Sunday, October 30, 2011

Discontinuing Francois on...

I have decided to discontinue my blog about my personal views and thoughts on general topics.  I will be focusing on my new blog apassionforrc.blogspot.com which is all about the Radio Control hobby and how I am going about getting into it as a beginner.  My aim is to build it up into a comprehensive resource for new people who wants to get into the hobby as well as over time to existing people enjoying the hobby.

Thank you if you were a regular reader of this blog.  I sure enjoyed writing it and to see the stats counter ticking up each time I posted something!

Hope to see you at apassionforrc.blogspot.com!

Francois

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Estate Agents... who's agent are they really?

I have the unpleasant experience of selling my house at the moment.  It is not the first time that I am selling my house and have thought about this issue many times.

I sign a mandate.
I pay commission.
I take the responsibility.

The agent receives 7% commission on average and his or her responsibility is to market my property and get me my price.  The only responsibility of the agent is to SELL MY HOUSE.

Nowadays the property is listed so that other agents from other estate agencies can also market the property and thus increasing the exposure.

What totally gets to me is that not one agent that brought potential buyers along, were SELLING my house.  They just let the people wonder through the house all on their own.  We even had a specific agent say to the clients as they walked in the gate: "This is an old house".  How do you expect to sell anything like that? What am I paying commission for?

If you bring along clients and you don't sell the house to them, then I am willing to MAYBE pay you 1% commission for bringing a long the client, but why should you get R 70 000 comm for just bringing around someone?? Even worse, why should I lose R 70 000 just because you brought someone round?

And in most instances the agent then negotiates with me to lower the price so we can just do the sale.

So my question is... who's agent are you really, Mr(s) Estate Agent?  Seems to me the buyer's agent, definitely not mine!

Majority of estate agents suck and they are paid way too much for doing nothing!

Francois

Sunday, October 02, 2011

Long time, no blog...

It is amazing how quickly time goes by.  In the last 2 months I made a change in my work as well as wrote 4 exams, none of which was fun I must add - especially since I did not plan for any changes.

The great thing is that all of this forced me to re look and rethink my life, where I am and what it is I really want to do and achieve.

I realised what a huge difference a good and real friend can make in your life.  I cannot compare my feelings and views from 2 months ago to today.  Many of us think that we only need ourselves.  I was proven wrong.  At the same time I need to say that it is sad that you truly cannot trust or believe most people.

Many things happened the last 8 weeks and people that I truly believed were different from others, turned out to be exactly the same as most others.  People preaching the big picture, suddenly turned a blind eye and only saw their picture.

Good comes from everything.  Lessons learned are invaluable.  It also resulted in me taking a step back and looking at things from a different angle.  The next step is action...