1742 Same Property 2 agents 50k Difference

in an aside to the price differenceit is quite unusual in italy for two agents to be both contracted in to selling the same house...usually agents like to do things exclusively...and one gets a written contract binding the owner to sell through them....often a different set of problems can occur for the unwary buyer if they buy through the non contracted agent... or the second contracted agent.... you then have the added problem of agent in fighting and splitting of fees as compenstation...... yet more spice to the dreaded italian house buyin experience.... which in truth.... before i moved here and from my own experience of house selling buying here had always seemed quite simple...but there you go

Hello Italianfan,

We've been looking at many places in Le Marche for almost two years now. We've been amazed at what we've seen in our areas of interest. We know the places we want to look at. When we see them listed at different agency we can sometimes get different photos or additional information. One might tell us the exact location, put no prices. Another will give prices but no exact location. Sometimes it seems like a shell game looking for something, then it's gone, then it's back again (could be that the sale doesn't go through). The most disturbing
part is the price variation. We too are trying to keep track of each place we like and who is offering it at the lowest price (but this can change too).

[QUOTE=Italianfan]is this the biggest difference in price between 2 agents selling the same property[/QUOTE]

Just down the road from us is a house on the market with one agent for E300,000 and with another for E230,000! We also know of a house with a E60,000 price difference between two agents. It is not uncommon. Interestingly none of the agents are aiming at the overseas market and neither of the houses would be of particular interest to most foreign buyers looking for their piece of Italy. Both houses have been on the market for a very long time which may explain why they are on two agents websites, I suspect that the owners have got fed up with the first, made a new contract with the second and the first agency has not bothered to update its website, another common problem. As Adriatica has rightly pointed out this could lead to a problematic time for any future buyer.
Anne2

Italian Fan

Am concerned to note the mention of 5% commission.

For all potential buyers out there...2% to 3% is the norm you should expect to pay. DO NOT go above 3% (don't forget the vendor also pays 3%). If anyone wants to charge you more then ask them to justify the extra and tell them it really is not acceptable!

There are far too many people paying more than is absolutely necessary!

As an example of the kind of problems agents encounter; I was asked (by an English owner) to market a house at what seemed to me an excessively high price. I asked him if it was for sale with any other agents and he told me it wasn't. Looking on the internet for comparable houses in the area, I found the same house for sale for €350,000 less. When I told the owner, he suddenly remembered.
Needless to say, I didn't touch it until both agencies had agreed on a price. The eventual price was €250,000 less than the original price.

When you think about it, its the owners who stand to benefit more than agents in bolstering the price of houses. Leaving aside the unethical practice that one agency was recently accused of on the Forum (selling the house for one price and declaring to the owner that it had sold for much less) if the price of a house is €50,000 more one one site than another, a typical agent would gain 6% of this figure - €3,000 - by selling at the higher price whilst the owner would gain €48,500. Most agents I know, would run a mile from the idea of losing a deal and compromising their reputation for such a relatively small sum.

Regarding 5% commission, I'd suggest that anyone quoted that figure should make it clear to the agent that any offer they make will be at least 2% less than they'd otherwise have offered, to cover the excess costs.

Some of you may remember a thread started by 'Dave', asking for comments/opinions on an estate agency called HOUSEAROUNDITALY & my response to it.

For those that don't know, my response consisted of the fact that the house we purchased was being advertised by HAI for 250,000e & also by an agency called HOUSESFORSALEABRUZZO, for 180,000e.

Neither agency had the 'mandato', or the sole contract to sell, so, as we wanted the house, we bought from HFSA.

What would you have done?

We have now owned the house for just over a year & have just received a summons, instigated by HAI, claiming 6000e + legal fees, in commission for showing us this house first.

We have taken legal advice, & as for demanding commission, they have no leg to stand on.
.................But, included in the summons, was the purchase price we actually agreed with the sellers,
PLUS the actual amount put down on the paperwork for tax purposes. This has taken them a year to discover.

In effect, they are blackmailing us to either pay up, or go to court & be exposed as a tax fraud.

So if you are buying with HOUSEAROUNDITALY, be very careful what you put down as the price of the house for tax purposes, as it my come back to bite you.

Keep you informed.

[QUOTE=Marc] Leaving aside the unethical practice that one agency was recently accused of on the Forum (selling the house for one price and declaring to the owner that it had sold for much less) if the price of a house is €50,000 more one one site than another, a typical agent would gain 6% of this figure - €3,000 - by selling at the higher price whilst the owner would gain €48,500. Most agents I know, would run a mile from the idea of losing a deal and compromising their reputation for such a relatively small sum.[/QUOTE]

I think you are wrong to say most agents, there are many who will do anything to get the very last penny, adding a few hundred euros to any extra services. So for 3000 it's a risk they would take.

