Why Using a Buyer’s Agent to Buy Property

Someone rang me from a marketing company asking me if they could offer their service to help me with promoting my website. As someone who came from IT development background, I knew how to do it all myself. But I thought, “Let’s just listen to what he had to say”. After all, you could have learnt all the skills in the world and done it all yourself. Problem is, do you have the time? Just like you’re going to a dentist to fix your teeth instead of doing dentistry course yourself for 10 years, same principle applies here.

So anyway, we chatted and he was so curious about the business I’m running. The very first question he asked, “What is a buyer’s agent and how is that different from a real estate agent?”. Wow….what a great avenue it was to hone my marketing skill! That was the exact same question that my potential clients have asked me!

I explained, “Well, Real Estate Agents are seller’s agent. They help people selling properties. While for me, I help people buying properties. Why would you use me? It’s because buying property is a very daunting and time consuming exercise, isn’t it? Think about it. You have to first do your research, do your numbers, project your profit, then after that you have to deal with real estate agents, do the negotiation, do the inspection. And if you’re building, you have to manage your builders right, otherwise you may end up paying a lot more than what you were promised initially. So, instead of having to go through all this, what if I can minimise all that pain away from you? Let me do all the hard work while you keep doing what you enjoy doing with your life, and in the end you know you would be settling on the right property. How does that sound?”.

“Wow, I didn’t know that kind of service exists! That would be really helpful”. From his tone, I actually felt he was interested himself. Who’s selling here? Hm…

For you who are reading this article you might have the similar question yourself. Why would you pay someone to buy a property? Can’t I do it all myself? It’s a really good and fair question!

Buyer’s Agency service is not for everybody. I’ll tell you that straight away. This service is for someone who want to settle on the right property but not having the time to do it all him/herself. Everyone can buy just any property. But it takes a lot of time and effort to find that “gem” ie. the right property!

What is the right property? To me, the right property is a property that:
1. Has demand of purchase
2. Has positive cashflow

Location, location, location determines if a property has demands. However, if you’re just looking at location alone, and yet you have to fork out tens-of-thousands of dollars every year to hold, then you’re buying a bad property. Negatively-cashflowed property is ALWAYS a wrong property to buy. Why? Because not only will it reduce your profit line by a lot, the banks can’t also lend you money to buy more properties. It’s like running a business that needs daily money injection because its revenue can’t keep up with the cost. Negatively-cashflowed property is a losing business and you can never win!

I published my personal story here on how I lost $50,000 on negatively-geared-and-cashflowed property, just in case you’re interested.

Just like with anything. If you just want to do anything, everything at a mediocre level, then you’ll be mediocre. It takes effort, time and talent to be a Roger Federer. Same with property. If you just buy any property then you’d just get mediocre return. It’s a waste of time, money and effort. Owning a property takes a lot of admin work, from having to deal with the bills, then the property manager, the tenant, the paperwork, the tax, etc. And if after all these, you only find out that you’re still forking money out of your pocket, to me that’s just a waste of of your life.

This is why, having said all that, a Buyer’s Agent’s service would be very helpful. For us, we charge 2% of the final purchase price. Meaning, if in the end the seller agreed to sell his property and settle for $500,000, you as the buyer would be paying us $10,000. “What..that’s a waste of $10,000”, you might say. But remember, what if I tell you that the original asking price was $550,000 and the median price was $520,000 and yet, we managed to negotiate down to $500,000? What if I tell you that the property was in a golden location: in a suburb that is growing, glowing affluence score, close to freeway, schools, hospitals, and 200m from the nearest bus stop; that the rental yield around the area was high and the property would give you positive cashflow?

You see, I don’t know about you, but the $10,000 you pay is nothing compared to the value you’re getting out of the property that you settle. Furthermore, imagine how many hours you would save in order for you to find that property in the first place?

As a Buyer’s Agent, because we do research everyday, our process is very efficient. Especially here at Easy Buyer’s Agent, we have developed a lot of automated systems that can source data from various places very quickly. Therefore, as far as research goes, we can turn around a lot quicker than you would normally do by doing manual process.

There is no magic in buying properties. You all know that. But again, it all comes down to how quick and efficient you can go about it. You can spend all the time looking for deals only to find out that you’re missing out simply because you’re not quick enough to snatch them.

It’s like trying to save $4,000 doing your own house painting. A professional can get it done in 5 days. While normal people like us, in the midst of our busyness, may take 4-5 weeks to finish. Then, our quality may not be as good. Think about it, how many hours you would have burnt along the way? Isn’t it actually worth paying the person in the end?

I know I’m super biased here because I’m running a Buyer’s Agent business, so of course I want your business. However, having worked as an IT Consultant, I knew exactly the very reason why a company would pay me $150/hour to build their website. It’s the expertise that comes with it. You want to make sure your website to be scaleable, secure, user friendly, accessible, according to standards, etc. You see, if you want to be mediocre, you’ll get mediocre. But if you want to get a gem, paying a professional is worth the money.

So, having said all these, the ball is now in your court. Whether a service like us would worth your money or not, it’s for you to answer. All we can offer is our expertise, an assurance that you would be settling on the right property. And not just that, especially for us at Easy Buyer’s Agent, having peace of mind is the forefront of our value offering. We would try our very best to shelter you from all the stress of property buying.

Thanks for reading!