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Hi all! Looking for a roomie in Culver City. New Yorker getting into the startup life and transitioning from data engineering to data science.
Looking at the Harlow for a 3 bedroom, want to convert the extra room into a home office: https://www.thewestsidecollection.com/harlow-culver-city-ca/
If you’re interested in the area lemme know!
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Any Property Management recs in Seattle area? :(
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Closing on a house this Thursday that I bought without an agent. You’ll get responses like the others in the thread, I honestly don’t get where it comes from… it’s basic math… standard commission is 3% seller and 3% buyer, paid for by the seller. If the seller no longer has to pay 3% to buyer agent, their potential net proceeds are 3% higher. To be honest, I suspect most seller agents will try their hardest to take an extra 0.5-1% of it, and depending on the contract they have with the buyer, the buyer may have to pay 6% regardless — though if market isn’t crazy that’s unlikely. Whatever contract they have with seller, if there’s no other buyers at a better price they’ll figure out a way to make it work, they certainly can anyway.
you’ll have to do some more legwork, etc. the biggest pain is having to organize showings with the seller agent or see open houses only. Unless you’re very experienced I would advise finding a real estate attorney, for document review. I actually found one at no cost for real estate purchase assistance because it’s covered in my corp legal plan I pay $15 a month for lol.
I’ve found that telling the seller agent “I’m unrepresented and the listed buyers agent fee will not need to be paid, whatever you work out with the seller is your business with them, but any offers I make will reflect that 3% extra net proceeds will end up going towards you and seller.” In the end you’re probably competitive offering 2-2.5% less than an otherwise equal competitor offer who has a buyers agent.
For what it’s worth, in my market (SLC UT) with $1mil houses, I was seeing them go at or very slightly above asking if they were reasonably priced. I offered about 2% below with no buyers agent knowing they’d net out slightly above asking. House is 1.17mil sale price so I think I probably saved $25-$30k.
Dm me if any questions. But in general, I would avoid trying to haggle with seller agent or discuss it too much beyond emphasizing that you know extra commission doesn’t have to be paid and whatever they do with it is between them and seller. Also only recommend if you’ve bought a few houses before.
How is this dual agency? Fwiw, Utah has an “unrepresented buyer” form that specifically says no buyer fee owed and that seller agent will not represent buyer interests.
Mentor
There isn’t much reason to skip the buyers agent as it doesn’t reduce costs to the seller in 99% of cases.
Since you have the license, have the broker guide you through the process. There is always a first time!
Mentor
Instead of skipping which won’t benefit you at all, find a buyers agent that will refund a portion of the commission back to you.
I’ll be sure to check it out, thanks for the rec! If we end up using another agent I’ll certainly make sure there’s something in it for me.