poor understanding of the market and cannot arrange the purchase and sale of an apartment on your own.
He will provide you with all the necessary information so that you feel confident giving your money to the developer.
The responsibilities of a realtor include:
- searching and consulting clients;
- negotiating with developers or sellers;
- assistance in choosing an apartment;
- support of the transaction itself, from collecting documents to concluding an agreement.
Transaction security
In real estate agencies, functions are strictly distributed among employees: agents communicate with the client and deal with showings, in-house lawyers provide legal support for the transaction. From a law and order perspective, the firm appears much stronger. If a private realtor does not have sufficient skills and knowledge in the field of housing and civil law, if necessary, he will be forced to resort to the services of third parties for additional advice - hire an outside lawyer to accompany him. It is worth recognizing that when a client seeks services from a private owner, he often runs a great risk of becoming a victim of the incompetence of a real estate specialist.
Buying an apartment on your own
Have you weighed the pros and cons and decided to rely on yourself? After all, buying an apartment without a realtor may be easier than you think. Especially if you are a competent and attentive person who is able to devote enough time to organizing a transaction. After all, it’s not every day that you get a new home, right?
In addition, after going through all the stages, you will learn a lot about the real estate market and legal aspects. If you have knowledge, it will be more difficult to deceive you. So, if you decide to buy an apartment yourself, step-by-step instructions are especially for you.
Terms of cooperation
When formalizing relationships, real estate agencies love to place their clients on a strict exclusive agreement, and often with penalties in case of early termination, for example, 50 thousand rubles. Moreover, in most offices this clause is put forward as a mandatory condition when signing an agreement. In addition, agencies practice temporarily confiscating the original documents for the apartment for storage from the owners - everything is done to make it harder for the client later (when he finally comes to his senses!) to refuse the imposed services and get off the hook.
For those customers who do not agree to shackle themselves with official, extremely unprofitable obligations, the only thing left is to look for a worthy alternative and resort to the services of private realtors, who are more variable in this regard - you can sign an agreement, you can not sign, the main thing is trust and mutual understanding. Of course, in this situation, when you work on trust, the broker himself becomes a more vulnerable party, but this is precisely the meaning of another competitive advantage of a private real estate agent.
How to read a contract
So, the question of how to choose a realtor has been resolved. It is important to legitimize cooperation with a specialist with documentation. A well-drafted contract with a real estate company guarantees the conscientious fulfillment of the obligations of both parties.
What points should you pay attention to when drawing up a contract?
- Conditions for termination of the contract . For what reasons can a partnership be terminated? Are there any sanctions?
- The exact duration of the contract (as a rule, it is concluded for 3 months). The wording “until obligations are fulfilled” is vague and disadvantageous to the client;
- Conditions prohibiting the client from contacting the other party to the transaction . Perhaps in this way an unscrupulous realtor is trying to make money on the price difference;
- Footnotes and terms in fine print . They definitely need to be read with a magnifying glass.
Service level
For many potential clients in the real estate market, all this tinsel and dust in the eyes when choosing a performer - an office, tea, coffee, strained smiles of sharks and plankton, politeness to the point of diarrhea, entrance to fanfare, caressing glances, curtsies - all this official business environment is very important. Yes, I agree, it is very convenient for a client as a consumer of real estate services to come to a sleek office with air conditioning next to the metro station and get advice from a specialist on an issue of interest. In addition, some of them naively believe that the actual address of the organization is of no importance, but the guarantee of the company’s reliability and take this criterion as a determining one; they regard physical presence on a geographic map as the main factor in cooperation with an intermediary in the market. But, my friends, I can assure you that the level of service and the quality of service are not the same thing, they are far from each other, different things.
The client will most likely have to meet with a private realtor at the property itself, and for initial consultations the specialist will limit himself to a telephone conversation, and at best will offer a quiet, cozy cafe for a preliminary conversation or interview. A potential customer should know that he will have to sign contracts and other documentation on his knees. The agent's working conditions are field, I would even say Spartan. The level of service is zero and in this regard, the services of a private owner are undoubtedly much worse than any of the most seedy agencies.
What should be done?
Apartment search
Humanity has made significant progress in the development of technology, so you can find housing without leaving your couch on various Internet resources, including our portal. So, here you will learn how to choose a new building.
In each region, including St. Petersburg, there are a dozen large information sites where all the characteristics are described in detail and, importantly, the shortcomings of apartments are identified.
Try searching on the websites of developers: their descriptions will focus on the positive aspects of housing, but sometimes the information is more relevant. In other words, absolutely all data can be found in the public domain.
Initial examination
A close inspection of the apartment is a must if you are buying housing on the secondary market. No little things should escape your watchful eye, even those that the seller wants to hide from you. Look at every corner, ask questions, push aside everything possible - otherwise you risk running into a “pig in a poke.” Read the detailed guide here.
Checking legal purity
Did the inspection reveal any problems? Dig deep into the documents. Who are the owners: current and past, what should the apartment look like according to the plan, are there any illegal redevelopments.
If this is a new building, study all the ins and outs of the developer, paying attention to the delivery dates of past projects and the quality of work. Find out what rights the developer owns the site and when the building permit expires. Carefully study the project declaration and correlate the information in it with what the seller says.
Preparation of documents
The key point is the purchase and sale agreement itself. Typically, developers already have their own standard agreement developed by the legal department. You do not need to additionally contact lawyers and spend money.
Prepare your own documents - passport, marriage certificate (if you have one), notarial consent of your spouse. If you use a mortgage, check the full list of documents with the bank.
If you purchase a finished apartment from a developer, he will provide the bulk of the documents himself: an extract from the Unified State Register of Real Estate, a cadastral passport and other technical documentation.
Conclusion of a purchase and sale agreement and DDU
Read the contract carefully and several times, do not hesitate to ask questions. Every point of it must be clear to you, otherwise you are risking your money. As soon as the purchase and sale agreement is signed by the parties, it must be sent to Rosreestr in order to register ownership. Don't forget to pay the state fee before submitting.
If you conclude a DDU, then it must also be registered with Rosreestr.
Ease of communication
In a real estate agency, employees, as a rule, coordinate every step they take, every breath they take with management. The expert’s communication with the customer turns out to be crumpled, like through a broken telephone - he misunderstood, the idea was not conveyed correctly, the message was not conveyed word for word, the message was not correctly formulated, the recommendations were given the wrong intonation or psychological connotation. The method of transmitting important operational information through third, fifth or tenth hands is a very inconvenient and extremely uncomfortable option for the client. In addition, due to the huge staff turnover, often one specialist starts a transaction at an agency, and a completely different one completes the purchase and sale process.
The customer communicates directly with the private agent, face-to-face. From the beginning to the very end, the transaction is carried out by one single realtor, personally selected and hired by the client. From the point of view of communication comfort, the candidacy of a private realtor looks much more advantageous compared to a real estate agency with its eternal problems of establishing communications.
Supporting activities at the stages of registration of the operation
A realtor must accompany his client at each stage of the transaction:
- AN checks the legal purity of the future transaction. To do this, the identities of the owners, an extract from the house register, the legal capacity of the seller and other details are checked.
- The agency must check whether there are any encumbrances placed on the object, and whether third parties have rights to it.
- The agent draws up the DCP, while respecting the interests of the customer.
- Mutual settlements are made between the participants.
If cash is transferred, the agent controls the correctness of the receipt. Reference! The most popular and reliable way is to transfer money through a safe deposit box in a bank. - The final stage is state registration of the transfer of ownership rights.
