Why you should not sign an exclusive assignment

To sign or not to sign? To bind or not to bind? These are the questions I will answer in this article. If you are thinking of selling your home and don't know how to go about it, perhaps these lines are for you.

When I go to see a property for sale, the statement I hear most frequently is as follows:

I don't sign exclusive assignments because I don't want to bind myself!

Accompanied by a

if you have someone bring them... then I'll pay you the commission!!!

Too often this "belief" is used by sellers in response to the insistence of the real estate consultant on duty.

Reasons for not giving a sales assignment

It is understandable that a homeowner would not want to sign a contract with a real estate agent knocking on his or her door--there can be so many reasons, and I want to try to imagine a few:

• 99 out of 100, the real estate agent one relies on is not one's own knowledge and, at best, was referred by an acquaintance or relative, without having specific and direct knowledge of the operations used by the broker to sell the property.
• Most agencies have as their "strategy" for selling your home to post it on portals and wait for the client to call (which you can very well do at much more affordable costs than a commission if not FREE )
• Some real estate agencies, chasing after numbers, turnovers and targets, unleash young interns or new graduates without any knowledge of the subject, in order to bring home assignments ( which in some cases they pay on signed assignment) at any price, putting the unfortunate property on the market at a price that will not allow it to sell in a short time. They use the technique of "exhaustion" to the tune of lowering the assignment price every 2 months until they arrive at a price that, at times may be lower than the market price.
• Ours is a people business. And people you know, they can be likable or disliked. What if the person you chose to sell your home was not sympathetic to your potential buyer? Or even worse, what if the agent or agency you entrusted with selling your property had a less than excellent or negative reputation? How would a potential buyer take it?

example of property given to multiple agencies

Differences between exclusive and non-exclusive sales assignment:

When selling a property, there may be various ways in which a real estate agent can handle it. below you will find the various ways and their consequences for the seller:

Assignment of real estate sale without exclusivity:

It means signing a contract in which you agree to guarantee a certain fee in the event of a sale. Within the assignment there are the same conditions as in an exclusive assignment with the difference that you will have no cost in case you sell the property with other agencies or on your own. In the event that the agency brings you an offer that conforms to the signed assignment, the right to mediation accrues and the seller is contractually obligated to pay the mediation.

Advantages of selling a house with assignment without exclusivity:

The undisputed advantage of this operation is that you are free to be able to have multiple stakeholders ( direct clients or real estate agencies) with whom you can talk about selling your property. But freedom also comes with sacrifices: to do this you will have to independently manage several people, who work perhaps differently, who will try to get there first and in order to do so will not care about the details. This means that you will have to spend time, energy and resources following up on the sale of your property, with the possibility of overlapping clients with each other and creating unpleasant situations for the parties involved.

Assignment of real estate sale without exclusivity:

It means signing a contract in which you agree to guarantee a certain fee in the event of a sale, and you agree not to entrust the sale of your property to other parties or to find the buyer on your behalf. The contract also includes penalty clauses that allow the seller to release himself from the assignment, paying a reduced fee compared to the agreed commission, in case of violation of the exclusivity or in case you do not want to accept an offer in accordance with the assignment. The duration of the assignment is fixed (usually 6 months) a renewal can be agreed upon upon expiration.

Advantages of selling a property with exclusivity:

You will have chosen your trusted contact person, agreed on the terms of engagement and delegated to him or her all the operations of managing the sale of the property. This person will interface with all parties interested in your property, and you will not have to explain your needs to every new person who comes to your home. If the agency also works with a network of colleagues, giving him the exclusive assignment will put him in a position to safely share your property with multiple agents and their clients.

The collaboration between real estate agencies

I believe that the person you entrust to sell your property should be a facilitator of the sale and not a potential obstacle.

Let me explain further.

Quite often there are clients who have a loyal relationship with a real estate agent and buy (if they can) through them, or otherwise get assistance even if the negotiation is done through another real estate agent.

Trusting those who make a profit from what they sell you is not an easy thing to do. That is why many people have their own "trusted advisor" with whom they deal before making a purchase.

So why not allow those who have their own "personal" real estate advisor to be able to purchase your property?

In Italy we are anchored to a concept of the super-partisan impartial real estate agent, whose job is to mediate between the two opposing centers of interest ( buyer-seller ) an archaic concept that is increasingly losing its value and is not matched in other countries, where it is the practice to be followed by one's own biased real estate consultant.

When you entrust your property for sale to a real estate agency, ask these questions of the appointee who will follow up with you:

• What will you do concretely to sell my property?
• What happens if another real estate agent comes in and claims to have a potential buyer for my property?

If you have entrusted your assignment to a real estate agent. NOT collaborative, this person will do everything to sell you a house ( of course ) but is unlikely to be able to offer you a client base as large as that of a group of real estate agents who systematically collaborate.

Do you think this modus opernadi is advantageous or disadvantageous?

Suppose he sells it-because it has always sold that way until now-do you think it will take longer or shorter? And under what conditions?

Being able to tap into the buyer client portfolios of multiple real estate agents or multiple real estate agencies is a tremendous value that only a few are fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of.

To do this, you need the esteem of colleagues, awareness of shared operations, appropriate ethical and deontological rules, and why not, even a dash of sympathy!

I believe that a sales system set on these dictates is a virtuous system in which the customer has only to gain.

The moral of these lines is that you should not sign an EXCLUSIVE assignment for your property when you are selling with a real estate agency but, as my friends at Remax say, an INCLUSIVE assignment where you have to give an authorization to one, and only one, interlocutor for the sale but, far more importantly, make sure that this person also makes your property available to colleagues who may have interested potential clients.

I'm not talking about a simple request that you have to make to your real estate agent....

You should DEMAND IT!!!

This is my opinion, which I employ in my daily life and which has brought me results and satisfaction....

What about you dear reader who has come this far? What do you think?

Leave me a comment on this article with your opinion--I'll be happy to respond!

Are you thinking of selling your house? Then this article on how to sell home without an agency is for you!