With a Buyer's Agent, you've got an expert in your corner every step of the way.

If you’ve ever been involved in the selling of a property, you’ll probably know that a sales agent does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. For instance, they will ensure that the property is listed online, the sales boards produced, the auction set up, and they’ll be on hand to show around prospective purchasers.

To use a legal analogy, a real estate agent represents, or acts on behalf of, the vendor.

In contrast, buyers are frequently unrepresented in this process, and will generally be acting on their own behalf when buying a property. To develop the law court analogy a little further, this situation could be compared to someone representing themselves in a court case when the other side has a barrister, solicitor and legal team all advocating for them.

The advantages of working with a Buyer’s Agent

This is why a key benefit of working with a BA is that you are not on your own and having to navigate what can at times be a complex and difficult process alone. Instead, you have an experienced industry professional with local knowledge by your side and advocating on your behalf throughout.

A BA, for instance, will help you at the outset to refine your property search it terms of price, location, amenities, etc., so that you aren’t wasting valuable time searching through hundreds of properties that are never going to be right for you.

Further to this, a BA is likely to have negotiation skills that have been honed with experience over time, and so you can be confident that any negotiations they undertake will be in your best interests.

Equally importantly, a BA will also help facilitate the review of the Contract of Sale and Section 32 by a conveyancer, as well as organising other important steps in the process, such as building and pest inspections. They will also be able to look into any relevant planning issues for you, or liaise with a body corporate on your behalf, if necessary.

A BA provides a range of services to support you

As well as helping you to find a suitable property, undertaking inspections and negotiating on behalf of a purchaser, a BA can also represent you at an auction. This is an especially valuable service to many home buyers (especially anyone who might be entering the property market for the first time), as bidding at an auction can be a daunting experience if you have never done it before. However, your BA will be there representing you, with the aim of making the process as stress-free as possible.

In addition, there are BAs who specialise in particular types of property, or may focus their attention on specific geographical locations, and so as a consequence have extremely thorough and detailed knowledge in these areas. This brings a range of benefits, including access to a wider range of housing stock, as well as a better understanding of the market and house values in certain towns or suburbs.

Ultimately, however, the key advantage for many people to working with a BA is that it can save you money. Their access to off market properties and knowledge of the area, combined with negotiating skills and the ability to utilise relationships with a network of selling agents, all come together to make engaging a BA an effective way of making any property purchase as cost effective as possible.

How do I know if a BA is right for me?

If you have never worked with a BA before, or aren’t sure about how to choose a provider who is right for you, there are a number of questions that you might want to ask before you engage their services.

To start with, you might, as discussed above, want to ascertain whether a BA has any specialisms, either in terms of property types or locations, as both of these could be decisive factors in helping you to make a choice.

You might also want to ask a prospective BA about the number of off market properties they are able to access on behalf of clients, as well as how often off market buying opportunities typically arise.

In addition, you should also ascertain whether a BA is genuinely independent, or only works with particular selling agents. As a purchaser, the former is the best solution, as this will mean both that you are getting access to the widest possible range of potential properties, but also that the advocate is acting entirely in your best interests, with no other considerations influencing them.

Another key question that you might want to ask is regarding the average time it takes between a client engaging their services until a purchase is able to be finalised. Most people want the purchase of a property to happen as smoothly and quickly as possible, so knowing how long the process typically takes could be an important factor influencing your final decision.

You should also enquire with a Buyers Agent as to whether they will be supporting you right through to settlement, as well as whether they can help you find movers and tradies as part of their service.