Should merely curious buyers seek appointments?

Flickr photo by Michael Simmons

When buyers call brokers to say they are thinking about a home purchase, those brokers respond almost literally like Pavlov’s celebrated dogs.  They may even actually drool.

I don’t plead guilty to drooling, at least not in such instances, but I admit to having made appointments for buyers who are unfamiliar with the housing market to see various properties.

Is such a practice fair to the sellers, who may spend a couple of hours stashing toys and scrubbing tubs, or to their brokers, for whom time is supposed to equal money?

What buyers don’t understand can hurt them

There are buyers who know what they are doing and those who only think they know how to proceed as they search for a new home.

I happen to favor those who get what works best.

You won’t be surprised to learn that their key understanding is their appreciation for the help a real estate broker can provide.

Even though buyers these days are about as good as any agent or broker in finding online properties that have been put on the market, those buyers

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Brokers can offer rebates legally to their buyers

Eric Schneiderman

There has for some time been confusion about the permissibility of brokers giving part of their commissions to their buyers.

The money obviously can be perceived as an incentive for the buyer to ask for representation by a broker.

One reason that brokers may demur, however, is the New York Real Property Law, which declares the following:

State admits to limited policing of us brokers

(Flickr photo by Metropolitan Police)

Real estate brokers in the state number 52,855, nearly half them in New York City.

Number of complaints filed with New York’s Department of State last year: 952.

Those figures were reported by the Real Deal in a piece about how hard will be enforcement of new advertising rules.  (I reported on the changes previously.)

Given what most consumers think of real estate agents and the number of times that I alone have observed violations of state law, those numbers just don’t square with reality.

There’s a simple explanation.

Got scalpel? Would you operate on yourself?

The questions in the headline are something of an exaggeration and wholly a cliché that I was too weak to resist, but a new online service made me do it.

You can check BuyerCurious.com yourself, then wonder how well the process would work for you in New York.  In a nutshell, the site describes its benefits this way:

Buyers can search homes for sale, request showings, and make an offer on a home online, while sellers can list a home for free, get information on low cost and discount ways to advertise their properties tapping the best of web 2.0, get professional yard signs, receive and negotiate offers, and finalize a purchase agreement in a private, online Deal Room.

From my biased point of view, I can’t imagine that even the site’s cafeteria of services would help buyers anywhere; as for sellers trying to unload a home themselves, that debate continues.

Although Robert Hahn, a consultant focusing on the real estate industry, sees the site as the beginning of the end of buyer representation,

The High Road: I broke every smart broker’s rule

(Flickr photo by litherland)

I have no one to blame but myself after I took on a new buyer.

Cindy is an acquaintance who e-mailed me one Friday saying that she was toying with the idea of moving out of her nearly $4,000-a-month rental to purchase an apartment on the Upper West Side.  Could we chat sometime? she asked.

I spent a couple of hours with her the next day explaining the process to someone who had lived overseas for decades and, like any first-time buyer in Manhattan, knew little about co-ops and condos, let alone what she needed to do to buy one.

It was a good conversation, in the course of which I went on at some length about steps that Cindy hsf to take to obtain a mortgage, retain an attorney and make an offer before going to contract.

She indicated as we talked that there was some urgency to get moving because

Agents don’t sell homes. Buyers do it themselves.

Bill Gassett

In no uncertain terms, Massachusetts real estate agent Bill Gassett declares in a post he wrote that “accompanied real estate showings do not sell homes.”

I am inclined to agree with him about the practice, in which the listing agent requires her or his presence when a buyer’s broker shows a property.  Says Gassett:

There is a long standing misconception amongst some people that Realtors “sell homes”. It may come as a surprise but

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