Mine negotiated the price down another 5% (5%!) from what we would have put in as a first bid had we done it without an agent. (so if list price was 100, we would have been OK with paying 95, we would have started bidding with 90; with our agent, we closed at 85).
We did structure his fee in a way that he would get more commission if he got a better price for us. We ended up paying him 2x or 3x what he makes on a normal sale, and yet even if we had paid him double from what we did, we still would have made thousands using his services.
(This might seem to be in contrast with my other post in this thread about agents being financially illiterate, but the proposition of 'more money!' was so simple in this case, that it did seem to help. Anything more complex (opportunity cost, time value of money, ...) went over his head.)
We did structure his fee in a way that he would get more commission if he got a better price for us. We ended up paying him 2x or 3x what he makes on a normal sale, and yet even if we had paid him double from what we did, we still would have made thousands using his services.
(This might seem to be in contrast with my other post in this thread about agents being financially illiterate, but the proposition of 'more money!' was so simple in this case, that it did seem to help. Anything more complex (opportunity cost, time value of money, ...) went over his head.)