Five Ways Buyers Advocates Help Prestige Buyers

Real Estate Articles

If you are a prestige buyer looking for a multi-million dollar home, a buyers advocate can be an essential part of that process. As you search for your next dream home, their expertise and knowledge will benefit you in the following ways:

1. Finding Rare Gems

In the past, a $1 million home signaled prestige, and even now, it's certainly not like living in a cardboard box, but a $2 million house is a true sign that you can afford luxury. Although the number of homes selling at the $2 million dollar mark is growing, these exclusive homes still represent a tiny sector of the real estate market in most areas.

For example, in Melbourne, homes with $2 million or higher price tags represent just 1.5 percent of all the sales in the city. Homes over the $1 million dollar mark, in contrast, represent 9 percent of total sales. With such a small sector of the market devoted to this price range, it's important to have an advocate to help you find these gems. Buyers advocates can also connect you with homes that are for sale privately, off the market.

2. Negotiating A Fair Price

If you are a prestige buyer buying a multi-million dollar home, you are more likely to overpay for your home than buyers who are buying less expensive homes. There are several reasons why this may happen. Unfortunately, with such a low number of houses in the prestige price range, it is often hard find recent sales of comparable houses to create a price gauge.

Additionally, buyers in this category tend to increase their bids in increments of $50,000 or $100,000 rather than the $10,000 increments used by buyers in lower priced categories. A buyers agent who specialises in prestige homes has experience in this arena. That gives them a sense of which prices are appropriate in this price range, and they can also remind you not to get carried away with bidding in excessively large increments.

3. Offering Industry Knowledge

Whether you are an expert negotiator, a skilled investor or a sales professional, you can still benefit from the help of a buyers advocate. You may understand business or sales inside and out, but these professionals have specialised industry knowledge about real estate in particular.

Keep in mind that in most cases, consumers buy a home once every five to seven years. Real estate agents and buyers advocates, in contrast, are involved in the process of buying a home once a week for several years or even decades. That experience fills them with the knowledge you need to successfully find a home.

4. Providing Due Diligence

To protect your interests, your buyer's agent also helps to provide the due diligence you need before buying a home. These professionals help with lining up pest inspections, and they are knowledgeable about most building codes, meaning they can give you an idea of a property's condition even before connecting you with the building inspector. In addition to that, they also help with organising the legal documents associated with a sale.

5. Sharing "Secrets"

Buyers advocates don't just share industry knowledge with their clients. As part of the ethical and legal code governing their industry, real estate professionals have full disclosure requirements to their clients. That means that if your buyers advocate knows that anything is wrong with the home you are buying, they are obligated to notify you about that. Similarly, if they are financially invested in the deal (other than being your advocate) they will also notify you of that fact so that you can make an informed decision.

3 November 2014