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A real estate boss wants other agents to follow his lead after he started sharing official price estimates with buyers.
Laing & Simmons' Danny Doff, who is co-principal of the Bondi Beach and Double Bay offices, said he now brings agency agreements to open homes to reassure buyers.
Mr Doff told REB that none of his vendors have objected during the six months he’s been following this practice.
“I haven’t had one problem yet. I've had vendors who have other agents who have actually got upset with those agents, because they've been told a price and then the agent was quoting a whole lot less,” he said.
“Every vendor that I work for will know exactly what I’m quoting to the purchasers. Why can’t we as agents tell a purchaser what our opinion is on the property based on what has sold in the area?”
Mr Doff said the practice started after a colleague, Caleb Jarvis, joined the industry at the start of the year and was shocked that buyers would never believe his price quotes. His solution was to disclose the agency agreement.
“By showing the agency agreement, it proves what our opinion was,” Mr Doff said.
“It doesn't mean it’s going to go for exactly that price – it could be less, it could be more – but it alleviates that dishonesty that agents have created by telling a vendor one price and telling the purchaser another.”
Mr Doff said that he and Mr Jarvis are the only people in the Bondi Beach and Double Bay offices to use the full-disclosure method, but that he wants other colleagues and agents from other businesses to follow suit.
“It’s a very old-school thing of quoting a price to get people through the door,” he said.
“I’m trying to create more transparency and honesty and a lot of my guys will potentially start to do it as well.”
New South Wales recently announced plans to introduce “long-overdue” underquoting reforms to parliament.
[Related: Agents judged less honest than politicians and lawyers]
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