Pay me to put a plastic combo box on your front door.

We've all seen them, the lovely 6, 8 or 10 button combination lockboxes that many listing agents throughout the country use. Well, guess what...in Brookline they're the sign of an agent who does not work in our market. I personally don't get the lockbox thing. The premise is you hire me to sell your house (paying me 2.5%+) and I'm going to sit on my couch with my dog just allowing people to traipse through your home (and all of your possessions) unsupervised. We've studied the numbers enough to know that Open Houses are simply tools for a listing agent to meet potential future clients, so by placing a lockbox on your property I'm simply using you to market myself and when it comes time to actually sell your house, I leave it to that handy little gadget pictured above. Nothing tells you how to get to a supermarket or the best way to commute to work like those plastic little buttons. You can't beat the advice and neighborhood insight you get from an often rusted spare set of front door keys.

To you lockboxers....yes, you complain all the time about having to schedule "accompanied showings" here in Brookline. Well, guess what?!?! My job is to be there when you want to see the house. When you drive in from Wellesely, Somerville, Natick....or you work for dial-an-agent.com realty I can promise you that you have not immersed yourself in the neighborhood to know what has recently sold, what has failed to sell, and WHY your buyer should (or should not) buy in this neighborhood. We hear over and over and over again that "real estate is local." I've got pages and pages of stats on this blog that prove that. So, if it's so local and you're driving in from Metro-West, shouldn't you expect a local expert there to help give you the information needed to answer the important questions on the spot?

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What Commission Do You Charge?

It is amazing how many conversations about real estate start with that question. It baffles me to this day that this is the one field in which people think they can make a decision simply by how much money the professional practitioner will "charge" them. It gets asked other ways, like "what's your fee" and "how much will it cost me" but at the end of the day, it speaks to a backward mentality.

Let's run through an exercise here: You get a big bonus at work this holiday season and you decide you want to buy a fancy new car. Let's say you spend $80,000 on that car. When it comes time for that first service are you going to go from random mechanic to mechanic and ask them what their rate is? You'll most likely take it to someone who you have heard has specific expertise with that model car, and you'll most likely pay a lot more than the random mechanic who would have done who-knows-what to your car.

An even better example is picking a place to eat dinner. Do you open the yellow pages, start at the A's and call asking "what's the price of food?" First, there are steaks and lobster which will be a whole lot more expensive than burgers and fish sticks. There will also be places which will give you $7 steak and I seriously doubt you would feel comfortable eating it. The simple "what's the price of food" question just makes NO sense. If you feel like a steak, you're going to the Capital Grille or Abe & Louie's.

So, what commission do I charge? It's impossible to know. I need to see what type of house or condo you have, and then we need to have a serious discussion about your pricing before we can determine how in-depth we need to get with your marketing campaign. From there, we build out a marketing calendar and we decide which types of floor plans and virtual tours you will need.

The one important thing to look at is the agent representing your sale does not get 5-6% of the sale of your house. All agents should be cooperating with buyer's agents. This usually takes half of the commission amount. Next, most agents split their commissions with their offices who pay for Globe and Boston Homes ads, certain Open House materials and other incidental costs. I will say, on average, I am looking at maybe 1.5% of the overall sale price of your house before I even start doing my own personal marketing efforts for your house (floor plans, fliers, post cards, catered broker tours, etc...). Remember, all of these things are paid up front whether your home sells or not. So yes, maybe there is someone out there willing to give you a "rebate" or "charge" you a lower commission, but I assure you the Globe isn't charging them less than me for advertising and the floor plans I pay for aren't offered to them for less money either. By hiring that agent for less money, I will ask you.....how much will that cost you?

I Want You!

I'm looking for a few brave first-time home buyers, a few FSBOs (for sale by owner), some discount brokerage clients, and others to provide a non-REALTOR perspective to the market. This site is only as good as its contributors and I would love to have all of our horizons broadened by hearing other views. If you're interested, let me know!