Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Real Estate Agents Getting The Shaft?

By Adam Moore

Real Estate Agent - How the Commission is Divided You could have dealt with lots of estate agents but did you wonder how your real estate agent gets paid? You surely know of that all of the talk about commission, percentages, costs, closing costs for example. Are broken down at closing. what are his actual earnings? The reality is that you are not the one who is paying your agent a commission. It's the approved broker pays your agent as he is the person that can get paid a commission.

It is fascinating to grasp the the bloke who toiled so hard to trade or find your place isn't getting as much as you think. Ever questioned how the money makes it to your representative? Here are some techniques :

Whether or not it is buying or selling the agent brings a client to the table, and a deal is signed between the brokerage house and the client.

It may not always be an exact split but it is often close to half that goes to the broker who represents the vendor and the purchaser. The commission is then divided up between the homes, and after the brokers decide how much to pass on to the agent who really did the all leg work. Various factors are considered while finalizing the amount. The total experience he has in this field or in that market, the time the agent has spent with the company and the level of his productivity decide the amount he gets.

For instance an inexperienced representative may only get 30 percent of the cut where as a vet who brings in heaps of business, could get half or perhaps more of the proceeds.

There's another strategy too. Here the agent can get the whole commission provided he pays charges each month to the brokerage house. You can consider this a a costs or a rent for using the office and using the name of the organization to back his name.

Some representatives find this deal awfully advantageous because regardless of how much they make at the end of the month the amount they have to pay remains fixed. For such brand spanking new agents, the standard split is more preferable as they may not be able enough to make that fixed payment every month.

Also there are some factors that gobble the ultimate profit manufactured by the brokerage house and the representative. In case the brokerage house is a franchise, after every commission there's a charge fee that must be paid.

And then a certain percentage that comes out of the commission which is often paid by the vendor at closing. This is can be negotiable depending on the sort of market. Another point open to debate is the way the commission can be divided. So, as you can see, it isn't just the six per cent but a load more things that count. Your agent gets the cash only after everyone else gets the money. - 23309

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Basic Strategies For First Time Investors

By Piper Marchon

How you buy stocks has changed an awful lot in the last decade. You used to have to have a broker and call him or her up to make a trade. Most everything was done over the phone or in person and that included opening the account and discussing your investment needs with the broker. If you were new to investing, having to do those things could have been quite intimidating.

Todays investor never has to have any contact with a real person if they dont want to. The computer and Internet has allowed the stock market game to change drastically and people can do everything themselves by just pushing a few buttons. Some may argue that buying and selling stock has become too easy because it allows people to have a gambling mentality. Day trading was an offshoot of this as people learned how to buy and sell back stocks within minutes, something they would have never done in years past with the old system.

If you are a beginner investor and want to get involved in buying stock, where can you go to get more information? Of course the Internet has an abundance of it but your best bet might be to go to the library and check out a book on the stock market. There are many good stock market investment books that have been written that can be used as a guide to get started. You should be able to find some of these solid investment guides in most libraries.

Once you have studied some stock market basics for a while, it could be a good time to get started buying a stock. You can read and learn all you want but nothing is a substitute for the real thing. On the job learning is the best teacher and that goes for the stock market too.

However, now is probably a tough time psychologically to start buying stocks beginners because the market has had such a bad run. When the market was going up every day, buying a stock for the first time was easy because you expected it to go up more. Any beginner had the feeling that whatever they bought would be a winner. Right now though, the atmosphere and feeling is probably just the opposite of that. Although it is good to buy stocks when they are low, it is hard to buy something that you know might not be worth as much tomorrow as it is today. Stocks have been so relentless in going down over the last year that a beginner might want to get in but be very scared. - 23309

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