Algarve Properties save 3%.5% on the Price

Algarve property owners who are looking to sell their Algarve property, more often than not engage the services of a Real Estate Agent in the Algarve since this seems to be what everyone else is doing and so they go to an Agent and place their property on the market. In Portugal there is little done by Agents in terms of valuation. a lot of Agents just ask the vendors idea on price, and for fear of not getting the listing they will blindly accept the asking price of the owner and offer the property for sale at that price. I am confident that I will not encounter one single agent who can disagree with me, that this is a frequent occurrence in the Algarve. Do not compare the business of Real Estate in the Algarve and the way it works in Portugal with the way you are used to in your own country. At the same time I like to state, that there are also many Algarve Real Estate Agents around who really have the professional expertise to value a home correctly. The single biggest difference in purchasing Algarve property direct from the owner as compared to buying through a Real Estate Agent is that the buyer and the seller are not impeded in their negotiations by the 3% or 5% commission of the Agent which does weigh heavy on both the buyer and the seller. A sale will become possible when buyer and seller both get what they want. If not, no sale. The price a seller is asking is determined at the end of the day by two thing only. What he needs to achieve bottom line or what he wants. That's it. We can talk all day about different scenarios and why the seller want this or that and property prices and so on and so on. The price in the sellers mind and what he is prepared to except as the lowest bid, and what the buyer is prepared to pay are the only important issues. If the vendor does not get his price after he has paid the agent his 3% or 5% commission he will have two choices only apart from withdrawing the property from the market. Either he places a higher price on the property to account for the agents commission, or he is starting thinking of selling his property himself. There are many Algarve Properties around which are not selling because the commission has placed them above the market value. Everybody needs to understand, that without an agent involved, the property can be offered to buyers slightly below market value and the seller will still end up with more cash in his pocket since there is no commission payed to the bank account of the Real Estate Agent. And the buyer gets a better deal anyway. The only thing the buyer wants is to buy a property he likes in the area he likes and all that for the best possible price. Can you blame him for wanting to do that? Considering the we as sellers always believe that our property is worth more on the open market than a buyer does it stands to reason that without the agents 3% or 5% commission taken out of the deal it will be easier to reach a compromise which will result in a sale. Many sales have been lost for both buyer and seller because of the agents commission got in the way of a sale. Every buyer needs to face up to the reality that it is he who really pays the agents commission. Not the seller. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. There is no seller who would be so charitable as to pay the agent 3% or 5% of the value of his home. We are talking serious money here. So it is obvious that a seller will have calculated the amount of commission and he will have increased the price of the property by that amount. The end result being that the property price may already be above real market value and you are buying a property at the very top end of the market price. Let us look at a real life example. A villa is on the market for 450,000 Euros. This means that in the selling price is a commission of 27,500 Euros or 18,753 GBP. This is based on 5% commission plus 21% IVA (VAT) Most foreign owned Real Estate are working on 5%. Are the services of an agent worth that much? Only you can decide that. It is your money. If you are buying through an agent this is what you will be paying. We are an advertising company and not a Real Estate Agent in the Algarve and we do not sell Algarve properties. We do not earn any commission on a sale when owners are selling their property through our different networks of web sites.