Buyers Agent Fees and What You Actually Get

It is a fixed fee, agreed in writing before we start, and it does not move because the price does.

Most of the industry charges a percentage of what you pay. Think about what that means. The person negotiating on your behalf earns more the more you spend. We have never been able to explain that arrangement to a client with a straight face, so we do not use it.

Our fee has two parts. A retainer of $5,500 including GST when we start, and a success fee agreed with you in writing before the search begins and payable only on unconditional exchange. We quote the success fee once we understand your brief. You'll know both numbers before you engage us, and neither will change afterwards.

If you need something narrower than a full search, we offer smaller engagements, priced separately. Just ask us what yours would cost.

There are two payments. A retainer of $5,500 including GST at the start, which is not refundable, and a success fee that is only ever paid on unconditional exchange.

If you do not buy, the success fee is not payable. Not on a property found, not on an offer accepted, not on a contract signed. Only on unconditional exchange. That is the same for every client and it does not move.

The retainer is different, and we would rather be straight about it here than leave you to find it in the fine print. It is not refunded. It pays for the work that happens whether or not a purchase follows: the pricing research, the inspections, the calls to agents, and the contracts we read and then tell you to walk away from.

What protects you is what happens before you pay anything. We do not take on a brief we are not confident we can deliver. If the budget does not reach the suburbs, or the house you have described is not one this market is producing, we will say so in the first conversation rather than take a fee and hope. That conversation costs you nothing.

And once we start, we do not stop at a date. Many agreements run to a fixed term. Ours runs until your brief is delivered. If your circumstances change and you decide not to continue, the retainer is not refunded, but there is nothing further to pay.

No. Our fee comes from you and from nobody else.

We take no commission, no referral fee and no spotter's fee from selling agents, developers, mortgage brokers, conveyancers or building inspectors. If we recommend someone, it is because we would use them ourselves.

This matters more than it sounds. An agent quietly receiving a fee from the other side has a reason to want the deal done, and you have no way of knowing it. You are entitled to ask any buyers agent this question directly, and to be suspicious of a vague answer.

Several, and none of them are paid to us.

Expect to pay for conveyancing, a building and pest inspection on anything you are serious about, a strata report if it is a unit, and stamp duty. Stamp duty is the large one, and it is set by Revenue NSW, not by anybody in this transaction.

We will give you the whole picture in writing before you engage us. Nobody should find out about a cost when they have to pay it.

Not always, and we will tell you if you don't.

If you know the street you want, you can inspect every Saturday, and you are comfortable negotiating, you may do perfectly well on your own. Plenty of people do, and we would rather say so than take a fee for work you did not need.

Where we earn it is the part the portals do not show you. A large share of the better homes on the Northern Beaches and the North Shore are sold quietly, agent to agent, before they are ever advertised. And the ones that are advertised carry a price guide written by the seller's agent, not by anyone acting for you.

We work out what a property is actually worth from recorded sales and tell you when the guide is wrong.

You can, and some people should.

The difficulty is that an auction is built to move fast and to make stopping feel like losing. Most buyers set a limit over breakfast and are past it by a hundred thousand before they have really thought about it. That is not a failure of nerve. It is what the format is designed to produce.

We bid to a number agreed with you beforehand and we stop at it. We are not the ones who fell in love with the kitchen. If the bidding goes past what the sales evidence supports, we will say so, and we will not keep going because the room has gone quiet and everyone is looking at you.

If you would rather bid yourself, we will do the pricing work, set the strategy with you and stand next to you on the day.

No, and you should be sceptical of anyone who tells you that you are.

Off-market matters, and it is real. About 75% of what we buy was never advertised. But access on its own is worth very little. A quiet listing can be just as overpriced as a public one, and frequently is, precisely because there is no competition to correct the price.

What you are actually paying for is judgement. Knowing which of those quiet listings is worth your Saturday morning, what it is genuinely worth once you have read the recorded sales, and when to walk away from it.

If you want the unvarnished version, we wrote it up in our off-market analysis, including the parts of it that are overstated by the industry.

Often. It is a large part of what you are paying for.

A house can photograph beautifully and still be a poor buy. On the Northern Beaches we see water ingress and work done without approval. On the Upper North Shore, heritage and tree controls that quietly remove the extension you were counting on. On the Lower North Shore, a strata fund with a repair bill coming that nobody has budgeted for.

We would far rather tell you to walk away in week three than watch you find out in year two. Saying no is not us being difficult about it. It is the job.

Yes, and it is included. We do not charge extra for it.

Timing is usually the hardest part of moving. Sell first and you may be renting for six months. Buy first and you may be carrying two loans. We help you decide the order and then manage both ends so they meet.

We do not sell your home ourselves. What we do is shortlist agents with a genuine record in your street, read their proposals properly rather than taking the headline, and negotiate their commission and marketing spend on your behalf. That is the part most people settle on a handshake and a neighbour's recommendation.

Most of the value is in what happens after you find the house.

Anyone can send you listings. The work that decides whether you buy well is the rest of it: pricing the property against recorded sales rather than the guide, reading the contract and the strata report properly, understanding what a building report actually means rather than what its summary says, and then negotiating on evidence.

You get both directors on your purchase, start to finish, rather than a junior working from a checklist. Our backgrounds are set out on the About Us page so you can check them rather than take our word for it, and you can read what clients said afterwards on our client results page.