Being a first-time seller, Michael was very unsure of how to best sell his home. After interviewing 3 agents, it became clear to Michael that Phil is the right agent for him. Unlike the other agencies, Clark Partners was the only one who assured Michael of a No Sale, No Pay guarantee which made him feel secure, that he had nothing to lose. With Phil’s fantastic ideas and hard work, he made selling a hassle-free process for Michael. In the end, Phil sold the property in just 3 weeks and got $10,000 more than their advertised price. Thank you, Michael, for sharing your story, so that others can learn from your experience.
Below we have included an extended transcript of our interview with Michael.
My name is Michael Scott. I’m an air traffic controller at Brisbane Airport. When we first came up with the idea of selling the property and moving somewhere else, it was a bit daunting. I’d never done it before, and I didn’t know the process at all. I didn’t know what to expect from real estates at all. There’s that reputation that they’re out there just for the commission, and a lot of people I’ve spoken to about their experiences, they put pressure on you to drop the price to get a quick sale so they get paid.
I always wanted three agents to come out. Phil was the first agent that I saw, but I had two other agents come out as well so that I could compare them. The other agents that we didn’t choose, and the reasons I didn’t choose, there are a few reasons. With the other agents, I know one, from memory, was charging $1,800 for the advertising. But then you had to pay extras, where you want it listed on realestate.com, which markets you wanted to advertise to plus extra.
There was a thing Clark Partners put in our contract that said basically if they don’t sell the house at any time, I can bail out without any cost whatsoever, and change estate agents. And I know the other two estate agents that I spoke to didn’t have that in those contracts. To offer a guarantee like that made me feel like these guys want to do the best for me. It’s a big difference compared to the other guys I spoke to.
I’ve never heard of another real estate agent doing two open houses on the same day before. They suggested twice next weekend, “How about we do one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and we can pick up people that are busy on a Saturday morning or busy on a Saturday afternoon?”
When Phil suggested that, I thought, “Oh that’s a fantastic idea, because you can cover people that are busy, you know, for kids’ sports on Saturday morning, they can come in the afternoon.” It was something I’d never thought of. For us, it worked as well. Without that suggestion from Phil, we probably wouldn’t have got the people in that bought our house.
I know we got a good price for our property because we started at $459,000. We started the price there, and to be honest, we were expecting anywhere from $20,000 less. $460,000 was definitely a dream price. If we achieved anywhere near that, we were going to be very happy.
And when we got the first offer, the other thing that really impressed me with these guys was they’d actually crossed out their first offer and added an extra $10,000 to it. We probably would have taken the first offer. So the way I look at it, that extra 10,000 basically paid the fee. So that’s almost like they covered their own fee for us, so very happy.
From the day we signed the contracts with Clark Partners, it took around 3 weeks to sell. It was all done by appointment so it was done when it suited us, which was good. By doing those appointments during the week on top of the open houses, that showed us that they’re working for us and not just waiting for the weekend to come around and bring people through and hope they get interested from an open house. It kind of felt like they were working 24/7 for us, which is exactly what you want when you’re trying to sell your house.
