The secret life of a buying agent: Part 1
Friday, 29 July 2011 3:54 PM
In the first half of our two-part interview, top buying agent Tracy Kellett tells Ele Cooper what it's really like sourcing dream homes for a living and reveals some of her clients' most bizarre requests.
How does being a buying agent differ to being an estate agent?
As a buying agent, you're paid by the buyer, whereas an estate agent is paid by the vendor. For that reason, the whole focus is on the buyer, which means getting the best price, the best terms, and the best properties.
How does the money work?
Buying agents take a fee upfront, then we have a contract for a set period of time which is typically six to nine months although we work a lot faster than that. If the buyer is very focused on what they want, we average about six weeks from taking the client on to making an offer. We're then paid when we exchange.
What sort of people use buying agents?
We work with all sorts of different people – overseas investors, first-time buyers, downsizers; it's not an elite service. There are elite buying agents who will only work with budgets above £2 million, but I'm not one of them: I believe it's such a brilliant and invaluable service that I wanted to open it up to people with £500,000 which, within the south-east and London, is a very average budget.
So how does the process begin?
A lot of people who come to us have already been looking for a year or two and they're absolutely fed up. This is particularly the case at the moment because the good stuff is going very quickly and it's awkward finding the time to get to the best properties before they hit the market. But there's also a lot of unrealistic thinking and we have to bring people back to reality very quickly. Clients will often call us and say, "I want a three-bedroom flat in Chelsea and I've got £700,000. I've been looking for a year and I still haven’t found one." Well there's a reason for that!
We'll often be looking at quite a few different areas to begin with. It could be that Guildford and Maidenhead are both suitable and the client hasn't been to either of them, so we take them to see the areas for an orientation and once we've established where they like, we'll preview every property for them, so they're only seeing things that we think will work.
Once you've found the perfect property for your client, what happens next?
We do all of the negotiation for clients when it's time to make an offer. Believe it or not, there are bidding wars going on even in this market, and that's where we as buying agents have great advantage because we know the game. I haven't lost a property yet, and it's not necessarily because my clients pay more than the others, it's about how you handle the negotiations.
The last property we bought was in Central London and we got nine per cent off the asking price. Our fee was 1.75 per cent so that's a considerable saving to the buyer. Sometimes it's more important to a client to secure the property than to achieve the lowest price: if it's going to be a long-term family home and three other people are after it, it's silly to try and save £5,000 and then lose it.
Once the offer has been accepted, we handle the lawyers, financiers et cetera. The client isn't totally hands-off but they've got a broker in the middle so they don't have the lawyers and estate agents chasing them all the time – we're the go-between. Currently, 29 per cent of property sales fall through, and it's our job to ensure that doesn’t happen.
We'll organise surveyors; if there are issues with the survey we'll organise tradesmen to look into it more deeply; if it needs refurbishing then we recommend tradesmen – we're very much a concierge service right through to the end.
You must work with some pretty mind-blowing budgets.
The highest budget we've been given is £16 million, which still wasn’t quite enough! We do get some funny requests. There was the man who wanted a 17-acre plot with its own water source but there had to be a pavement running all the way from his property into town so that he could push the pushchair to Costa every day.
There was another chap living in a mid-terrace who wanted to buy an industrial unit in Central London because he kept getting into trouble with his neighbours for holding raves in his flat. That was never going to happen so we didn’t take him on.
How many people do you turn away based on the impossibility of their requirements?
Before we take a client on we have to have a damn good idea that we can achieve what they want, because otherwise we're wasting our time and their time. I send about 50 per cent of the people that ring me up away, saying, "The reason you can't find what you're looking for is because it doesn’t exist." People sometimes take umbrage at that but what I say to clients is that we will always be successful if your budget matches your expectations. The problem most people have is that they're trying to buy something they can't afford.
Do you ever show your clients properties you're not sure they'll like?
Part of our job is to push the boundaries: people can be very narrow in what they think they want, so it can be useful when we make alternative suggestions, particularly in terms of areas. Very often I say, "I'm not telling you what we're going to see, because if I tell you you'll say you don't want to see it. Just trust me." And more often than not, they really like it. It's lovely when someone says, "It's perfect and I would never have looked at it if you hadn’t made me."
How do you know whether a property will be right for a client?
I have to get myself into my client's head very quickly – I no longer have any personal taste in property! It's all about seeing things through the client's eyes.
You mentioned that you work with overseas buyers. Do different nationalities have different tastes?
Americans always want a plethora of bathrooms, which is quite a challenge when you're looking for conversion properties in Central London. We were once given a relatively small budget – £500,000 for a two-bedroom flat – and we literally found four flats in the whole of London that also had two bathrooms for that price.
Middle Eastern clients aren't interested in the kitchen because they go out for dinner, and they generally need accommodation and separate entrances for the staff. Also, Arabs do not like lots of floors – they don't do stairs. I'm quite fond of some of my clients and I do laugh at them – there'll be six stairs and they'll say, "Can I put a lift in?" "No you can't!"
Find out Tracy's thoughts on up-and-coming London areas and whether Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer give an accurate portrayal of buying agents in the second instalment of our interview, out this time next week.
Tracy Kellett is the founder of BDI Home Finders. For more information, check out BDIHomeFinders.co.uk or call 0845 603 6110.
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