did this agent preview for the client or bring the client?

"The price was established to be competitive absent realtor fees."

What does this mean? To me it reads, "the market value is $xxx, so I have it listed about 5 or 6% below that".

The buyer's agent should have discussed this with you BEFORE showing the house, but that's not your problem. In the case above - if your home is discounted since you do not plan to pay commission to anyone, I would explain to the agent that the buyers will have to pay his commission (and that should be worked out in the Broker's Buyer Agreement that s/he signed with the buyer) - or add it to the selling price.

cmarlin20 -The agent did not preview.

gyr_falcon - The plan was to sell it myself with adjustment if the buyer involved an agent. Sorry, I was just giving "voice" to my jitters.

c9pilot - Exactly.

I told the agent the price was based on market without fee and we would have to negotiate to that end. She said the written offer would follow probably tomorrow.

The agent set her self up for problems when she bought the buyers to you for a showing w/o discussing the compensation being offered. You caused yourself potential problems by doing the same thing.

You know the options possible... the buyers balk at paying 3% over the asking price and move on; you agree to offer commission at full price; the buyers agree to pay 3% over asking price; or some combination of the above.

If you are listed on Zillow and checked the box "willing to work with buyer's agents", YOU should have been ready to discuss fees with the broker before it got this far.

The AGENT should have let you know ahead of time what fee they were hoping to get instead of dropping "oh by the way I get 3% of the sale for showing up".

Way back in 19-- when I bought my first house, I signed a Buyer's Agency agreement with a realtor. I did so with every subseqent home purchase as well. It required an earnest money deposit the first time, but not with the subsequent purchases because I was an established homeowner whom the agency had dealt with previously.

So, while you may have never been exposed to a Buyer's Agency agreement, that doesn't mean that it is not used.

As realtor, I have never seen an agent sell a home where the seller didn't pay the commission, and the agent collected it from buyers. As a seller, you should have enough room in your price to negotiate/pay realtor commission. As an agent, if I want to show a fsbo, I will contact the seller first, ask if they will pay a commission and get a commission agreement from them for that buyer on that house. I get that signed while I preview the house and have the seller show me the features that are not readily visible (ie new roof, new furnace, new windows, in floor radiant heat). Then I bring client back to view. If the seller would not pay commission, I would normally find my buyer something else.

As a seller, you have to realize that most agents have spent quite a bit of time prequalifying their buyer, finding homes/previewing homes, showing them homes, etc. A realtor is not going to invest that kind of time in a client, and then sell them a house and not get paid. Most buyers are not going to be willing to pay 3 % more to buy a house. In addition, most FSBO sellers are not knowledgeable enough to know what to disclose, how to fill out the contract, and handle everything that a Listing agent would do, so the buyer's agent ends up having to do the work of both agents. Getting seller's disclosure, lead paint disclosures if needed, getting mortgage payoff info to title co, getting repairs done by licensed contractors, explaining what items normally convey to seller (I had one seller remove the built in double ovens after the inspection, and before the walk thru!).

My advice to the OP is to figure out a list price that allows room to negotiate and pay agent commission of 3%. If you absolutely cannot, you need to be up front about that in any advertising (IE NO BUYER AGENT COMMISSION PAID!), and tell agents you won't pay it when they call. If you end up with an offer from the agent that saw it, then it would behoove you to pay it if they make a decent offer. The end of summer is typically when sales slow down when school starts. Prices will drop, and sales will drop. If you don't get a workable offer with this buyer, then change your price to allow negotiating and realtor commission.

Let me understand this. You set your price based on no realtor's commission. Didn't you put any wiggle room in that price?

This is the major problem with FSBOs. The seller wants to save the commission, and so do the buyers! The buyers think that the house can be gotten for a lower price because there are no commissions involved.

Now you have an agent that may have brought you a bone fide buyer, and you're balking over a crummy 3%?

I can also almost guarantee you that once a buyer sees the original price, that they will not take kindly to you raising the price.

Even if you do raise the price after all this is done, your offers will more than likely still be the same... buyers base their pricing off of past sale prices, not on the asking price. Puts you back to square one...

We just sold our home FSBO. We knew when we listed it that we would give the buyers agent 3% - just because we needed someone to put together the contract for the buyers. Even though our state has a standard contract, we didn't want to have to guide buyers though the process.

I personally would never use a real estate agent to purchase a home ... we bought a new home and didn't use an agent because contracts are standard where we live and we ran it past a lawyer which was so much cheaper.

I think the answer to this question depends on how bad you want to sell your home. If you really want to sell it, then negotiate and try to see what you can get. If you don't want to sell it then tell the buyers they can pay the fee or walk (but be very prepared to have them walk unless it's a sellers market in your area).

We had four or so showings of people without agents but the rest were with agents. We were NEVER asked to sign anything from a buyers agent but we had our home on the MLS and stated we would give 3%. Both offers we had on our home were from agents but when we had problems with our first sale appraisal, the agents were completely useless and it was clear they were not looking out for clients interest and really didn't care about anything but the commission (the appraisal used the wrong square footage for our home). The second agent was a curmudgeon and no fun to work with. He also didn't know much and had no people skills what-so-ever.

Loveumms, did you use a flat fee listing service to get on the MLS?

Yes, we used a flat fee listing service. I was leery to do a FSBO because I was worried about having to do so many things I was unfamiliar with (I'm in the health care industry). I read a TON and figured out that a selling agent is absolutely not needed for most home sales. If you can afford one and don't want to do it all yourself, then I understand using one but I couldn't stand the thought of paying someone 3% to do what I could. We actually had a 'pseudo' agent who was supposed to help us get to close and luckily that didn't work out because that person wasn't at all interested in helping us get to close. In our state, contract is standard so there really isn't a whole lot to get through legally except proper disclosures (which we were selling an 8 year old home so there really wasn't much to disclose and we were completely honest and stated everything possible on the home).

Anyway, feel free to ask questions if you are thinking about going that route.