What to be careful of when real estate agents offer incentives to sell your home

Channel Nine news ran a segment the other night about real estate agents offering incentives for property owners to list their property with them.

The segment reported incentives like an Audi A3 car and American Express points being on offer and it got me thinking about what is the role of a real estate agent.

Whilst I appreciate promotional offers may create new business opportunities I just wonder if these types of incentives from Real Estate Agent are sending the right messages.

As an explanation, a quick check on the Audi website indicates the on road cost of an Audi A3 sedan is about $45,000.

As a business, you’re always looking for a return on an investment and by my calculations, there’d be quite a few property sales and commission cheques required to get a return on this type of investment.

The question I have is, does the process of selling my property become what I’ll call a transaction so the agent can move quickly onto the next sale or will they actually be working in my best interests with potential buyers during the sale process to help me obtain the highest possible sale price?

It’s an interesting question.

In this podcast we talk to a Real Estate Agent with 15 years’ experience,  Peter Sachs from Sachs Real Estate on Sydney’s North Shore