Our agent wants 6%! and yes I did question it.

A cautionary tale indeed Rob, and I'm very sorry to hear what has happened.

This problem deserves a thread of its own really but I'll continue here with these two remarks;

By agreeing to view a house with an agency, you agree to their terms and conditions, which are that if you go on to buy the house, even through another agent, or by private negotiation, you still have to pay them. It doesn't matter whether they have sole agency or not. I not trying to defend the agent in this instance, but look at it this way; some agents spend large sums of money advertising the homes they sell. They have to recoup that money somehow and most of them do it by passing the costs on to the clients.
The moral of the story is that that more research you do for yourself, by searching the net, or asking to be on various agents' mailing lists, the better the deal you are likely to secure.

Regarding the fees they are trying to recover, I'm not legally qualified to state this categorically, but I'd have thought that the most that they could seek to recover would be a percentage of the sum stated in the Notarised Act Of Sale. The Compromesso is essentially a private contract between buyer and seller, so how would they know how much was stated in the Compromesso, unless someone furnished them with a copy?... and who would have any reason to do that? They may think they know how much you paid, but that's a different thing. If the case were to come to court, I'd have thought that the only legally admissible evidence that could be produced would be the Atto Di Compravendita, drawn up by the Notaio and registered with the authorities.

Once again finding an agent you can trust seems to be a problem! from what I can see here one person deals with an agent and finds no problem,another has loads of issues! I guess every sale is different but I find it very off putting when this particular agent areadly mentioned (Brian French) isn't actually showing the property but passing you on to the agent in Italy ,meanwhile securing a hefty mark up on the sale( makes thier fee higher) and a minumum amount for the fee dependant on the price secured 5%. Non of the agents I've tried seems perfect,Casatravella for instance charges the same price as the Italian site so seem to make a percentage of the 3% charges of the agent selling/showing., but are a little prone to not giving 100% accurate descriptions of what they are selling,EG saying a property had private courtyard when in reality it was shared.You dont find these things out until you've spent the money and time viewing!!! I seem eventually to have found someone I can trust and am very pleased how things are progressing at the moment, if you'd like to know please pm me.

The 350k price difference in a house must have been some place huh!

A note about agency fees:

The Italian Civil code has provisions concerning commissions and expenses payable (diritto alla provvigione ed al rimborso delle spese) to agents, providing that they are licensed of course (iscritti nel ruolo) and not:

1)Unlicensed procacciatori, brokers or agents
2)Consulenti immobiliari who are not iscritto bel ruolo)
3)Ex-pat and other non-Italian operators who, masquerading as agents, market properties on their websites and who dabble in real estate
4)Any other individuals operating abusivamente
5)Where a conflict of interest may arise. For example, someone working full time in the public sector

The agent has the right to receive a commission only if the sale has been made and only if he/she was instrumental in making it happen (article 1755 refers).

What Marc is saying in his second paragraph is not strictly true. Unless you have entered into a written agreement with the agent (or unless you are dealing with a sole agency agreement – in that case you can’t go to another agent to buy the house), you are not legally obliged to pay anything if no purchase has been made.

Again, the Civil Code has provisions (article 1756 refers) that allow the defendant to claim for legitimate expenses even if a sale has not been made. But unless the agent can prove (i.e. by keeping a record) that he/she incurred 100-euro of expenses let’s say, to show Mr and Mrs house hunter some properties, only to find they bought the property through someone else, the agent has not much of a case. In any event, even if he/she did try to seek remedial action, I think it is highly unlikely that any judge would want to waste time over such small amounts.

My suggestion to anyone embarking upon this process is to find and deal with a professional agent and to avoid all those listed above.

Very interesting information. HAI is one place that has a property that's on our "to see" list that is asking 350k, while two other agencies have it listed at 205k.
After we saw that we decided not to have them show us a couple of others we liked. I would think people who are doing their homework will notice this and they may end up losing potential clients.

The other is Casatravella. They are listing a place we have on our list of "to see"
homes at $450k, that two others have up at 400K. Casatravella did have it for $400k about a week before we contacted them and asked them about other properties they had in this area.

We are working with Monica Bruni and she has helped several others on this forum buy their homes. Most of our homes of interest are listed with her. What we are looking for at this point are a few homes of interest that aren't listed by her.

I think one point beginning to emerge from this discussion is that many agents, 'inscritto nel ruolo' or otherwise, are acting at second or third hand to sell properties which they know little about and have may never even have visited. Many of the problems quoted, whilst not perhaps due to craven greed on the part of the agents are due to misunderstandings or poor contact with the vendors. My advice would be to try to find the 'lead' agent for any property you are interested in.

Questions to ask would be;

Is the agent based in a particular territory, or do they sell houses all over Italy?

