Sperry Van Ness Difference

Question: Would you list your home with a residential broker who would not put your home into the Multiple List Service(MLS)?

Answer: Likely not.

Question: Why?

Answer: You want maximum exposure so you could be sure that the best offer could be obtained in a reasonable amount of time. If possible, you would like to see multiple offers with buyers competing for your property.

Question: Is there a MLS in the commercial real estate market?

Answer: No…while there are various listing services, commercial brokers are not compelled to list their properties with a national, regional or local listing service and more often than not, especially in the investment sales market, they choose not to openly market their listings. If they do list their property with such services it typically comes late in the listing period when all of their individual efforts have been exhausted without success.

Question: Why?

Answer: Many commercial firms take a large portion of the listing agents fee. In order to earn more money and / or meet company production quotas, many agents feel that cooperating with outside brokers will hurt their income and make it more difficult to meet company sales quotas.

Question: Who’s interest is being served when an agent does not openly market his or her listing or refuses to cooperate with an outside broker?

Answer: The broker operating under this model ends up serving their own interest first. In fact, on average, only 20% of all investment sales are co-brokered (i.e. involve a cooperating, outside broker).

Question: How is Sperry Van Ness Different?

Answer: Our outside cooperation rate is over 70% and we are the only national firm that has a policy of proactive, outside broker cooperation from day one of the listing! Don’t be fooled by those who say they cooperate. Ask them if they proactively cooperate from day one of the listing and do they split their fees 50/50 with cooperating brokers. Some who say they cooperate only offer a token fee to the cooperating broker or tell him or her to get their fee from their buyer. This is their definition of cooperation.

Question: I have been told by a broker that he knows all the buyers in the market and he has a database of 100,000 active buyers. Why should I doubt him? He works for a big downtown brokerage firm?

Answer: The Top 5 Brokerage Firms in the Nation have just a 13% market share. That means 87% of the deals are being done by regional and independent brokerage firms. Since no one broker knows all the buyers, and truth be told, has strong relationships with more than a handful of clients, it is a fair assumption to make that if you list your property with another firm that your property will not get maximum exposure and the competition for your property will be artificially limited.

Since joining Sperry Van Ness in 2002, my cooperation rate has been 80% on all my sales and 90% if you just consider sales of my listed properties. I have sold properties by achieving maximum exposure which has led to multiple offers and prices that were clearly top of the market. Case in point a class B office building in Wilsonville, Oregon I sold at $262/SF or an Industrial Property in Wilsonville at nearly $95/SF or a retail property in McMinnville, Oregon at a 6.6 cap rate. All were the result of extensive marketing that generated multiple offers. All involved cooperating brokers earning a 50/50 split of the fee. If an agent is telling you he cooperates, ask him or her at what point in the listing term do they cooperate, what is their cooperation rate and are they offering the cooperating broker a full 50% of the commission?