Does A Good Listing Agent Really Make A Difference?

Yes, a listing agent can make the difference.

I had just experienced this recently in Sydney, Australia. Basically, we had some 2 agents appraise a 4 bedroom house between $2.4M to $2.6M and a 3rd agent appraise it between $2.6M to $2.8M back in July. We had a family member offer $2.5M off-market, but due to them taking more than 3 months to try and get their finances in order, we got another 2 agents to appraise it. They both came back at $2.7M to $2.8M. All 5 agents recommended for us to take it to Auction.

So we decided to negotiate with the 3 agents offering the higher appraisals. We told them what our terms were:

1. No Auction, listing for sale instead.
2. Agent to pay for marketing fees ($5k to $7k)
3. We would only accept $2.9M net (so the agent would have to get over $2.94M to get their full commission or reduce their commission.
4. If the agent could not achieve $2.9M net for us we had no obligation to sell and we would not be liable for any costs.

Two of the agents were comfortable at paying the marketing fees upfront and getting us $2.8M net and the 3rd agent (he was actually the 2nd agent we negotiated with) agreed to our full terms and to get us $2.9M net, with no costs to us if we didn't sell.

We signed an agreement with him, he listed the property, and in less than 2 weeks of listing the property was sold for $2.945M, with us getting our $2.9M and the agent getting $45k commission.

The thing is that that $2.945M was a record for that area. There had only been one property sold for just over $3M but that one was right on the water, our house was 4 blocks away from the water.