Real estate agents should disclose transaction fees upfront in the purchase agreement, not later on closing paperwork. Explain what the fee covers: admin work, closing coordination. A typical $695 fee often rolls into buyer closing costs and reads as reasonable when agents speak confidently about the value.
I promise you, this is so far from anything that you've ever been to.
And now.
Julie. Let's start with Julie. All right. We are starting to implement the loyalty agreement. So that's fantastic. Do you give the lender any instructions as far as how the closing costs are divided between closing costs, additional commissions? So as far as the lender, we are giving them really specific. One thing I love about working right with your vendor partners or your lender partners is they are going to know about the transaction fee. And even though they know about it, it seems like we still have to remind them from time to time about that. So the question is about how closing costs are divided between closing costs and. And additional commissions. Yeah, I mean, they're just divided up between the closing costs that we're able to obtain for our buyer and then they also have the line item in our case. Right. Of the $695 transaction fee. Is there any different take you would have on that, Stacy, as far as dividing up closing costs and instructions with lenders on that?
Yeah, actually. So the lender in our state, generally, our buyers use up almost all of their closing costs because sometimes they're not paying for their home inspection outside of closing. So if they ask for 2 or 3% of closing costs from the seller, generally they're getting used up. So then the lender will list under the commission, it will list an additional. It will say. It just says additional commission to the brokerage, I think is how most of ours gets worded on the new HUD document. And then it just gets charged to the buyer on the buyer side. So, but we don't tell the lender how to specifically do that. They know how much and what they can put under closing costs, and then they'll just list it separately. But we get that to them at the time of the purchase agreement, otherwise it can get missed. Or they say, we already disclosed. We can't now add it in. So we put it in, or we let them know up front when we send the offer.
Okay, good, good.
It looks like she had a question, too, a second part of that question about the verbiage. So I'll let you go with that one.
Yeah, absolutely. So the verbiage around second part of Julie's question is around the loyalty agreement and the buyer regarding the additional commission or the transaction fee. Number one thing before verbiage is definitely confidence. Julie is. And you literally have to role play and practice that out with agents, because agents will get nervous. I mean, I've just seen them sweat. And you Hear the tonality and the voice kind of change as they get into talking about that verbiage around a transaction fee. And so you really have to coach to that and lead to that. Number one is confidence. Number two is setting the buyer at ease in the sense that communicating that, hey, your buyer agent's going to do all they can to procure closing costs for the buyer. Doesn't always happen, of course, but that when closing costs, or I should say if closing costs are procured, that that transaction fee rolls right into those closing costs and really making it not a big deal. Again, if the buyer's agent makes it a big deal, then it's going to be a big deal to that buyer. And that's where the confidence and clearly communicating that it rolls into the closing cost is really, really critical. And then the last piece, and this is more of a mindset thing, but it's also part of the verbiage is sharing just the services that your team, your admin, your closing coordinator, whoever's handling that, we all know the work that goes into handling a file from contract to closing, the email, the follow up, the follow through and all that on that level of detail, it's mission critical. And so when you communicate the value of those services 695 or whatever, that cost is minimal. I think from a verbiage standpoint, if you've got confidence, you clearly articulate about the closing costs and you're communicating the appropriate value that you're bringing to that buyer from contract to closing and all the work that's involved, it's a small, small price to pay for the services that are being rendered.
