Purplebrick vs regular estate agents

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Hi, any review or comparison of recently launched purplebrick?

I have also contacted several real estate agents and even vendor advocate. There are some big agents who sold many property in the area. And a small agent who sold similar property to mine recently and have interested buyer. And also the vendor advocate who seems to know what he is doing.

How do I choose?

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Have a look at earlier posts about finding an ethical real estate agent. (search using the magnifying glass icon on the top right hand corner of the page)

I assume that you are talking about selling your home.

I am not sure the value of a vendor advocate when selling. Here re the attributes of a GOOD real estate agent in my opinion:

  1. Guarantee they will achieve their valuation, or they won’t charge a fee. This avoids the unrealistic and outlandish valuations to entice you to sign with them.
  2. Their fee is realistic for the amount of work they will do on your behalf, and are willing to negotiate their fee downward.
  3. Their fee should include all the photography etc that is done.
  4. They don’t need to advertise your home, as they should have buyers listed who would be interested in your home. Therefore no advertising fee. If they do need to advertise it should only be when & where you agree to, without any set period. That is, if you say so, or if the house sells, no more ads.
  5. No open house. They should pre-qualify buyers and only bring buyers one at a time who have the funds available. This means that you don’t have ‘tyre kickers’, nosey parkers, and other people wandering through your home unattended.

Hope that helps.

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Great points @meltam
I would add, no auctions!

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I do believe in auctions as an important option
don’t rule it out. It is important to consider. (I have bought and sold with over 25 property transactions
approx 10 with an auction method)
At an Auction
you get everyone engage in the sale committed to one date.

  1. Your solicitor and the potential buyers solicitor will have done all their homework. ( there is nothing more frustrating than one of the solicitors being ‘too busy’ or someone else gets their attention who is buying or selling another property via auction
your deal gets pushed to when they ‘feel like doing it’. Likewise for your inspections services (building,strata, pest etc)
  2. You and your family are all committed to either buy or sell when an auction happens. It forces everyone to talk
its not just ‘another squiz’ at a property. It does require some considered thought by everyone. Having a set date gets everyone ‘one the one page’ time-wise.
  3. If you use an agent, they have to get their act together on that day. I have agents that wanted to pull out of an auction program in the last week of a sale program as they didn’t have ‘enough interest’. I always refuse that!.. I have paid for the auctioneer! I have paid for the marketing! We have to go through with it whatever the outcome. It puts them under pressure to perform! ( often they want to pull out of the auction as it looks ‘bad’ on their figures or their reputation on web sites or referral systems ( which I think must always be considered with a fair dose of skepticism
and NEVER EVER let those sites get a piece of the fees!) I have always managed to sell or buy at an appropriate price within 2 weeks of an auction campaign ( 6 times I never sold at the auction
but always sold)
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Be wary of fixed price agents,. The idea isn’t new it has been done before but this purple brick mob is just hyping it so much many people think its new. Sold a house 10 years ago with a fixed price agent.

Fixed price agents get paid on the successful property sale irrespective of price, so slower moving property owners get harassed by their own agent to quickly drop the price because the agent just wants their $$ which are locked in irrespective of final price

I find what works well is to aim for a reasonable and consistent with the local market property sales price and lock in a fair market rate sales commission with a good local agent but offer the agent a sales bonus to the listing contract.

Typically offer the agent $2000 extra commission for ever $10,000 they get you above your target selling price. You watch them work hard to get those extra dollars on the sale.

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I find that no agent is willing to sign a quotation guarantee.

And purplebrick get paid upon listing, not selling.

Most include advertising and open house. I can properly ask them not to do open house.

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One of the problems with auctions is that you’ll never get the top price that your keenest buyer will pay.

If you only have one interested buyer, the best price you’ll get is the reserve price.
If you have two or more interested buyers, the best price will be one increment above the highest price the second highest bidder will pay. If one buyer is prepared to pay $500,000, and the next highest bidder would pay $450,000, there’s no reason for the first bidder to go above $451,000. Whereas a skilled agent or negotiator could get $500,000 from the first buyer, outside of auction.

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I saw another thread in this forum about jenman (http://www.jenman.com.au/approved-search/#searchvl) sound to me like another vendor’s advocate?

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FWIW in the USA the preponderance of agents are in the “Multiple Listing Service”. One agent lists your property and any agent can show and sell it. The listing agent gets 3% and the selling agent gets 3% (percentage negotiable when the property is listed). There are no additional selling fees (advertising etc.). Agents love to get listings and those on the selling side have an inventory of “everything on the market”. Auctions are quite rare.

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Read everything written by Neil Jenman. 90% of estate agents are pure parasites.

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Thank you for reminding me of Jenman’s name @Leptobrama.

After reading his book my ideas about selling real estate changed completely. (Hence my anti-auction stance above.)

Has he written anything recent? The book I read was written prior to widespread internet advertising and I suspect his model would need to be changed, given that he expected buyers to approach agents rather than respond to ads.

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Why not just visit his website Jen?

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The website has no relevant content–it’s a venue for selling his books and finding and approved Jenman agent.
According to the website, Don’t Sign This (the book I read) is still the most recent one he’s written.