What is a Buyers Agent

What is a Buyers Agent

What is a buyers agent. A Buyers Agent is a person or agent appointed by another person to assist them in the purchase of a property. Alistair Kelsall provides Brisbane Buyers Agents Services to anyone looking to purchase in the Brisbane property market.

The Buyers Agent will establish the requirements of the persons seeking to purchase a property in much the same way as a financial planner would.

Property Analysis

When choosing to use real estate as as investment option then it needs to be analysed from an investment point of view rather than a property you would purchase to live in yourself. Part of this process is to analyse the risk level of the property. For example, you may require a very high return however that will generally be associated with a higher level of risk. This would be typical of regional properties located in mining towns where there is a very high rental return yet it may be short term which then indicates a high risk.

So a good Buyers Agent needs to be more than just a real estate agent, they need to have financial planning skills behind them in order to properly advise you on the right type of property that meets your needs.

Local Knowledge

They should also have a deep understanding of the local property market be able to discuss suburbs and property types that meet your budget requirements and this is where the skills of a good Buyers Agent come into their own. A good Buyers Agent will know the market and will know the suburbs that are going to perform.

This is a very good rule to adhere too, if the media is reporting an area to be good to purchase in, Don’t, your far too late. You will turn up to an open home along with at least 30 other groups which increases demand on the local housing market which in turn leads to a rise in the prices of the property and you end up purchasing at the top of the price cycle. A skilled Buyers Agent will be able to assess a suburb for future potential growth where the local property prices are further down the property price cycle and have room to move upwards. The agent will be able to clearly show you the reason why a particular suburb is going to move upwards in value and the time frame and once you see this information you should be in full agreeance. To understand this further you need to read our guide on the purchase process system we employ and how we study the market place. Click Here…

Know Your Customer

Once all the needs, requirements and budgets have been identified, the search process can begin. There are many systems out there but the  most common method is to use the main web sites that advertise property. This would be realestate.com domain and a couple of others. In our case we have a database of agents all over Brisbane and it is here we first look for property that has not come on to the market place yet. Then we use a scraping system which we developed for our own busyness and that is a custom search engine that looks at over 1000 real estate web sites, from the biggest to the smallest. Your requirements are inputted into the system and it performs a daily search.

Once a suitable property has been located, the Buyers Agent will notify the customer, conduct research into the property and organise an inspection. In the case of our Brisbane Buyers Agents service we go to the length of creating virtual tours of all properties inspected in order to give the client as much information as possible.

Your Input

This is the time where you give the agent your feedback, it might be simply an investment but you have to be happy with it and there is a rule applied here that is covered off in our selection process. The last item is titled “Your Input” and we use this feedback to refine the right type of property for you. To take this a little further, when we are considering and investment of any type, we must have an exit strategy. I docent matter the time frame, 5 years, 10 years etc, but we must always consider how we can exit the property in a timely manner and this is where your input goes a long way to help. If you like a property, chances are others will and that will make it easier to rent out and sell in the future. If you don’t like it, chances are a percentage of people wont like it too and it will sit on there market vacant for a longer period of time than a property you did like.

Negotiations

When it comes to the purchase of a property, the Buyers Agent will negotiate a price for the property in your behalf and this is another area where skills are required. You would be very surprised at the high prices we see other Buyers Agents paying for property in Brisbane. They will generally be from the southern states of Australia and either do not know the market or just wish to secure the property. This is very wrong.

There is a price the owner wants for the property and there is the value of the property and market demand to be considered. These 3 points are the basis for negotiations and all we need to do is find that point in the middle that is both acceptable to you firstly and the owner of the property. The second point, the price we want to be pay can be given more sway by giving the current sellers terms and conditions that are very appealing. This could be short time frames on building and pest inspections, finance time frames and settlement period. Condition like subject to the sale of another property are not looked upon kindly and will only hurt your case for a lower price. If those conditions appeal to the current owner then often they will accept a lower offer over other offers due to the conditions presented in the contract.

Due Diligence

The final phase of the purchase process is carrying out due diligence on the property. That is a building and pest inspection report. A building and pest inspection report is carried out by an independent business who will physically inspect the property for defects and any pest issues and provide you with both a written and verbal report. The verbal part is very important as a property may be 30 years old and the report incites that there is some wear on a part of the house. If you read it, you may be put off but you might just find that it is exactly as it should be for the age of the property and that is where a call from the inspector to the buyer, not the buyers agent is important.

Other services we should be taking care of are the conveyancing which is the legal aspect of the transaction. Your Buyers Agent will recommend a good solicitor for this process and finally, property management.

There you go, a good Buyers Agent will advise you of the right area to invest in, the right type of property and best of all, attend all the properties recommended which saves you a great deal of time. Most importantly though, you should have a property that you paid the right price for and it will perform well into the future.

This article was written by Alistair Kelsall, one of the Brisbane Buyers Agents for Investate. For more information call him on 0405 131 333.

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