Frequently Asked Questions

Buyers’ agents work to find and secure properties for their clients. This means we spend our time searching everywhere for properties and talking with selling agents to get the inside track on anything that may be coming to market in the future.

There are several reasons to use a buyers’ agent. Most come down to the simple fact that if you sell your home, you get a professional to do it for you to look after your financial interests. When you buy a home, you have more to look out for than financial interests so shouldn’t you have a professional help you?

The main reasons people use buyers’ agents are:

• Time. Have you got the time to spend every Saturday (and potentially Wednesday and Thursday too) looking at homes? How about if most of the ones you see won’t suit you? How many weeks will you do this for?

• Negotiation. Are you confident with negotiating on the biggest or one of the biggest purchases you will make in your life?

• Off-market properties. We won’t pretend that you can’t get access to off-market properties because you absolutely can. It just takes time, effort and relationships with agents. However, a good buyers’ agent has those existing relationships with selling agents. We are continually nurturing them so that we are the first to know when that perfect property comes up for you.

• Auctions. Yes, anyone can win an auction provided you have the budget to do it, but what about strategy for it? What about potentially finding the way to spend less on the auction floor or not getting emotionally carried away into a massive overpayment?

Most buyers’ agents charge you a percentage of the purchase price (generally 1% to 2%). Many will also offer a fixed fee that relates to the amount you are likely to spend (ensuring it ends up being the same as 1% to 2%).

At Ralph & Ralph, we are the only buyers’ agents we know of in Australia that incentivise our fees so as to achieve your ideal outcome. We don’t charge a percentage and our fee is not linked to what you spend.

Here’s the kicker. A buyers’ agent is a real estate agent. At least, they are a licensed real estate agent (or should be). The difference is we work for the buyer, whilst a selling agent works for the seller (vendor).

Buyers’ agents work for the buyer. At Ralph & Ralph, we pride ourselves on getting the best possible deal on the right property for our clients. We won’t push you into the imperfect home and we will make sure that when we find the perfect home, we get it at the best possible price for you.

Payment for buyers’ agents is different from that of a selling agent. We will charge you a retainer fee (this is something that allows the agent to see you are serious, as when a seller hands over their keys or pays for marketing). We will also be paid directly by our client on successful purchase of a property directly from you the buyer.

There is a variety of off-market properties, but basically they are properties that are not listed for sale publicly. Effectively this includes a range of off-market types:

• Pre-Market. These are properties agents send to their database for buyers and buyers’ agents to inspect prior to a proper campaign launch. Sometimes agents will send these to a large number of buyers’ agents and potential buyers and sometimes to the buyers they consider to be most serious.

• Testing the market. These are the properties that are only being shown privately to test what someone may pay for the property. They may or may not even sell but are available for the best connected buyers or buyers’ agents.

• Genuine off-market. These are the properties being sold without being listed and without any open homes. These are only shown to the most serious buyers and buyers’ agents.

Every buyers’ agent will be able to help find off-market properties. Agents will send them to us, call us or tell us about such properties because they know we have clients who are ready to buy. At Ralph & Ralph, we pride ourselves on not just showing you these but genuinely valuing them to avoid the trap of overpaying on the off-market for something that would’ve been significantly cheaper on market.

Yes. A buyers’ agent in NSW must be a licensed real estate agent. You can check licences here.

Buyers’ agents are registered and licensed real estate agents. They must comply with the same regulations as real estate agents but are not regulated separately right now.

It is important to remember that you are about to make one of the biggest purchases you will make in your life. Getting this choice right is important so you should do your homework. At Ralph & Ralph, we suggest that you ensure you connect with your buyers’ agent and feel that they fully understand you, your life, your reasons for buying and what you are looking for. You should be confident they have your best interests at heart and will buy you the home that is perfect for you (not just the one that gets them paid and fits the basic criteria you give them).

Finding property isn’t a science. There is no trick to it. Buyers’ agents will look on agency websites, listing sites (i.e. Domain and RealEstate.com.au) and in all the publicly available places. We will also ask agents what they have coming to market, receive emails from every agent we have met (having been added to their database) and receive calls from the agents we are closest with. Sometimes, if a client is very interested in a particular property, we will approach owners directly to see if they might be interested in selling.

As professional buyers, buyers’ agents can bid at auctions on your behalf. As a cheeky aside, most of us actually enjoy doing it. It is important to remember that anyone can bid (and win) at an auction (and anyone can bid on your behalf) as long as you provide the authority to bid form. You can also give the auctioneer legal approval to sign the contract on your behalf. No one else can sign for you without a Power of Attorney.

Whilst you will win an auction most of the time simply by having the highest budget, there are strategies in trying to keep the price down. Everything at an auction is emotional and tense deliberately. Agents and auctioneers know exactly how to push you and your competition further so a professional on your side can make a significant difference. At Ralph & Ralph, we will also evaluate the property to give you a guide as to where we see value and what we expect it to sell for in advance.

There are many ways to assess the value of a property and good buyers’ agents will use a number of different ways. Most will make a judgement against comparable properties that have recently sold. A selling agent does this, too, and will often show you a list of similar, recently sold properties. At Ralph & Ralph, this is one of many ways in which we will assess value. This allows us to state a value with confidence and an expected sale price whilst also checking to see if there are any concerning outliers such as all measures indicating a much higher price than what an agent has listed it as. This will allow us to further investigate and help you determine if a particular property is worth the risk or not.

You pay a non-refundable retainer to engage a buyers’ agent. If you cancel your search, that is all you pay.

Absolutely not. Everyone can benefit from using a good buyers’ agent. Whether it is to save you money in a negotiation, to find you the property you couldn’t find yourself or simply to take most of the pain and stress out of buying a home, having a professional on your side can be the best decision you ever make.

Not all buyers’ agents are created equal. Some will simply pay whatever an agent asks and others will negotiate bullishly. At Ralph & Ralph, we use several measures to provide you with our valuation estimate of the property we will negotiate for you on your behalf. Once we have this, we will determine what we believe is the most you should pay, consult with you and negotiate to save you as much as we possibly can.

This is ultimately a personal decision based on several factors. Buying a home will take a significant commitment of time and energy from you, but these commitments will be much less onerous with a buyers’ agent. At Ralph & Ralph, we believe we will save you time and money on your purchase while offering extremely fair and competitive fees.

At Ralph & Ralph, it is the small details that matter. We work for many buyers, making us the agent of those buyers, so that is where the apostrophe belongs.

P.S. Maybe this isn’t frequently asked, but you have to have some fun sometimes.