In this episode of the Brisbane Property Podcast, Melinda and Scott Jennison break down one of the most misunderstood aspects of property buying in Brisbane: understanding who actually represents you during a real estate transaction.
Many buyers still believe that the friendly selling agent at an open home has their best interests at heart but that’s far from the reality. This episode unpacks the clear differences between sales agents and independent buyer’s agents, revealing how their motivations, responsibilities, and legal obligations diverge.
Learn about the common tactics used in the industry that can mislead or pressure buyers, and why independent advice is so critical in Brisbane’s competitive property market.
Whether you’re a first-time buyer, seasoned investor, or simply curious about the role of a buyer’s agent, this episode will help you navigate the process with more clarity and confidence.
Tune in to understand the difference between help that’s offered and help that’s actually on your side.
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Transcript
Melinda: [00:00:00] On this week’s Brisbane Property Podcast, we’ll talk about sales agents and buyer’s agents.
Scott: [00:00:04] We’re going to dive into who represents who and some key differences in what you can expect when dealing with both types of agents. We hope you enjoy this episode.
Announcer: [00:00:14] Welcome to the Brisbane Property Podcast with your hosts, Melinda and Scott Jennison.
Scott: [00:00:18] Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Brisbane Property Podcast with Scott and Melinda Jennison.
Melinda: [00:00:23] Welcome back, everybody. We are excited to be bringing you another podcast episode today. We’re really going to be unpacking who is really working for you when you’re engaging an agent or engaging with an agent in the purchase or sale of a real estate transaction here in Brisbane. And we’re going to give some real-life examples of where you might be a little bit confused around where those allegiances lie. Is that the right word? Allegiances?
Scott: [00:00:49] Yep. Yes. It’s an interesting one, and the buyer’s agency, buyer’s advocate space has been around for quite some time. Very popular, obviously, in America earlier on, and then through Australia, oh, look, probably 15-odd years.
Melinda: [00:01:07] Brisbane. Definitely more than 20 years, some of the more experienced advocates have been around in Australia.
Scott: [00:01:13] It’s interesting because we still get questions sometimes from people wanting to know, you know, what we’re selling, for example. And we say, “We don’t sell, we’re actually buyer’s agents, we buy property.” We’ve still got some people that are a little bit confused how a buyer’s agent works compared to a sales agent, which obviously most people know how a sales agent works.
Melinda: [00:01:34] Let’s just unpack the facts, Scott. Let’s start with who represents who. And I think one of the key topics here is that it’s important for any buyer to understand, regardless of how engaged you are with a selling agent, they work for the seller. A selling agent has a primary responsibility to sell the property for the highest possible price and with the best possible terms for the vendor. That is the seller. That is who they get paid by. That is who they represent. It doesn’t really matter how much you’re engaged with the selling agent, you know, all of the information that they’re sharing with you. Obviously, a lot of that is to help you make an informed decision, but ultimately, they work for the seller to get the seller’s best price. And you must keep that in the back of your mind regardless of what conversations you are entering into with a selling agent.
Scott: [00:02:30] You’ll generally find with sales agents, they’ll have their patches as well. They’ll have certain areas. You might sometimes they might go out of area, so there might be a friend or a relative or somebody has put them on to or referred them to a seller. But generally, they’ve got their own patches and their own areas. You’ll probably find they’ll do letterbox drops, they’ll do door knocking, and they’ll do prospecting to try and help people or vendors to sell their property. Once they’ve engaged them to sell their property, obviously they help them with the staging or preparing the property, marketing, going to realestate.com, those sort of platforms, and obviously promoting the the property as best they can to to get obviously the best price for for the vendor.
