Navigating the notoriously complex New York City real estate market on one's own is something we would recommend only to our fiercest enemies (and luckily we do not have many of those). For all other buyers, we strongly suggest using a qualified and experienced buyer's agent for a number of reasons:

1. A buyer's agent will help educate you on the market. For most buyers, purchasing an apartment is an event that happens rather infrequently and thus in the long intervals between one's purchases, the market changes considerably. A good buyer's agent is immersed in the market every day and understands its trends and directions. As a result, he or she can provide invaluable information that will be critical to you in making an informed decision concerning any apartment.
2. A buyer's agent will save you time and energy. Quite simply, trying to buy an apartment on your own is a lot of work. Let's say you spend a couple of hours tracking down eight or ten apartments that might be of interest. If you wanted to see each of these apartments and wanted to do this without the assistance of a buyer's agent, you would spend another three or four hours simply coordinating all of the appointments. Next, immediately prior to seeing the apartments, you would have to confirm the appointments, which might take another 45 minutes or an hour in total. Lastly, after you see the apartments, you would be contacted by all of the agents to see how you liked the apartments. At 10 to 20 minutes per conversation (not to mention the inevitable phone tag), this could take another hour or two. In total, you would have invested approximately nine hours to arrange to see the eight or ten apartments, or roughly an hour per apartment. If you plan on seeing 40 apartments, this equates to a week that you could have spent on the beach instead. And this is simply to see the apartments. Once you have found the perfect apartment, the real work begins: negotiating with the listing agent, preparing the board package and dealing with all of the other closing related issues.

Page 1 of 3    |    Continue >>