The real estate agent has done it

These are tough times in the housing market. The supply of homes for sale has dropped to an all-time low. Hordes of people are searching for nothing on Funda every day and often don’t even get a viewing. Most seekers then miss the boat, because others are willing to offer far above asking price. Almost 80% of all sold homes in the last quarter are above asking price. And we all know the horror stories from the newspapers about the terraced house for which a million was paid or about people who had to watch that someone else offered a ton more.
In short, for the buyers there is nothing to worry about at the moment, it has been going on for a while and it will – I fear – continue for some time. The housing market will remain a ‘seller’s market’ for the time being. The seller has the power, whether you like it or not. We have almost forgotten the times when it was the other way around – during the financial crisis. It was no fun then either, because sellers often had to accept offers that they felt were far below the real value of their home. Or they kept their house on the market for years against their better judgement. Buyers had the upper hand at the time.

In either situation, the real estate agent may be at fault. Not the butler, but the realtor did it. In a “buyers’ market,” he or she sometimes gets blamed by clients: first a too-low price recommendation, then insufficient efforts. Now – in this seller’s market – there are complaints about opaque bidding systems, unfair competition or nepotism. Vereniging Eigen Huis has even opened a hotline. Together with the NVM, I believe that it is primarily the market situation that leads to disappointment. An estate agent acts in the service of his client, the seller, and that seller ultimately determines to whom the house is sold. Incidentally, there are still buyers who do not sell to the highest bidder, but to the nice family with whom they have a ‘good feeling’. Sympathetic, but just as difficult to accept for those who miss out.

A certain cowboy behavior is possible in every market, but protection of the real estate profession will certainly help to eliminate abuses. Now anyone can call themselves a broker and flout the codes and rules of the NVM. The NVM has already developed a transparent online bidding system, but you cannot force clients to use it. And abuse is also possible with online bidding. The NVM is now studying 91 of the 600 complaints submitted in which the name of an NVM Estate Agent was mentioned. This is how we do our best to keep the professional honor high, because we want to have done it as brokers, but in a positive sense.