Seller Beware

Caveat emptor, quia ignorare non debuit quod jus alienum emit ("Let a purchaser beware, for he ought not to be ignorant of the nature of the property which he is buying from another party.")

Many people are familiar with the latin phrase caveat emptor, or buyer beware, but there’s a lot to be said for seller beware too. Earlier this year, a prospective seller came to me very frustrated. They had been working with a listing agent from out of the area for more than six months with very few showings and just one problematic offer. We got them back on track and sold their house within the first week back on market, with many showings.

Changes are afoot in real estate, with online platforms and major national and international real estate players lining up to fight for corporate dominance over markets. While nominally these online platforms and their agents offer low transaction costs, like most things you get what you pay for. As I drive around Walla Walla and see properties marketed by out of area agents or by online platforms based far away, my reaction is one of sadness. Not for my commission, but because those sellers have signed up for something that isn’t likely to produce the quick and lucrative sale they want.

So long as real estate is about immovable land and buildings, local knowledge will matter. In many of these schemes, the “agent” is getting paid a few hundred dollars per showing to open a lockbox for a buyer, or on the listing side to do little more than put your house on a few websites. Incentives matter: do you think the “agent” working for a minimal salary is really going to work harder than the agent depending on a commission who might have thousands of their own dollars tied up in marketing your property? Do you think an “agent” sitting in front of a computer 500 miles away knows as much about what’s happening in the local market as someone with an office on Main Street? Often what looks like a great discount to you as the seller turns out to cost you a lot.

Look, if real estate was actually easy, there wouldn’t be nearly as many brokers. As a full-time broker working across eastern Washington and eastern Oregon, I’m constantly looking for ways to make the process easier and more cost-effective for my clients, but the bottom line is that this is a complicated business. A lot of what goes into the cost is risk-mitigation, where you are paying for local, specialized knowledge to keep your transaction on track. Seller beware, it might turn out that the old-fashioned idea of working with a local broker is the smartest move you could make.