Chances are good that the person you are calling is not the actual listing agent or office. If you are not calling the “LISTING AGENT” directly there is no commission or very little in it for the other agent ($300) who would be representing you as the selling agent. Real Estate agents get paid through either a home sale or as the “Listing Agent” for a rental. In a home sale the two agents representing each party (buyer/seller) split 50/50 the commission which is typically 5% of the sale price minus any negotiated rebates. As the listing agent on a rental property the agent would get a percentage of the yearly rent as long as the tenant remains in the property as a general rule of thumb but many other types of arrangements are also made.
At Property Force we are connected directly to the Multiple Listing Service which is only accessible if you are a licensed agent or an affiliate to the industry located within the associated MLS or an affiliate MLS in a neighboring community. The MLS is the ONLY site providing direct contact to the actual listing agents. Many sites like Realtor.com, Zillow or agent sites pull their information from the MLS and rebrand it to either an agent paying for that specific zip code or into another agent or company site with their own contact information. In other words if you go to a real estate site you will see all the listings currently active in the MLS branded to which ever site you are looking at. Due to our contractual agreement making you our paying client we are motivated to fulfill our contract making you a satisfied customer who may provide an excellent review.
To provide an example of how competitive the market is for good properties I’ll give you an example of one our most recent open houses for one of our listings. The property was a 3 bedroom in a good neighborhood going for $3,200. We posted the listing on the MLS, Craigslist, Realtor.com, Zillow and our own Website along with 20 of the other top rental sites. Since we only show our properties in an open house format we posted for our first open house to be 3 days after the listing was syndicated out to the entire market. The open house was scheduled for 30 minutes and when our agent showed up 15 minutes prior to the showing there were over 30 folks in line. The next day we received 7 applications from the folks attending the open house and 2 from folks relocating to the area who were willing to rent the property sight unseen. To give yourself you’re best chance at having a great relocation experience you may want to look into a San Francisco Property Management firm to help guide the way.
