If you want a competitive advantage in your home search, begin the process by choosing an experienced, skilled buyer’s agent. To give you a personal example, when my wife and I purchased a condo in Miami, we chose to use a buyer’s agent despite my successful career as an NYC agent, and despite the fact that I’d just received my Florida license. While I had access to the data we needed to make an informed decision, I knew we needed someone in our corner who had a professional knowledge of the inventory and working relationships with the brokerage community we could leverage.
What I thought I wanted changed fundamentally after one conversation with my agent. She knew what I wanted better than I did, and as an agent myself, I understand why. Once we found a building we liked, my agent knew of an upcoming listing in the building and used her relationship with the listing agent to get us early access. Although we immediately made an offer (we took our agent’s advice to offer 1% above the asking price), we had competition from another buyer who already lived in the building.
Why Agent Relationships Win Bidding Scenarios
The Miami market was hot, and homes were routinely under-appraising… In order to compete against the other interested buyer in a way other than simply agreeing to pay more money for the home, we waived our appraisal contingency, making our offer more attractive, even at the same price. We’d have never known to use this strategy if our agent hadn’t educated us on the pace of the market from the outset. Best part is, we got lucky and the home appraised. We were able to ‘outbid’ a competitive buyer by offering no more money, and putting no additional equity down, simply by implementing a better strategy. We also conducted a successful search over one weekend seeing ten homes, since our agent knew from what we wanted exactly what buildings and neighborhoods to take us to.
Many buyers are under the impression they’ll find the seller more negotiable if they don’t have a buyer’s agent with whom the commission will be split. This is a misconception. Direct buyers—and this is especially the case in NYC co-op purchases—are much more work for a listing agent than represented buyers. According to Forbes, experienced agents make transactions smoother and more successful. If the listing agent is going to do more work, they expect to be compensated accordingly.
Good Buyer’s Agents Don’t Just Find Homes—They Win Them
As a buyer’s agent representing a buyer in a competitive bidding scenario versus unrepresented buyers, I’ve had listing agents tell me exactly where the other offers are, enabling my buyer to win the bid without overpaying. They did this because they could tell from the structure of my offer that both I and the buyer would be an easy partner to go through the process with. As a listing agent, I’ve also advised sellers to prioritize an offer more seriously if I knew that the agent was a competent expert—a highly skilled buyer’s agent makes the listing agent’s job much easier. That’s how you negotiate a great deal.
If you’re wondering how long it takes to buy a home in NYC once we begin,
If you’re interested in what strategies we can implement to find you a great home, please feel free to reach me anytime at my contact info listed below. This is Jacob Wood, your New York City real estate broker.