Melinda: [00:03:14] The primary goal is to attract buyers to the listing. And, you know, there’s there’s a number of ways that they will do that. They’ll obviously use some of the major real estate platforms, sometimes their own website, they may use social media, they may do letterbox drops. There’s so many ways that a selling agent will attract buyers, to draw attention to the property that they have to sell. A lot of those properties might enable buyers to preview them off-market or pre-market, or ultimately they’ll go to market. Once you actually attract the buyers to the property, then you’ll get a very different experience depending on the selling agent when you turn up to inspect. A lot of selling agents will be very engaging and be very helpful, and they will try to do as much as possible to make your experience as a buyer as pleasant as possible. And they will appear very helpful in assisting you and guiding you through the process, especially if you are an interested buyer. That is, you’re interested in the home. Usually, you’ll get a lot more engagement from a selling agent when you are an interested party. Sometimes, on the in the other extreme, you might get a quite a disengaged selling agent. They don’t really engage with you at all as a buyer. And that experience can feel quite different for you if you are a buyer in a property with a selling agent like that. Depending on the type of selling agent, their experience, you know, the way they work their market, you might get varying degrees of interaction. But ultimately, regardless of how they interact, it’s so important to always consider the fact that they are there representing the seller, engaged by the seller, and therefore doing everything that they can to get the best price for the seller. I’ll even go to say, you know, sometimes I overhear conversations at open homes. I’ve actually overheard conversations in auction campaigns at open homes where buyers are genuinely interested in understanding, well, how much is this property worth? How much is this property likely to sell for? What are the seller’s expectations? And you get some really interesting responses to those questions. I’ve heard selling agents for auction campaigns very clearly say, “The property is listed without a price, we cannot give price guides for an auction campaign,” which is correct information, by the way. That is the case here in Queensland. As crazy as that might seem to buyers, selling agents can’t give price guides. But usually what they will provide is a list of recent sales in the area that can enable you or help you come to a decision about where you might see value. But interestingly, quite often, because we know the market so well, that list of comparative sales can be strategically put together in that some of the sales that represent higher values are included, but some of the sales that have occurred that represent lower values might be deliberately excluded because the seller’s agent’s intention is to obviously encourage buyers to see value at a higher level because they’re wanting to attract the best price for their seller.
Scott: [00:06:19] We’re not doing this podcast to to put sales agents down or put buyer’s agents up or anything like that. We know a lot of really, really good sales agents, and there are some fantastic sales agents that do a really, really good job. One of those things that Melinda just touched on is getting back or communication with a sales agent. As you just mentioned then, you could go to an open home, you could be interested in the property, you might ring up next week and the agent will say, “Oh, look, it’s already sold,” because you didn’t, if you didn’t get in contact or you didn’t show a lot of interest in the property, they could just sell it. At the end of the day, if the seller or the vendor takes that offer that the sales agent presents to them, they have to do what the vendor actually instructs them. They’re working for that vendor, and if the vendor says, “Look, I’ll accept that offer, go for it, take it,” there might be no conditions on it, and they might just accept that offer on that. They might, that’s where you’ve got to understand who’s working for who and how they’re working, and don’t forget a sales agent will probably have multiple buyers looking at a property. For them to go back to every single buyer all the time, it’s a lot more work for them. And if a property comes along and there’s a good offer on it, they’ll sell it. The other thing I’ll touch on as well with auctions, and this one is always an interesting one, is a lot of people will engage a sales agent to be on the phone for them at an auction. And they’re again, they’re working for the vendor. You have a choice, you can do that. That’s okay, there’s no problem with you saying, “Yeah, look, if you want to be on the phone and you want to help me out doing some bidding,” at the end of the day, they will be still trying to work for the vendor to get the highest price for you. A buyer’s agent on the other side of it would obviously be working for you to get the best price for you and the best opportunity for you they can, as opposed, and they’ll still work with the sales agent, but obviously they’re working for you then, not for the vendor.
