Search for a property in Italy: hints for a smooth research!

They have contacted me telling me they have read our guide “Things to know BEFORE looking for a house to buy in Italy” and that they have found it particularly illuminating.

Luise and Paul have been searching for a property in Italy for a long time, and they already came several times here in Tuscany to visit properties that, from time to time, the various agencies proposed.

Too often, they have found discrepancies between reality and what was declared on the announcement seen from home. After about a year of research, they understood it was necessary for them to be assisted by a single contact person. In our first interview, we dwell on an important aspect for which they had not considered the consequences.

What happens when a buyer sends a request to receive more information about a specific property to a real estate agency?

Let me give you an example to better understand:
Let’s suppose that Mickey Mouse (yes.. that of Walt Disney) who lives in Los Angeles, is interested in looking for a house here in Tuscany, in San Vincenzo, where my office is located. During his various searches through several websites, he sees a property managed by a real estate agency that we are going to name AGENCY 1.

Mickey Mouse decides to send, through the contact form of the website, a request to receive more information about that property to AGENCY 1.

What happens now?

First of all, AGENCY 1 receives an automatic e-mail saying that Mickey Mouse has requested more information about that property. This, in the jargon of real estate agencies, is called specific request.

The other thing that happens is that all the real estate agencies in the area where the property is located (which use that same real estate portal do advertise their estates) receive an automatic e-mail saying that Mickey Mouse is looking for a house in their area of expertise. This is called a generic request because the agency that receives it has not been contacted directly by Mickey Mouse.

So far there is nothing wrong, because Mickey is aware that, for his research in that area, he can also be contacted by other agencies in addition to AGENCY 1.
However, there is a problem – one of the limits that we have here in Italy, if compared to other countries, is that the agency that receives a simple call or an email from a potential buyer, already considers him as a customer.
Each agency that receives the new name, rightly contacts Mickey Mouse to submit their offers.

Meanwhile you should know that, in Italy, the real estate agent traditionally receives a fee from both the seller and the buyer.

Cooperation between agencies.

Among real estate agencies we collaborate, of course, and one of the additional activities that each real estate agent carries out is to collaborate with other agencies in the same area to meet more quickly the requests of the potential buyer.

Let me explain what happens when 2 agencies collaborate:

In our example, Mickey Mouse, who is the purchasing customer, is followed by AGENCY 1.

• AGENCY 1 contacts AGENCY 2, because AGENCY 2 has for sale a property potentially suitable to Mickey Mouse’s needs. The 2 agencies, at this point, request in advance the compensation, each only from the respective customer.

Therefore, in case of purchase of the house by Mickey Mouse (the sale of which is managed by AGENCY 2), AGENCY 1 will receive its compensation from Mickey Mouse and AGENCY 2, instead, will receive it from its selling customer.

• Consequently, AGENCY 1, which has received Mickey’s specific request, calls AGENCY 2, which has received Mickey’s generic request, saying they have a customer interested in a property they manage.
• AGENCY 2 will ask AGENCY 1 for a name, to find out if it is a potential buyer already known (that’s how you do it among agents).
• AGENCY 2, having received a generic request with the name of Mickey Mouse, will reply they already know that customer and, therefore, will not consider the possibility of collaborating with AGENCY 1 because, as mentioned above, they will already consider him as their customer.
• At this point, AGENCY 1 tries to contact another agency, AGENCY 3, which has received the generic request of Mickey Mouse with an automatic e-mail, responds they do not consider the possibility of collaborating because the name of the potential buyer is already known.

In all this, Mickey Mouse, who really wants to buy a house and who should, therefore, be “the main actor”, what kind of result will achieve?

He will inevitably be led to search for the property with the classic procedure that leads to waste a lot of time, bringing him to contact many different real estate agents, to whom he will have to explain every time the same things.

Moreover, the agent on duty, with whom he will come into contact, once submitted all the solutions available to Mickey, will get in touch only when he has some new solution. Once exhausted the solutions to propose, he will not call again. The various agencies (AGENCY 1, AGENCY 2, AGENCY 3 …… and many others) will keep in their database the name of Mickey Mouse… without being able to communicate to each other, because they all believe they hold some sort of of exclusivity.

For all these reasons, Luise and Paul realized that until that moment they had acted as Mickey Mouse… and that the time had come to change the way they search for a property to buy in Italy.
Do not end up like Mickey Mouse: rely on a single agent to search for your potential property in Italy!

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