Sometimes our life in Italy seems to consist of a string of coincidences.
Everywhere we went, we always had a look at real estate magazines and in
Belgium we loved going to look at houses for sale even after we already bought
ours.
Eleonora, our real estate agent, and I became best friends and soon after
we moved here she started to ask me to accompany her when she had Dutch
clients.
When, in 2011, she started her own real estate agency, she had less time to
hang out outside of work, so I began to translate her property ads so that she
would have more Dutch clients and we could go “on tour” in Piemonte and Liguria
together.
Nicolas, who always said he didn’t want to “work with his head” anymore,
started to realize after a few years that he needed an intellectual challenge,
especially during low season, when the tranquility became too much for him.
So … 6 years ago we decided to follow the course to become Italian real
estate agents and after a few very boring months of lessons and exams we had
our certificate in hands and we were ready to conquer the Italian real estate
market. When an Italian real estate agent sells a house, he or she asks (in
average) 3% commission from the buyer + 3% commission from the seller. Sounds
pretty sweet, doesn’t it?
But as you all certainly know, in those years Italy was still very much in a financial crisis and foreigners didn’t come in droves to buy their Italian dream house…
We soon realized that being a real estate agent in Italy is a lot like
being a donkey chasing after a juicy carrot.
The problem for us was not only that most foreign househunters turned out
to be dreamers, which meant that all our efforts were for nothing as we only
got paid when a purchase took place. We also learned that such a large
“dangling carrot” in front of our eyes made us focus too much on the monetary
reward instead of enjoying the work.
Another huge drawback of the Italian way of working, where both parties
have to pay you, is that none of the clients (buyer / seller) respects you.
They all seem to think you’re a money grabbing person that they can’t trust, so
they don’t feel any regret when they try to cut you out.
Very soon this started to weigh on us, especially on me, because – as I
said before – I’m not the most stress resistant person and the fact that I felt
that people constantly doubted if I had good intentions turned out to be very
stressful.
So, after a while we decided to take a different approach with Advitalia,
one that suits us a lot better.
Since a few years we only work for the buyer, and not both parties and
instead of asking 3 – 4% commission to each party, we only ask the buyer an
hourly rate (starting from the first contact after the client has agrees to
work with us) + a commission on the difference between the asking price and the
selling price.
For us, our method seems more logical as our clients will have the security
we’re as motivated as they are to get the price as low as possible. And it is
also more motivating to work for clients that are really serious because they
pay us from the beginning, so for them our method is only interesting if they
end up buying a house, otherwise they have thrown their money away for nothing.
Since we started working like this, our job has changed completely, as we now form a team with our clients, with whom we work towards the same goal: making their Italian dream come true … without massive carrots dangling in front of our eyes.