Melinda: [00:08:16] It’s interesting. And now that we’ve gone to the alternative type of agent in in the market that exists, that’s the buyer’s agent. Let’s explore that role a little bit more. And a lot of people who listen to this podcast, obviously would be more familiar with the role of a buyer’s agent compared to others that may be less familiar with the role that a buyer’s agent holds. But basically, a buyer’s agent advocates for the best interest of the buyer. That might be everything from finding the right property that’s aligned with the brief, that is an investment or a home or a commercial property, whatever the brief is that you’re there to find. Our job is to go out and actually actively search listings, actively engage with selling agents, actively engage with any properties that might become available for sale to find the right home. We perform an enormous amount of due diligence on those particular properties as well to ensure that we’re identifying all known risks to help a buyer make an informed decision. And importantly, help a buyer understand value based on many different metrics, some of which will be based on the most recent comparable sales. Where there’s a lack of comparable sales, we can use other potential evaluation methods to come to a determination of where the value might sit in a market. And ultimately, when it comes down to placing an offer or negotiating or bidding at auction, our job is always to get the best possible price, the lowest possible price, which is the complete opposite to what a selling agent’s job is. I’ll just give one example. We quite often see this, I know I hear it a lot in conversations that we’re having with agents, where they’ll ring up and say, “I’ve got a great opportunity, it’s off-market, it’s a it’s a perfect investment property.” And, you know, I will ask the question, you know, “Help me understand the address.” I’ll do some due diligence. And if we don’t think it’s a perfect investment property, we’ll actually call the agent back and say, “We’ve done an investigation, but it doesn’t align with what our clients are looking for for an investment for these reasons.” Because our job is to ensure that it is a perfect investment property. We do that due diligence. We don’t just make statements. We have to back it up with data, analytics, facts, and information. And that is the difference. A selling agent will be able to, you know, create and showcase and highlight all of the best features of the property. We will be able to do that, but also highlight all of the risks, all of the concerns and all of the the potential maintenance concerns associated with a property.
Scott: [00:10:52] I think one other thing on the the buyer’s agent side of it as well is there’s different levels, okay? Everyone has to be aware, consumer to be aware, there’s different levels of service on different buyer’s agents, okay? And you can, you can pay for what again, you have a choice, you can do what you like. But there’s, you should be, you should have a buyer’s agent doing all of that due diligence for you, doing your comparative market analysis, assessing the property, checking out all the, if it’s a body corporate side of thing, checking out all those types of things, your building and pest, organizing it, reviewing it. They should be literally doing every single thing and unpacking everything, every little wart that’s on that property, you should be able to see it, and you should be able to see the pros, the cons, and understand everything about the property because it’s it’s a big investment in buying into property. When you’re working with a buyer’s agent, you need to make sure that you’re getting that full range of service because it’s your money and you’re investing a lot, a lot of money in whether it’s a home or an investment property.
Melinda: [00:11:57] Let’s break it down in some simple facts, like some quick facts in terms of who does what. We’ll look at the role of a buyer’s agent and a selling agent. If I’m a buyer’s agent, I’m searching for properties, whether they’re off-market or on-market, that’s my role. What would your role be as a sales agent?
Scott: [00:12:12] Market’s listed properties. Prospecting and then listing properties.
Melinda: [00:12:17] Absolutely. As a buyer’s agent, I assess the true value of a property through market analysis. What’s your job?
Scott: [00:12:23] I will get the expectations for the vendor, and I’ll promote their expectations to try and achieve that.
Melinda: [00:12:30] Perfect. As a buyer’s agent, I will conduct thorough due diligence on every property.
Scott: [00:12:34] And I’ll highlight all the positives.
Melinda: [00:12:36] Won’t you ever! I will also negotiate the best or the lowest possible price when I have the capacity to do so, when there’s an absence of competition. As a sales agent, Scott, what would you do?
Scott: [00:12:49] I’ll aim for the highest price because I’ve got the expectations of the vendor, and I want to achieve that so that I’m hitting the highest price. And if I can, I want to set a suburb record as a as a seller. And highlight it. And highlight it and put it on socials.
Melinda: [00:13:03] And of course, as a buyer’s agent, I have an exclusive representation engaging with or I’m engaged by the buyer.
Scott: [00:13:11] And as a sales agent, I’ll represent the seller.
