- Home buyers are increasingly using buyer’s agents to find suitable properties and avoid costly mistakes.
- Agents like Jo Eddington and Alex Martelli help clients with budgets ranging from $1m to $20m.
- Buyer’s agents are expected to become more popular, offering personalised services and thorough neighbourhood research.
Some home buyers are moving away from the DIY approach of finding their own house and, perhaps inspired by the popular TV shows Selling Sunset in the US or Location, Location, Location in the UK and New Zealand, are now paying buyer agents to do the work for them.
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Buying Queenstown managing director and buyer’s agent Jo Eddington likened her job to what you see on Selling Sunset, telling OneRoof she got paid by overseas clients, often with multi-million-dollar budgets, to check out homes in the district – sometimes from a wobbly paddle board.
Auckland-based agent Alex Martelli, of Martelli Buyers, said that while some of her work involves matching wealthy buyers with luxury homes, a large part of her job is helping ordinary home buyers find the right property in the city.
All of the buyers Martelli works with have “a real fear of making a very expensive mistake and that comes from your $1m buyers right up to your $10m buyers”.
Location, Location, Location host Phil Spencer in Auckland last year. The TV star started life as a buyer’s agent. Photo / Supplied
Alex Martelli looks for homes in Auckland’s inner-city suburbs, including Remuera. Photo / Fiona Goodall
“They are time-poor, they want better quality information and they are scared about buying the wrong property. Actually, they are very worried they are going to buy a lemon.”
Buyer’s agents are a common feature of the real estate industry in most other countries - Location, Location, Location host Phil Spencer is one in the UK – but they have never been popular in New Zealand.
While there are some agents in the bigger agencies who work on behalf of buyers, they usually get paid by the vendor, taking part of the commission from a sale. Most buyer’s agents in the traditional sense have nothing to do with the marketing or selling of a property and are instead paid by the buyer. These agents usually ask for a retainer upfront and get paid a success fee once they find the buyer a home.
Martelli, who recently got engaged to Act leader David Seymour, set up her agency after working as a buyer’s agent for several years in Australia. She said there was a misconception in New Zealand that buyer’s agents only dealt in super-prime real estate.
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About half of the buyers she works with are purchasing their first home and have budgets of around $1m, while other clients might be retirees looking to downsize or professionals with bigger budgets of $6m, $7m or even $10m.
Martelli said she only took on a small number of clients at any one time and turned business down if she thought the buyer was looking for a unicorn.
The process was the same regardless of the budget. Martelli meets with the prospective client to understand the brief before identifying 12 to 15 properties both on and off the market. She will then show the buyer about eight of them and they will almost always find one they like.
Once the client has selected their property, Martelli will then do the due diligence around the property to make sure there are no nasty surprises. As part of her investigations, she often chats with the neighbours or visits nearby pubs to find out how noisy it gets late at night.
Buying Queenstown managing director Jo Eddington: “I have grey hair, not blonde hair and we are not wearing stilettos. Well, I live in Arrowtown so everybody wears cowboy boots.” Photo / Supplied
Eddington found Marshall Cottage on Lake Hayes for a Kiwi living in the UK. Photo / Supplied
“You’re not just exploring the house, you are exploring the whole neighbourhood – what might impact our buyer now and in the years to come that’s within our control,” she told OneRoof.
“It’s such a fun job being a buyer’s agent. You get to meet some amazing people, you get to see beautiful homes and interesting homes and quirky homes.
“You never have to fudge to anything, you are never having to hide anything – your whole purpose is to find out more and get more information for your buyer.”
Eddington is equally enthusiastic about her job. Most of her clients are Australians or expats living in the US, UK, Asia or Europe who have up to $20m to spend and are usually looking for something they can use as a holiday home while they are living overseas but can morph into their permanent residence when they return home for good.
“I get to work with people who genuinely trust me to go and find them their dream house whether it’s an investment or their forever home,” she told OneRoof.
Eddington had been a sales manager at New Zealand Sotheby’s International Realty’s Southern Lakes office when she noticed a huge gap in the market. “You’ve got half a dozen private jets landing every day, you’ve got people with their eyeballs pressed to the glass going, ‘Oh my god I want to live here’. There are lots of real estate agents here, but they represent the needs of the sellers,” she said.
“My whole duty is to the buyer. If you are a selling or listing agent, then your whole duty is to your client, the seller.”
Eddington goes the extra mile for her clients. Photo / Supplied
So far her success rate has been “pretty good”, she said. “Literally, the last three big deals I’ve done were over $6m.”
She recently sold Marshall Cottage to a Kiwi living in the UK. He had specific requirements and all his viewings were done by video calls. Eddington even hopped on her paddleboard during a video call to show what the property looked like from the water.
Another US buyer, with a Kiwi passport, is also hoping to buy a piece of sought-after Queenstown property at auction later this month. Eddington will be bidding on the townhouse while her client is in Alaska.
She likened her job to the Selling Sunset TV show, but “without the bitchiness”.
“We are just not as glamorous. I have grey hair, not blonde hair, and we are not wearing stilettos. Well, I live in Arrowtown so everybody wears cowboy boots.”
A lot of the homes she finds for her clients haven’t even been listed for sale because – like many of her buyers – the vendors value their privacy and don’t want people traipsing through their home. “I get to go to homes that would blow your mind.”
Both Eddington and Martelli believe buyer’s agents will increase in popularity in New Zealand. “I think you will start to see more people pop up around the country once it becomes a bit more mainstream,” Eddington said.
Martelli added: “You could be the average Joe and have your own buyer’s agent. A lot of my friends in the city wouldn’t think twice about having a buyer’s agent – if you went into a court case and the other side had a lawyer, of course you would get your own lawyer.”
Ray White Manukau co-owner Tom Rawson said new agents often started out helping buyers to build up their client base and experience, but there was not enough money in it. “People do it to become trusted, for the person they helped get into a house to use them five years later when they go to sell it or to tell their friends or families to use them.
“It’s pretty hard to walk in and be a listing agent if you’ve never listed a property before, but it’s definitely a lot easier to be a buyer’s agent. And most people should start their career there just to experience what it’s like for a buyer.”
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