Thanks Neil.

God bless you

Neil

A couple of questions if I may.

This obviously happened a while ago, is the agency a paid up member of the Jenman Organisation now?

If yes, why hasnt he responded to you now that he has his money?

Jenman is happy to go after other agencies when he beliieves they have acted inappropriately whether they are a paid up member or not. If he thinks you have a case then why in this case will he not help you?

Why havnt you used the agency and the salespersons name? Why are you naming Jenman, but nobody else. Not the company involved, the salesperson or the Jenman staff member you spoke with.

There are two sides to every story and we have only heard yours, but from what I can tell you were not the easiest owner to deal with. Some salespeople cannot handle high maintenance vendors and their answer is to put their head in the sand and hope it will all go away. Experience has shown that quite often the best way to deal with that sort of situation is to increase the level of communication which normally heads off most problems.

Please dont get me wrong.. I have no doubt many of the problems were you experienced was caused by the fact that they were lack lustre in their task, but some of the things you were asking they just could not do. Besides.. I have no doubt.. if I was selling through an agent, I too would be a high maintenance vendor.

Agents have a responsibility to tell you about fair offers whether you like them or not or if you will or will not accept them . They also have a responsibility to tell you when your over priced. Thats the law. For a salesperson not to tell you about an offer is a court case waiting to happen. If he did not explain that to you at the time of listing or later, that is what is disappointing. I am sure if your circumstances had changed overnight and you found out that they had turned away a fair market offer that you would now accept you would be the first one to complain.

I suspect that Jenman has done nothing to help you because he just does not rate your complaints as high as you did. He is never going to get on A Current Affair because a vendor is complaining they got an offer they did not want to hear. No money and no exposure for him and he just could not be bothered.

I sympathise with you and it certainly should have been handled better. With that in mind, I really reckon you should move on and forget about.

I could give you the name of the person who quoted this to me and it is a person involved in the real estate business and it is a person associated with Jenman who Jenman had contact me when I raised my concerns about the local “Jenman approved agency” in the first place.

Sure, there are crap agencies out there, but there are also agencies trading under false pretences and in this case Jenman knows, his associate knows and the agency principal knows.

“The real estate rip-off was revealed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in their producer price index released yesterday that showed the annual rise in business costs and charges.
While Australian businesses overall recorded a 4.8 per cent increase in the past year, real estate agents fees and charges increased by 16.57 per cent. ”

The cost of running a real estate agency keeps escalating. The level of customer service & the man hours that have to be dedicated towards marketing a property, plus, add to this all the red tape that agents have to go through now to comply with recent law changes. The workload is getting absurd.

When Jenman mentions “For example, an agent may pay $100 a month to advertise a property as much as they want — and can then charge whatever they want to their customers.” Neil obviously thinks that the updating of the internet is done by waving a magic wand. Just ask the marketing person in any office if they are volunteers or on the pay role. In many offices the uploading of properties onto the internet has become an additional full-time job, so your $100 a month has just blown out to about $3000/month Neil.
(Maybe if the Approved office had someone dedicated to making sure their internet marketing was correct they mightn’t have got such a bad rap – who knows?)

In recent years the real estate agent licensing requirements has also been made easier which has created more competition. With the real threat of mobile/virtual agencies entering the market the competition will only keep increasing.

While agents may be charging a bit more in some cases, a hell of a lot of them are doing less transaction volume than in previous years & in lots of cases their business turnover has decreased significantly.

Nowadays, most agents are offering pretty much the same thing as their competition and it has now become a huge commission shoot out. After speaking with a number of agents within NSW – in the majority of cases the average selling fees have actually reduced this year.

Sure they will make an extra 7 – 10 cents on property management fees but the article neglects to mention that the agents are also having to process, in many cases in excess of 30 applications for one property & an overwhelming volume of tenant enquiry.

PS. If the average percentage increase is only supposed to be 4.8%, I’d love to see how this percentage compares to the price increases of the newspapers & major real estate portals.

You’d know all about that hey ?