Melinda: [00:13:15] That’s just obviously breaks down the various roles because we quite often see that sometimes consumers or buyers will say, “Oh, you know, this agent’s been so helpful. They’ve they’ve really been able to provide me with all of the information that’s helped me come to an informed decision on X, Y, and Z.” And at that point, we can just highlight a couple of things that we’ve seen in due diligence that might actually make them stop and think, “Hang on, I didn’t know that,” or “I didn’t know that.” And then we can unpack all of the information that hasn’t actually been shared with them because that is our job. And right now, without seller disclosure, it’s coming, 1st of August, it is coming, but right now we don’t have seller disclosure requirements here in Queensland, certainly not in Brisbane. The responsibility is for the buyer to find out everything about the property themselves. I will also say there are some selling agencies, some of the, some brands across Brisbane right now that are promoting in-house buyer’s agents. We’re starting to see buyer’s agents not independently operated, but operated under a brand. And I think it’s really important for a consumer to understand that a true independent buyer’s agent will actually show a buyer opportunities that may be available across all segments of the market. So important if you’re aligning with buyer’s agents that may be affiliated with a brand that they also will provide you with opportunities outside of the listings that that brand bring in themselves. That’s a critical piece of information that buyers should understand if they are engaging a buyer’s agent because independent buyer’s agents have access to the entire market, any properties, whether they’re listed for by that agency or by another agency, it doesn’t matter who brings the listing, we have the opportunity to buy. Keep that in mind if you are investigating buyer’s agents and you come across buyer’s agents that might be affiliated with a brand associated with real estate agencies in a typical sense.
Scott: [00:15:17] Speaking of investigating, and you just made me think of one of the thing which I, which I will bring up. As a buyer’s agent, we do not go and cold call buyers or or people, or sellers, or people, or buyers when people go and attend open homes. There’s a there’s a privacy side of things. And when you go, if for a for a buyer, for example, if you go to an open home, you have to sign in, you give your personal details, you get an email address, you get your name, your phone number. And then the next week after, all of a sudden you’re getting a phone call from a buyer’s agent saying, “Oh, you attended this property and…” Okay, that is illegal. Absolutely illegal. For them to, your, to get your information is completely illegal and it shouldn’t happen. We’ve seen this on, I think it was an ABC a while ago, Four Corners, there was a show episode on that as well where they talked about it and showed this sort of information and this, this happening in the industry which should be stopped. And it’s not allowed to happen at all. You can get referred by a sales agent, so as a buyer’s agent, they might say, “Hey, look, if you, if you need help and you want a referral…” You can do an introduction. You can do an introduction, and then you’ve got permission to share your information. But for someone to share your information to an open listing, to a to a buyer’s agent business and then go and call call people is completely illegal. If it happens to you, I would probably just suggest you say, “No, I’m not interested, thanks very much.”
Melinda: [00:16:50] And potentially report it to the Office of Fair Trading because it is a breach of the Privacy Act, and those that are engaging in illegal activities such as this can, you know, lose their license if complaints are made. We absolutely need to abide by the Privacy Act. Under no circumstances should a buyer’s agent be given or be provided with an open home list. That is people that have registered to go and inspect an open home that a sales agent’s putting on. That selling agent is not allowed to share that private information with a third party that is a buyer’s agency. It’s happening in Brisbane. If it’s happening to you, report it. It’s not okay, it’s illegal, and it needs to be stopped.
Scott: [00:17:33] A few confusing things that happen out there. A couple of scenarios. You might go to an open home, you’re interested in the property, and the sales agent could say that they’re happy to help to put together an offer.
Melinda: [00:17:48] It’s okay for a selling agent to help a buyer with the paperwork, but remember, they’re not negotiating for you. Sharing budget with them, sharing your pre-approval information with them can work to your disadvantage, not to your advantage. We saw a scenario like this just on a recent auction where we turned up and we noted there was actually only one registered bidder. And the agency actually shared with us that they actually turned up on the day from interstate. It was the first time they’d viewed the property, and they registered to bid. Now, we overheard the agent coaching them through the process before the auction opened, saying that, “We’ll help you, we’ll help you understand the process,” which is great because it gives that buyer confidence. But remember that coaching is also for the benefit of the seller in order to ensure that the buyer meets the seller’s reserve. And therefore the agent gets the highest possible price. Beware when this is happening. There’s many helpful agents that are doing, genuinely trying to assist. There’s going to become a point sometimes where the assistance pushes you to a level that is over market in terms of price. And it’s important therefore that you understand the market value before you’re actually being coached by a selling agent on price.
