Agent woes
Selling the house is fun. We just have to keep telling ourselves that.
Yesterday an agent came by, supposedly to bring a potential buyer whom she represents. She called about an hour before arrving and told Stephanie she did not have the buyer with her but that she wanted to meet to "straighten some things out first." Every buyer's agent expects some commission, and when doing an FSBO, it's understandable that that is a foremost concern for the agent because the rules are different. When she got here, however, it turned out she wanted to sell her services listing our house more than she wanted to talk about her buyer. I think we'll probably have to suffer through a few more of theses. It probably comes with the territory of selling ourselves.
I found an interesting article called "A note on buyer's agent commission and sale price" through Google. It is written in the form of academic research and explores whether there is a relationship between the buyer's agent commission and his level of enthusiasm in participating in a sale. The paper concludes that there is only a relationship in lower priced homes, that is to say, when the standard commission total dollar amount is low. But more interesting to me is a footnote.
An interesting piece of the puzzle is the common pitch used by listing agents to offer a higher commission if a full price is obtained on the sale. This seems to be a rather overt intent to get buyer's agents to disregard their obligations toward their clients.
I'm willing to try this to see if it works.