Reduced realtor commission when selling a house

[Steve R.]

Just want to get opinion in regards to realtor commission when selling a property. As you all know, Austin RE market is red hot now. I have been doing most of the groundwork on working out what the fair market value of my property would be in this current market. I have a seller realtor who accepts 1/ 1.5% as commission for listing the property. 

so when listing the property can I mention that I will pay buyer realtor commission of max 1.5% ? Is that going to hamper my chances of selling the property. In the current market I see that there is enough demand for my property to get the buyers at the appropriate price point. So should this matter?

i plan to cut down the total realtor (buyer + seller) commission to be around 3%.

please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,

Steve

[Austin Stowell]

Agree with Max - if you wan't to skimp use a service like listing spark and make sure you get a great photographer and offer a buyer's agent a higher commission. For what it's worth - managing multiples is an art. I have seen some great listing agents coach offers from buyer's agents to much higher rates. I had a property we did in S Austin where the ARV on the houses was 500K. We pre-marketed and ended up normalizing a 550K list price and ended up receiving 568,000 and the buyer paid my closing costs. As an agent and investor that flips houses - I offer a buyer's agent 3% every time and I believe it nets me more in the end.

Remember too - the buyer has about 20+ exits from a contract if their agent knows what they are doing (option, EM, termination due to seller non compliance with delivery of items like survey/T-47, third party approval, appraisal etc).  If you are skimping on a buyer's agent  - you are incentivizing a buyer's agent to always be looking for a backup option while under contract with you.   I think it increases the likelihood of potential termination and when I am on the seller side- I want certainty after option that it is going to close.