Scott: [00:19:11] And I, after that auction, I did think they probably weren’t very organized. Watching the auction, I don’t think they were quite prepared or anything. They looked a bit befuddled. But anyway, they bought it and they’ve got their new home. Looking at property, asking for value, things like that, “Is there good value?” Obviously, if I was a sales agent, I’d say, “Yeah, look, this is great value. It’s a great neighborhood. There’s parks down the road, there’s a coffee shop, fantastic area. Yeah, look, I think this is great value, you know, buying it at this sort of price.” Obviously, as a buyer’s agent, you’ll do that independent analysis on it.
Melinda: [00:19:45] That’s where a buyer’s agent does add value. You’re not only talking up the pros, but you’re also highlighting the cons. You’re really giving the buyer an understanding of all facets related to the opportunity. If there are concerns, you’re highlighting those concerns, you’re helping the buyer to make an informed decision based on all of the facts, whether they’re positive or negative. It’s a combination of all of those things that helps a buyer to determine whether it’s going to be the right property to proceed with or not. Yes, selling agents can definitely give opinions, but buyer’s agents have to provide that independent analysis and they have to back it with facts because a seller’s relying on that. And when you’re being paid to provide that professional advice, there’s obviously a legal responsibility that you have as a buyer’s agent as well. You won’t get the same with a selling agent that says things in passing. It’s often, you know, something that’s written that’s misleading. Obviously, that’s not okay if it’s in a listing that you’ve relied upon, but something in passing, it’s going to be very difficult to prove that you’ve relied upon that to enter into a contract if it has been misleading. Know who’s representing who and when it’s advice and when it’s a statement in passing.
Scott: [00:20:58] I think the other one is sometimes the emotion that gets in there. When you look at a property and you’re quite interested, sometimes people will pick up on that. Time frames on it. A sales agent could say, “You’re going to have to get an offer in really quick because this is going to sell.” They’ll put that urgency in there so that you do have to make a bit more of a rushed decision. You probably don’t have your time to do all your homework on it. And they’ll put a time frame on it, say, “Look, I’ve got another offer, you need to make an offer really quick. This is going to sell, otherwise you’re going to miss out on it.”
Melinda: [00:21:28] There’s a lot of time pressure that’s put on, especially in today’s market. There’s a lot of FOMO that agents can create quite easily because when they know that there’s a high volume of buyers that turn up to an open home, they can use that as leverage. For example, we’ve seen in the past instances where a property might be filtered in the back end of real estate portals at a lower price than we know the value sits. Let’s say the property might be worth 1.2 to 1.3 mil. And when it is listed between 750 and 1, $1 million on real estate portals, of course you’re going to attract a huge volume of buyers that are going to turn up to that open home to inspect, thinking that because they’ve filtered a maximum budget, you know, of 1 mil, they’ve got a chance of buying this property. But the reality is, those that know the market know it will never sell under $1 million. All of a sudden, 60, 70, 80 groups turn up to that open home, and the genuine buyers that are there can see the level of competition. And the agent can use that as leverage towards creating FOMO, or that fear of missing out, and create urgency by closing offers very quickly. And we’ve seen this time and time again. Is it ethical? Not really. Is it acceptable? Not really. Is it done? Unfortunately, yes, a lot. And that is where independent guidance can help you. One, if you are shopping with that budget of $1 million, we know there’s no point in even investigating that opportunity further. But two, if you have the capacity to buy, we also know that because of the way it has been listed, there’s obviously going to be a lot of buyers that are working with a lower budget that might not know the actual value of a property. These are some of the things that we’ve seen happen often in the industry here in Brisbane, and it’s one of the things that we’re able to coach our buyers through to ensure they’re looking at opportunities that align with the budget that they’ve got to spend, and they’re not influenced by some of the trickery, I guess, that is played within the industry.
