Do you need a buying agent in the Netherlands? What an aankoopmakelaar costs and what you can do yourself

I am Jiri, an estate agent in Maastricht. I sell houses, and on the other side of the table there is regularly a buying agent, an aankoopmakelaar, who earns a few thousand euros for being there. Sometimes he is worth every euro. Often I watch a buyer pay for work he could have done himself, and for the one thing newcomers hire him for most, access to homes before Funda, he delivers less than the advertisements promise. Here is how the bill is put together and what you can take out of it yourself.

What a buying agent is, and what the selling agent is not

The Netherlands has two kinds of agent in one sale. The selling agent, the verkoopmakelaar, works for the seller: he sets the asking price with the seller, runs the viewings and must present every bid to his client. He is not your adviser, however friendly he is, and nothing he says about what you should bid is advice to you. The buying agent works for you and is paid by you. Many expats assume you need one to view or to bid. You do not: you may request a viewing yourself, and a selling agent who waves you away is failing his own client.

How buying agents charge

There are three usual forms. A fixed fee for the whole job, from the search to the keys. A percentage of the purchase price, the courtage, which rises with the price of the home. Or a combination: a lower fixed fee plus a percentage, or a fixed fee plus a bonus when the agent buys under the asking price. Some offices also charge a start-up fee that you pay even if you end up buying nothing, and a small number work by the hour.

What the amount is differs per office, per region and per year, and I will not quote figures here that are wrong next year. For an average home it soon comes to several thousand euros. Ask whether the fee includes VAT, which is often left out. Ask what happens if you do not buy, and whether start-up costs or hours are then charged anyway. And ask what is not included, because the structural survey, the valuation and the notary are almost never in it. All of that is in the opdracht tot dienstverlening, the service agreement, which you read before you sign.

On percentage against fixed fee: a fixed fee is predictable, and the agent has no interest in you paying more. A percentage looks attractive for a cheaper home, but gives the agent a slight interest in a higher price.

What you get for it

A complete buying job has five parts. The search: the agent sets alerts, calls colleagues and sends you homes. The viewings: he comes along or goes alone, and looks with a different eye at damp, foundations and the zoning plan. The valuation: what this home is really worth, apart from the asking price. The negotiation: the bid, the conditions, the counter-bid, the escape clauses. And the paperwork: the purchase agreement, easements, the owners' association.

There is real value in that, above all in the last three. An agent who has negotiated a hundred times stays calm when you no longer are. The question is only whether you have to buy the whole job for it.

What you can do yourself

The search you can do yourself, and honestly better. You know what you like; the agent has to guess. Viewing you can do yourself too: request it, go, and take a handy friend or a building surveyor if you doubt the condition. For an expat the viewing is also the place where the language gap is smallest: you are looking at a house, not negotiating.

Bidding you can do yourself. The selling agent works for the seller and must present every bid that comes in, whether it comes from a buying agent or from you in a polite email. And you need not fear walking into a trap on the legal side: as a private buyer you are bound only once a written purchase agreement has been signed by both parties, and after that you still have three days to withdraw. A verbal yes binds nobody.

What you buy separately

The parts you really know nothing about you buy separately, and that is almost always cheaper than the full job. A structural survey by an independent firm tells you more about the house than any agent, because the surveyor lies in the crawl space while the agent stands in the living room. A valuation you need for your mortgage anyway, and it gives you a value that does not come from the seller. Your mortgage adviser works out what you can carry and which conditions you need in your bid. And a notary or a lawyer can read or draw up the purchase agreement for you, so the papers are checked by someone trained for it.

Add those four up and put them next to the full job. Usually you have money left, and you had a specialist on every part instead of one generalist.

The partial job

Many agents now offer a partial job, and for many expats it is the sensible middle. You search yourself, you view yourself, and you hire the agent only for the part you dread most. Usually that is the negotiation, which in a second language and under a deadline is where most newcomers lose their nerve; sometimes it is the valuation just before your bid, sometimes only checking the purchase agreement. That comes with a fixed fee that is a fraction of the full job.

Ask for it explicitly, because not every office puts it on its website. An agent who offers it is usually also the one who tells you honestly when you do not need him.

When a buying agent is the right choice

I am an agent, so I am not going to claim the profession is superfluous. If you are buying from abroad and cannot view, someone who knows the neighbourhoods and the building years is worth his fee. If you have no time for viewings on weekday afternoons, you buy time with an agent. If you do not dare to negotiate in Dutch, or bid too much out of nerves just to be done, a calm negotiator sometimes earns his fee back in one conversation. And if the home is unusual, a monument, a split townhouse with a tiny owners' association, a house on wooden piles, an agent who has seen it before saves you from an expensive surprise.

What you should not expect from a buying agent is a discount you cannot get yourself. There is no agents' price for houses. What he can have is that he hears earlier that something is coming up, through colleagues who call him. That head start is real, but smaller than the advertisements promise, and part of it you build yourself by registering with selling agents, as described in how to buy an off-market house in the Netherlands.

The part you do better than an agent

There is one part of the work where an agent is structurally worse than you: reaching the owner of a house that is not for sale. Agents have done this for their clients for years, with a phone call, a card through the door or a letter on office paper. I have done it myself, and I know what the owner sees: an agent, someone who trades and has a client. That letter goes on the same pile as the letters from the quick-buy companies.

Your letter looks different. Under it is the name of a person who wants to live there, a reason that is only true of this house, and the line that you are not an investor and not an agent. An agent cannot write that, however good he is. An owner who is wavering about moving keeps that letter and reaches for it a year later when the conversation at home finally starts. The words for it are in the letter to a Dutch homeowner, in English and in Dutch. Because I saw too often that such a letter could not be found a year later, I built DoorLetter: every letter carries a code with which the owner can reply to you anonymously, and the first letter is free.

That is my real answer to what a buying agent costs: not only the fee, but also the idea that without him you cannot get in before Funda. The search and the letter you do yourself, the survey and the paperwork you buy separately, and the negotiation you hire if you dread it. What remains is a bill you understand, and a home you did not have to outbid forty others for. Everything else about buying here is in buying a house in the Netherlands as an expat.