There was an article printed in this week-end's real estate papers in KW and Cambridge. The one that appeared in the Cambridge Times was entitled "HST threatens home buying dream". It was written from the board and quoted Mike Toffner, president, "No matter how you sell it, the HST is a big tax increase for local home buyers, sellers and owners." The article goes on to claim with the average home price being $302,354 (Ontario) that the cost to home sellers would go up an estimated $1,449.
Realtors are very much opposed to the HST, and I suspect it is for a reason different than they claim. The following chart was included with the article to show you how much you would be effected.
Not pointed out is that of the $1,449 in additional tax, 83.5% of it is a direct result of their fees. If they are so concerned with home buyers being able to live out their dream of home ownership lets not worry about $1,449 in potential taxes when they are charging 10 times that amount for a simple process.If a home seller decides to pay themselves commission, which the government can't tax, then they end up not only saving HST on the commission but also the $15,117.70 in commissions. What would the chart look like if it considered the cost of a an average Private Sale marketing package?
Realtors appearing so adamant on reducing costs for the home seller by going after a proposed tax that equals a small fraction of what they charge seems a little misguided. They claim that HST will add an additional $262-million to residential resale real estate transactions. That means that they are expecting to charge $3.275-BILLION to you the home sellers. Put your equity in your pocket where it belongs. Pay for all your marketing with less than the taxes you would have paid for using a Realtor.
Here is their "official" stance:
M
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8 comments:
You are such a loser pal, i have a couple of friends in the business who don't go around smashing you rip off business. you scam people out of money by giving them a sucker sign and putting it on a crappy website that gets little traffic in relevant terms. You need to shut your pie hole or someone is going to do it for you and i know one agent who is looking forward to it and i think you know him as well. id be careful about who you are shit talking.
Another empty threat from someone not willing to put their name to their email. It seems that our message is hitting home for the agents.
Fact is $15,000 (average agent cost) vs $1,000 (average PropertyGuys.com cost) is a huge difference.
Our numbers are growing and our clients are paying themselves. October stats for agents in this area were 68.08% List to Sell Ratio. PropertyGuys.com was 81.67%.
Our "sucker sign" and "crappy website" seem to be working better than you think!
you fail to point out that your clients pay commission to the selling agent more then 95% of the time...its interesting that you get this fake figure to help boost your misleading info. So its more like they save $6000 on commission but probably lose around $12k purchase price. its really not worth it using property guys...if your gonna sell use for sale by owner, way better and way cheaper. plus more people in the real estate business would send their people that way then deal with a jerk like you.
Don't go spouting off about fake figures by making them up, it adds no credibility to your argument, friend.
I don't have an actual figure as to how many of our clients deal with buyers that use agents but I figure it to be around 20% (that may be high). Unfortunately for those buyers they pay more for the house.
As it works people selling a home have a bottom line. Their asking price is just that, what they are asking. They intend on negotiating down somewhere between the asking and their bottom line. When an agent is hired by a buyer the cost of the commission eats up valuable negotiating room that the buyer could have used to buy the house for less money.
As for a "jerk like me", it would seem that our clients are happy with our service. At least that's what our client testimonials say.
FYI until you can sign your name to your comments I will no longer be posting them. If you want to insult and threaten me, put your name to it.
you are right..your not a jerk so i do apologize for that but you make false comments yourself and i think it makes a lot of people angry that you attack people that would most likely help and support you if you didn't act as such. i get mad sometimes and act out of anger which when i have a second i realize its pointless and stupid so i apologize for that. i wish we could all get a long and not have to attack each other in business so we could make this a lot easier and better for everyone.
Thank you for that!
Anything I post in my blog is factual to the best of my knowledge. I would never post something that I knew to be untrue.
This industry is full of people yelling at each other and I can get caught up in it as much as the next person.
Bottom line is I state facts and my opinions on those facts. I never threaten anyone with physical threats, that is unprofessional and illegal.
If you ever wanted to meet for a coffee and talk about it I would be happy to do so.
Send me an email.
mshanks@propertyguys.com
Our numbers are growing and our clients are paying themselves. October stats for agents in this area were 68.08% List to Sell Ratio. PropertyGuys.com was 81.67%.
OK Buddy. Here's your chance to right a wrong. You quote MLS statistics all the time but don't substantiate your own.
I will be selling my house in the spring and notice your give numbers for property guys in percentages but never real numbers. Fess up. 81% is very high for for sale by owners. Quite frankly, I find it hard to believe. How did you get to that? If that numbers makes sense, I'll be calling you. But if it's 4 out of 5. Well, we know who is false and misleading.
Also, from reading your blog. How do you reduce your price for the buyer by the amount of the commission and still pay yourself? I've been doing a lot of research lately and this doesn't make sense.
Hey thanks for the comment. Another post without a name....why am I always dealing with "anonymous" comments. Makes me think a bunch of realtors are trying to be stealth...hmmm
Nothing to hide here. 49 of our clients sold their homes here in the Waterloo Wellington area in the month of October. This is an increase over 2007 and 2008. November is doing well so far as we have already had more clients sell this year than last year.
To answer your question in regards to reducing the price AND paying yourself. The commission structure of a traditional agent assisted transaction has an average 5% commission or $15,000 on a $300,000 house. Of that, half goes to the seller's agent and half to the buyer's agent. In theory, as a private seller, you now have the flexibility to offer the buyer their portion of the commission as a price incentive ($7,500) and pay yourself the other half as a commission for selling your own house (tax free BTW no GST).
The advantage is yours as a private seller. You can leave your house at market price and keep the entire 5% for yourself or reduce your house by the entire amount and be more attractive in the market, which means selling faster, and not effect your bottom line as compared to selling with an agent. Of course anywhere in the middle is an improvement on the bottom line. Sure is nice to be in control of your sale!!
M
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