Does the agent' s web site have photographs of the inside of the majority of houses on their web site? (implying that they have visited the houses)

Is the agent able to quote the 'Rendita Catastale' of the house? (an indication that they have the paperwork relating to the house)

Does the agent have under, say, 50 properties on their web site?

Does the agent answer pertinent questions (e.g., what kind of heating does the house have? Is there a well?) promptly and accurately?

If the answer to any of the foregoing questions is 'No' then maybe you're looking at a middleman's middleman.

Selling houses is fundamentally different from the kind of business represented by Amazon - stack 'em high and shift 'em out of the door as fast as possible. Each house should be a carefully nutured 'project' seen through from start to finish by the agent. If you can see the signs of those qualities in agents such as Magical Marche and Monica Bruni (to reference Greatscott's property search in Marche) then bond yourself to those agents in preference to others.

Of course, there are property portals out there (such as PrimeLocation.com) who do nothing but aggregate houses from a variety of agents. Nothing at all wrong with that... BUT.. they don't charge you 3-5-or-6%!

Excellent points Marc! Thank you.

Your "questions to ask" will help people navigate their way through the property search maze :)

It would appear every agent is up to this, putting the price up, inc Monica Bruni, if you show interest. I honestly didn't think it was as prevalent as it would seem to be. It would be nice to know if genuine agents actually exist in what seems a pretty cut throat business! Think you must just be lucky if you dont get stung in some fashion. Anyway a property is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it so It'll be a take it or leave it offer I'll be proposing no matter what the asking price is, and being prepared for a lot of rejection! What's for you wont go by you!

If ever I am mad enough to buy again in Italy I am not using an agent.In Abruzzo we heard of many locals with house to sell.Leave the agent out and save yourself a lot of money!

This may be the case Italian fan. One thing that helps is to look at lots of properties. We've looked at hundreds of places all over the area, and if you take all the details into consideration (location, home size and condition, amount of land, heating, water, etc) there really is a consistancy in price. We can make a "guesstimate" of cost and it's usually close to the asking price in most cases. It's when you see the anomalies to this that sends up the red flags.

Salve tullo

Quite right 'Greatscott'.

One of the many problems when buying in Italy, especially for english buyers, is that there is no point of reference. You know the sort of thing. By that i mean no other houses in the street to refer to for price, size, the amount of land, etc. So you have no idea of how much to pay for a particular property.

So, as 'Greatscott' says, look & look & look again, to get a feel for what you are wanting.

It sounds obvious, but so many buy the first thing that 'Looks right'.

Rob

[QUOTE=Marc]A cautionary tale indeed Rob, and I'm very sorry to hear what has happened.

This problem deserves a thread of its own really but I'll continue here with these two remarks;

By agreeing to view a house with an agency, you agree to their terms and conditions, which are that if you go on to buy the house, even through another agent, or by private negotiation, you still have to pay them. It doesn't matter whether they have sole agency or not. I not trying to defent he agent in this instance, but look at it this way; some agents spend large sums of money advertising the homes they sell. They have to recoup that money somehow and most of them do it by passing the costs on to the clients.
The moral of the story is that that more research you do for yourself, by searching the net, or asking to be on various agents' mailing lists, the better the deal you are likely to secure.

Regarding the fees they are trying to recover, I'm not legally qualified to state this categorically, but I'd have thought that the most that they could seek to recover would be a percentage of the sum stated in the Notarised Act Of Sale. The Compromesso is essentially a private contract between buyer and seller, so how would they know how much was stated in the Compromesso, unless someone furnished them with a copy?... and who would have any reason to do that? They may think they know how much you paid, but that's a different thing. If the case were to come to court, I'd have thought that the only legally admissible evidence that could be produced would be the Atto Di Compravendita, drawn up by the Notaio and registered with the authorities.[/QUOTE]
Buona Sera Marc,
Re, your 2nd to last post on this thread.
Which law ties me into the'Terms & conditions' of any agent showing me a house? Especially when i was never shown, or given such.
Saluti
Rob

Salve Rob,
Whilst there is no 'law' that ties you to the first agent who showed you a house, as Charles has said some agents do ask people to sign an agreement before they show them a house. I assumed that you had signed one. If you didn't, then the agent's claim for compensation is pretty cheeky.
Apologies for the misunderstanding.

Marc,
What's a Senator apologising to an Equestrian, stop it, you'll have people talking!!!

No mate, didn't sign a thing. As to being even SHOWN 'Terms & conditions', err, no.

That's obviously, (in my solicitors opinion), why all the other info about how much we declared as the purchase price, for tax reasons & the actual cost we paid has been included.

Got to say also is 'i wonder why they picked on us?'

Thanks all for your comments, keep you posted.