On my previous post, I talked about the landlords and tenants. A prospective tenant posed a 
question to me which I think I will answer here (Thankfully, I had nothing else to write about tonight, Sellsius threw me off by their post - trust me, it was heading down hill for me tonight).
Question: Why does the tenant and not the landlord pay the real estate fee with apartment rentals? To be honest with you, I know that in many States the landlord pays. But, we are not in many States, we are in the State of NY. So the best reason as to why the tenant pays the fee is because the rental market is tough, it is fast paced (as in - what is here today WILL BE gone tomorrow) (literally) and it is competitive. With this combination Real Estate offices that excel in doing rentals have the "goods". Which means that a typical real estate office that does alot of rentals have alot of landlords that trust them to rent their apartments for them. For free. The landlords become our clients. So we provide the landlords a service - they wont have to advertise, we will do it. They wont have to run the credit, we do it. They wont have to even show the apartment we will do it for them. When we offer to do these services for the landlords we can gain inventory. What a typical tenant will see when they look in the paper or online is a 16th of inventory that we have.
When a tenant presents themselves to us that they are in need of renting an apartment most likely they have searched and scrubed the papers, the internet and even local deli's to find out that what they are looking for they can't find. So the tenant employs the agent to help them search. But what the agent has done that a tenant has not, is they have built up reputations and clientele that a possible tenant is missing.
To to recap even though an agent only spent 5 minutes with you showing an apartment - they have spent months and years building up their clientele. That is what you are paying for -
Now let me just touch on this for a second. The landlords are our clients and the tenants are our customers. So what we offer our customers is use of our inventory, the use of our negotiating skills and the ability to find you an apartment. Our job is to connect the landlords with the right tenants and visa versa. I will be honest with you - not all tenants are picture perfect. Most have requests that are hard to fulfill - such as they might need a pet friendly apartment, an apartments with a washer and dyer, an apartment that include use of yard, driveway or garage, an apartment on a particular floor, in a building or in a private home - and so on. So when someone is looking for these particulars and can't find it, they are hiring us.
A good rental agent will preview their landlords apartments so when a tenant calls looking for a particular size, price and area that agent can cut to the chase and show the tenant exactly what they are looking for. A good rental agent will also know how to reason with a landlord when an tenant has not so good credit as well as possibly negotiate with the landlord to lower the rent a few dollars for then tenant. There will always be things that needs to be negotiated with on either side and that is part of the service that agents provide to both parties. We want both parties to be happy and to re use us or refer us out.
As for the fees that agents are charging - that can vary. It is usually set up by the broker as to what is expected but just to give you a hint - nothing is set in stone. I am sure that you can understand why most agents wont like to or will refuse to negotiate their fees. I hope that I somewhat answered your question -
Grand villa in Bucharest centre can buy them for 1,900,000 euros. Several real estates and properties in Romania to selling. Kontakt-me: EU-Capital@web.de
Posted by: adviser | January 24, 2007 at 01:05 PM