Hi Peter
I'm sure that if we had been looking for agents then you could have sold all my apartments many times over by now, and I would have been singing your praises like many others on the forum, and I may even have thought that commission was well spent versus my time etc. Maybe on the next project !!!
One reason for joining this thread was because of the views from some of the non-agents on this thread being concerned about their treatment.
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Dont take this too much the wrong way but I think you have to acknowledge the business sense in posting on this web site. It has certainly been very useful to your business on an ongoing basis.
Just a little suspicious of the much touted 'I wanna speak out about the nasty agents and their treatment of clients' syndrome which is, quite frankly, a much used and effective sales technique of its own.
The company that I work for is launching into Egypt this week and have spent over 3 months doing nothing but due diligence which is available to our clients at no cost and which has been acquired from a completely independent lawyer. At the same time, I am sure our clients will want to do their own research and will pitch up on this forum or another at some time in the future. The point is, they will not be paying any extra money to deal with us with any of the developments we are making available and we may well be able to give them better offers than they would have got directly themselves (obviously not from you Dave).
This is our first foray into Egypt but we have been extensively involved in many other locations and, after our initial period in the market, we are usually actually able to negotiate and structure deals which developers would not normally make available when they are selling themselves or over a vast network of agents. Selling themselves they have to put too much time in to be able to offer significant discounts or deals and, if they have a large network, the offers must be flat across the network and they still have a lot of work to do coordinating the efforts of many sellers.
When the right agent is involved in the business we are a power for the good for the client. Nobody disputes car dealers being involved in the marketplace because the astute buyer can always get to talk to a human being, structure a deal because the agent is more amenable to a deal and not have to fight their way through the bureaucracy of a large car manufacturer who cant be bothered to talk to the little guy.
You do your thing Dave, and we will do ours. Hopefully, they are pretty much the same.
Cheers
Rick