Ep 57. Why Agents keep prices confidential
In this episode, Michelle dives into the often frustrating question, “Why don’t agents disclose the selling price of a property?”
Here’s what you’ll learn from today’s episode:
Who can request to keep a property’s sale price confidential
Reasons why the property’s sale price is not disclosed
The importance of privacy in the real estate market
What tactics some agents use to manage market expectations
How you can uncover non-disclosed sales prices yourself
Speakers in today’s episode:
Michelle May - Michelle May Buyers Agents
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VIEW TRANSCRIPT
Hi and welcome to another episode of the Buy Your Side podcast, the property podcast to help you make smarter property buying decisions. My name is Michelle May and I am the principal of Michelle May Buyers Agency here in Sydney. My team and I buy properties for both owner occupiers and investors around the 10K radius of the CBD. So, that would include the Sutherland Shire, Lower North Shore, Eastern Suburbs, and the Inner West of course, as well as the Georges River area. So if you're in the market to purchase a property, have a look on my website, both Buy Your Side, but also Michelle May Buyers Agents and you might find some more helpful blogs there that can help you on your property journey, and don't be afraid to reach out.
But today I want to answer the very frustrating question, Why don't the agents disclose the selling price of a property? Now, there are a number of reasons for that. But by and large, the biggest reason why an agent is not disclosing the sales price of a property is because the vendor has requested it. Now, as you can imagine, if you're in the market everyone has an opinion. The butcher, the baker, your colleagues, your family members, and everyone's got an opinion. So when it comes to selling your property, you might not want people to know how much you sold it for, because “Daddy big bucks” all of a sudden in the office, or get lots of opinions about how someone else would have made more, and oh my gosh what are you gonna do now. Very big reason why a vendor chooses not to disclose the sales price of their property and effectively it's no one's business. But did you know that buyers can actually request for it not to be disclosed also?
Now, by and large over the years when clients ask me to ask this of the agents, most agents are happy to comply. However, in recent years I have come across a few bully agents who are refusing to keep the price non-disclosed when it is the buyer requesting this, because they're using it as a marketing campaign. The more listings they have with prices and they can say it's a street record or building record or whatever the case may be, even though there was never a sale in that street for the last 20 years, so of course it's going to be a record but that's by the by. They sometimes have come back to me and say well A, it was a public auction, so it's out there in a domain anyway or or whatever excuse they can find and basically have said no. My advice to you would be, if you are a buyer and you're keen to preserve your privacy, make it a part of your contract review. So say to your solicitor or your conveyancer, hey, as part of the contract changes, can you put in the request for the sales price not to be disclosed if I am the successful purchaser?
Because then you're going directly to the vendor and saying, I want to preserve my privacy. And in most cases, vendors would agree because they probably haven't thought of it. And so, if a buyer brings it to their attention that it can actually keep it private, they're probably most likely happy to help you out with that. So that's the main thing that the vendor or the buyer doesn't want it disclosed for privacy. Now, going back to that point that it’s an auction, yes of course, the auction results will be out in the wider domain, but that should not be an excuse for them to not keep the price non-disclosed on their own websites, for example, or on the main portals. So just ignore that reason as to why you can't keep the price non-disclosed.
Now the other big reason why an agent doesn't want to disclose the price is because they haven't really done that well on the sales results and they don't want to toot their horn about the result that they got because that then will put a price into other buyers expectations for other properties bringing down the comparable sales. So that might be a big reason as to why an agent won't disclose the sale price. They could also be trying to manage the expectations of potential vendors for next listings as well. So bear in mind that agents work months ahead of time. So if they've been speaking to someone who potentially may be putting their property on the market in say the next six months or so, and they've had a poor result in their street, they might decide not to disclose the price. So there could be a number of different reasons as to why the price is not disclosed. But that doesn't really help you, does it?
So, here are a number of ways to find out a non-disclosed sales price. So it's got to be a little bit crafty, but here it goes. You can wait for it to be registered at the Land Titles office. Now that's going to take a couple of months sometimes, so if you have the time to wait, then that's the free way to get the information. But you can also pay for it. So there's online databases which we have subscriptions to as Buyers Agents, namely Price Finder or RP Data / Core Logic that will allow you to do one-off reports. I think the reports may be about $40 or something like that. But bear in mind that on those databases, the prices may still be undisclosed as well. So first check with your broker because they will most likely have a subscription to one or the other and they might be able to find that information out for you and so that you don't waste your money on something they've got for free and then find out that it's non-disclosed there as well. So it's not always the same. So start with those, but the other thing that I want you to do is to set up a separate email address and make sure that you are on every agent's database in the areas that you're interested to buy in because what happens is that a lot of agents go to different agents auctions and they're like spying on who the buyers are first of all but they're also looking to see what the results are and how busy the auction is and just testing the market that kind of way as well. So on the side note that they will know who you are as a buyer and they will know what you will be bidding up to. Don't think that as a buyer you're anonymous. They keep track of you very carefully and I know that some agents, actually if not all, have actual spreadsheets as to you know “John and Mary were at 45 Fulham Street in Newtown the other day and this is what they paid up to”. So if they're then introducing a property to you they will know exactly how much money you have. So bear in mind that is one of the reasons why they go to auctions, but they also go to auctions for the results and the number of registrations and things like that.
But what they also do is they then send an email out either on the weekend or Monday, Tuesday with all the results. And even if an auction is not disclosed, they will have the actual price, the actual sales result because they were there. So make sure that you register for every Tom, Dick and Harry that is currently a real estate agent because you can actually farm that information by doing a bit of work yourself. So I hope that helps. I know it's very much a bane of my existence too, not knowing what something went for and what something sold for. But so this is a way to work around it, and the other thing is that quite often when we call the agents, they will actually discuss as long as we don't tell anybody else, which is what we just needed for research purposes, so we won’t. Just nothing stopping you from picking up the phone and actually calling the agent as well and saying, Hey, I'm just doing some research. I'm interested in buying a property, but I want to know what this particular one sold for. They may not give you the exact number, they may give you a range, but hey, it's better than nothing if you can't find it anywhere else.
I hope this was helpful. If you have any more questions, do reach out I'd love to hear from you and help you solve your property problem. My email is hello@buyyourside.com.au
Get in touch, follow me, like me, and I look forward to talking to you next time.