Most anything that happens in Panama happens very slowly. A car wash takes two hours, a return email takes weeks, and selling your home can take years! But it doesn't have to if you take one piece of simple advise.
For decades the real estate industry has operated as a "wild west" non regulated free for all. If laws have not changed to regulate and organize the system, at least the real estate board has been trying, and with the increased use of the MLS system here in Panama, things are really looking a lot brighter. The problem is that even though many real estate companies have 100% bought into the idea and use the system religiously, many foreign buyers still don't trust giving their listing to one agent working for one company.
If you are a home seller, you may have your home listed with several agents and several real estate marketing companies because someone has told you that it's the way to go. The problem with that is that due to time you can probably only really list with a maximum of 10 companies , and even that would be time consuming for the seller.
Well folks, it's 2018! Not 1985. There's a little thing here in Panama called the internet. Statistically, almost 100% of real estate buyers use it. It allows almost any agent you choose, to list your property in almost every place every other agent is going to list your property. It's a great tool, that may not have been available to near as many Panamanians even 5 years ago. Now, almost every agent you list with is going to go ahead and list in 3 places for sure. Those places are encuentra24.com, compreoalquile.com, and quite often, their own site, if they have one.
That's great right? But why advertise your property 7 times with 7 different agents on the same websites? It definitely confuses the heck out of the buyer. You may remember when you bought your property in Panama. Just how confusing and difficult is was, with listings duplicated all over the place, old listings and sold listings never taken down, and agents not even returning emails and phone calls.
Now, the reason the property is only going to be advertised on these two sites, and a homepage, is that you have listed the property with 2, 3, 7 or whatever number of agents. Whether the consumer in general wants to admit it or not, a real estate marketing professional provides a very valuable service. In order to provide this service, an agent has to accumulate many listings, so that he can afford to buy clothes, gasoline, food, pay for advertising your listings, carting around clients etc. Yes! It's a business, and for any business to remain in business, it must be smart business. And you want a smart agent to sell your property fast and effectively.
It is BAD business for any company to take a listing and invest any significant time or energy marketing that property when there is no guarantee of a return on that investment. As a consumer, and a person that one day will have to retire on what you have spent a lifetime saving, you would never invest your hard earned dollars, or valuable time on an investment that only has a one in 7, or even a 50% chance of paying off. Come on! Anyone can see that these 7 agents just cannot take the risk. All they can afford to do is throw the property on a couple of free, or almost free classifieds sites, and wait for the phone to ring.
Now that they have your listing up on their home page for content, they are going to go ahead and concentrate on selling their exclusive listings. Every client that they get, is going to be shown those exclusives first, and the non-exclusives quickly become an after thought, and only get shown when a client specifically requests a viewing. I think we can all agree, that a lot of people don't know what they want until they see it, and that with no viewings, you probably won't sell.
List with one competent agent who will spend time and resources working to sell your property because he knows for certain it is a good business investment to sell that property as quickly as possible. That agent becomes accountable to you, and knows that as soon as he sells that property, he can pay the month's bills.
A competent agent will have a long list of email addresses for agents that he works with for marketing purposes, will utilize all of the social networking tools made available, will maximize SEO to make it easier for potential clients to find him, and will be operating legally within the system. You see, there really is no need to cause yourself a bunch of additional stress by listing with more than one company. Your agent is easy to find, and is spending time and money to sell. If not, you found the wrong agent, and you can fire him.
Another issue in Panama is that everyone is telling you that there is no MLS system like there was back home. Wrong! www.mlsacobir.com is a selling tool available only to those of you who choose to list exclusively with an ACOBIR licensed real estate company in Panama. All buyers can use this tool of course. This not only allows us as real estate professionals to network with trusted professionals, but gives the seller and buyer a certainty that the transaction will be conducted by professionals, and will limit the number of "Panama-isms" that may occur to hinder the deal from moving smoothly.
The bottom line is that if your property has been sitting on the market for too long, you have either overpriced, or have it listed non-exclusively, and no one is accountable. Who can you blame if you've got 7 agents that cannot sell your property? How do you know whether it is overpriced, or if all 7 agents are just concentrating on their exclusives and leaving your property to flail in the breeze?
If you're serious about selling, list for the right price, and the best agent, and you WILL sell.