Scott: [00:23:36] Again, we’re not picking on sales agents, but we’re just, we’re just sort of saying some of the experience and some of the things that we have experienced or do experience. Again, as a sales agent, they will want to show the vendor that they’re getting multiple people through. If they have an open home and they get 50 groups through, that looks really, really good. They’ve got a lot of people through. Some agents might have a great database. “You know, 50 groups through, I’ve got 21 offers.” Wow, that’s incredible. Half of those are probably way, way down. If that where they’ve filtered things is way under where it should be, half of those offers are probably a waste of time anyway. There might be a handful that might be more competitive in that, in that sort of range and prepared to stretch a little bit more. But you know, you’ve got to obviously understand that there’s different things to obviously agents need to work hard and show their vendors that they’re working hard for them as well.
Melinda: [00:24:28] I hope some of the stories that we’re sharing about what we’ve seen, what we’ve experienced, what our clients have actually been through, what we observe here in Brisbane, help you understand the difference between a selling agent working for the seller and creating the opportunity to get the best price for the seller versus the role of a buyer’s agent, which is more independent and advisory based to ensure that the buyer doesn’t get fooled into believing that they can afford something that they can’t or doesn’t believe that they’re they’re getting coaching and guidance on value from someone that’s actually not really interested in getting them the best price, but more so getting the seller the best price because ultimately, there’s a lot of very good agents out there. They do a lot of fantastic buyer work. And you know, that comes from years and years of practice and experience. And you know, we certainly know the agents that work hard for their vendor to get the best price, and a lot of those will work very, very hard with buyers. And good agents know that every buyer they deal with is a potential future seller, so they’ll give those buyers the best possible experience. But we’ve also experienced some agents that don’t actually have that long-term vision. And you know, we wait every day for agents to call us back as professional buyer’s agents. We’ll leave messages around opportunities that are listed, opportunities that are currently available for sale, and we never get a phone call back. Imagine that. We have qualified buyers, and we do not get phone calls back from some listing agents across Brisbane. We have to chase, we have to chase to get the information for our clients. Your job is to advocate for the buyer. If you’re a buyer and you’re ringing a selling agent and they’re not ringing you back, you’ve probably forgotten that you’ve left all of those messages. We have to chase to get the information for our clients. Obviously, if a selling agent has, you know, a lot of interest in a property, they don’t need to ring buyers back because they think the buyers will just turn up, you know, to the open home. But I can guarantee you a good selling agent will always call a buyer back if a message is left. And a good selling agent will usually always follow up every buyer after they visited the property to seek feedback to share with the seller. And of course, you know, we know and we work regularly with a lot of very high-quality selling agents in the area across Brisbane. And you know, we congratulate them on on the work that they do because it is outstanding in many instances. Hopefully, this podcast has really helped you to understand who represents who in the buying and selling process across Brisbane.
Scott: [00:27:02] It goes right around in the other circle as well. There’s good buyer’s agents and there’s some that are probably not quite as good. We’ve talked about that in past episodes. Yes. In every industry, you look at your qualifications, you look at your experience, your ratings, Google ratings, all those types of things. Everyone’s got a choice. You have a choice to do what you want to do, whether you want to work with a sales agent directly or if you want to work with a buyer’s agent, if you want to do it all yourself. But again, it’s just helping people understand the choices out there and how things should be. It’s been a really good episode. Hopefully, it’s given you a few little tips. And hopefully some tips for any sales agents that are listening to us. Hello, everyone. And we’ll see all the sales agents at opens and auctions as well. As usual, I’ll let Melinda wrap things up. It’s been great talking. We will talk again next week. Thanks very much for listening, and bye for now.
Melinda: [00:27:53] Yes, thanks again for joining us once again on the Brisbane Property Podcast. As always, we hope you have enjoyed this episode. Please share with friends and family. We would love for you to leave us a review, and we would also love for you to hit that subscribe button on YouTube or on your favorite podcast player wherever you’re listening in and tuning in to this episode. Until next week, we look forward to speaking with you again then. Bye for now.