Licensed New York City real estate broker

Should Agents Be Given Extra Perks to Sell Homes?

10/17/2007, By

In a drive to attract home buyers in today’s sluggish real-estate market, home sellers are offering real-estate agents incentives — including gift cards and cash bonuses — to show homes, says MarketWatch’s Amy Hoak in this recent article.

The hope is that such incentives will get real-estate agents to favor certain homes — critical in markets flooded with unsold properties.

One builder, for example, recently offered a $5,000 American Express gift card to agents in exchange for a buyer who signed a contract on a Long Island City, N.Y., condominium, according to Noah Freedman, a principal with the brokerage firm Bond New York Real Estate, who is quoted in Ms. Hoak’s story.

Ms. Hoak notes that agents are not obligated to disclose perks and that such incentives won’t necessarily speed a sale. “You can’t make someone buy something because you’re going to get an AmEx card,” Mr. Freedman says in the article.

Readers: do you think offering incentives to real-estate agents can speed a sale? Are such incentives necessary? Is offering such perks ethical, and should agents be required to disclose such bonuses to prospective home buyers? — Lauren Baier Kim

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