Buyer Q & A

Q. What advantages are there to offering a fee to the buyer representative?

Buyer agents are not traditionally used to having to negotiate their fees with their buyer clients so it may be more difficult for them to approach you and they may be uncomfortable discussing fees with the buyer.

We recommend you be open to offering a fee as it may be what it takes to bring a deal together and it will allow you to take full advantage of the MLS® system.

You also have the opportunity to use our innovative SellerInvite™ option allowing you to deal with buyers directly and avoiding any fees you may have offered to a buyer's REALTOR®.

We encourage our buyer agents to discuss fees up front with their clients so they are prepared for situations where no buyer fees are offered.

Q. What do you mean by having the fees built into the transaction?

Fees today are often built into the transaction. For example if a Sellers fees total $10,000, a typical situation would see the buyer representative getting $5,000 out of the $10,000. So the fee for bringing in a buyer is built into the transaction and the buyer representative would not have to negotiate that.

So if you have negotiated a sale price for your home of $300,000 and are not offering any fees to the buyer agent for bringing you a buyer, and the buyer agent has negotiated a $5,000 fee up front with the buyer then they might offer you $305,000. You would get your $300,000 that you negotiated and you would agree to pay the additional $5,000 to the buyer agent upon the transaction closing.

Q. Why would I want to build the buyer agents fees into my transaction?

Fees are not typically covered by lenders and this is why traditionally they have been built into the transaction and often buyers are unable to pay for the fees separately out of their own pocket.

In the end sellers feel as if they are paying the all of the fees but without buyers and their money you have no sale. So in the end it's actually the buyer who pays the fees.

Q. Will buyer agents still show our home if we don't offer them a fee?

Yes. Buyer agents have a legal obligation to their clients to put their client's best interests before their own. Also, the competition act prohibits buyer agents from discriminating against other industry members pricing policies. In short, REALTORs® must show your home if it's in their clients best interests.

For-sale-by-owner companies tell you this and want you to believe this. They want you to think REALTORs® are unethical but we want you to believe different and we want to prove it. REALTORs® are professionals and sell approximately 85-90% of all residential real estate in Edmonton. Do you want to miss out on that market?

Q. I thought that in this market it's was important not only to pay equivalent to the industry standard, but more as a bonus to encourage buyer agents to show my home?

Firstly, there is no industry standard as that is the equivalent of price fixing and is a breach of the law under the competition act.

Secondly, I have never seen a buyer choose a home simply because their agent was getting paid more. We show our clients homes that suit their needs and meet there price point. If no fee is offered no problem, because we've already negotiated our fees based on the level of service and time we have provided to our buyer.

Q. Is there an opportunity for buyers to save money by approaching SellerInvite.com™ directly?

Yes there is. If you are not currently under contract with a REALTOR® and want to see one of our homes and are not comfortable approaching the seller directly, then we will have a dedicated buyer specialist show the home to you and we have fees built in to cover this.