Overall happy with the outcome, though some questionable practices along the way.
Overall I am happy with the service provided, our property sold in 28 days which is good in the current market.
Some areas I’m not so happy about and future vendors should be aware of.
I wasn’t shown the market fees until after I had signed the sale agreement. Whether this was hidden or not I’m unsure? Normally I would have pulled the pin within the 24 hour cooling off period but decided to stick with Luke as he was recommended by a friend. The marketing cost are ridiculous compared to the other 4 agents I had come through for appraisals, on average 2.5 x more with very little difference if any in the marketing package.
We went to auction, the strategy was to make the auction guide low to get more people through the doors, I’m not a fan of this practice. Sure, it’s gets more people through the doors but a lot of those people aren’t going to buy the house as it’s not in their price range. I think this leads to unrealistic feedback on price of the property which can be used later on to try to get vendors to drop their reserve. I personally think this is also done to get more people through the doors to grow the agents database. Bigger database of buyers = more potential to sell future listings faster in their price bracket.
In the lead up to, and during the auction there’s a bit of pressure put on around reserve price and what happens if it doesn’t reach that price. This was a little pushy, I felt like Luke was trying to get the reserve down to get the sale across faster.