Buying real estate: this little-known tip to never miss out on the home of your dreams

The “off market” does not only concern luxury real estate. For a purchase of 200,000 euros also, you can visit properties before the publication of real estate advertisements. Here’s how.

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Which candidate for home ownership has never felt disappointed when clicking on a real estate ad and reading “this property is no longer available” ? If only it were possible to know which properties are about to be put up for sale in a given search sector, before the advertisements appear on SeLoger and other Bien’ici… Well, it’s possible, and not only for high-end goods. If 60% of sales of luxury goods are made “off market”, that is to say without publication of advertisements, this proportion is still close to the 10% on the rest of the market, according to Mon Chasseur Immo.

First because “their owners do not necessarily want all their neighbors to know that they are selling”explains to Capital Cyrille Keff, general director of this network of real estate hunters. Afterwards, “THE real estate agencies do not publish advertisements for 100% of their housing supply because it is expensive, between 50 and 200 euros per month and per property”argues the leader. Finally, the real estate agent must have been entrusted with a sales mandate and have carried out technical diagnostics of the property in order to publish an advertisement. However, as soon as he estimates the good and while carrying out the diagnostics, he can contact potential buyers registered in his customer file, likely to be interested in this product.

Apartment hunter, a still young profession in France

If you are not included in such a file, you can still access the off market through a property hunter. A profession still not widespread in France, where it has existed for only ten years. Mon Chasseur Immo, which claims to be “the only national network, facing regional competitors”receives no less than 200 off-market properties per week from real estate agencies.

Goods that “we offer a clientele ranging from rental investors, looking for a studio of 60,000 euros in the provincesto buyers looking for an apartment for 6 or 8 million euros in Paris”describes Cyrille Keff. And to specify the composite portrait of the buyers who use its services: “These are people who buy in a region other than where they live, for example due to a professional transfer, but also people who do not have the time to look, and people who need ‘be reassured, like first-time buyers.’

Identify apartment hunters working with renowned brokers

This composite portrait is more or less that of Sandra. In 2019, this young woman decided to buy her first apartment, in Paris. Credit rates were very low at the time, studios and two rooms were selling like hot cakes. “Every time I liked a property, the agency told me that it had been sold less than an hour after the ad was published… Looking for an apartment was a full-time job. But I already had a full-time job!”says Sandra. To visit properties for sale even before the advertisement appears, he comes up with the idea of ​​calling on an apartment hunter, this profession beginning to be popularized via television shows.

“To find it, I did a lot of research on the Internet, I spotted two or three well rated by their customers”she continues. A method approved by Cyrille Keff, who also advises checking that the hunter is working with renowned credit brokersits mission also consisting of supporting its client in setting up their financing. Sandra’s experience does not start off well: “While I wanted to live in the 18th arrondissement, near the metro, the hunter offered me an apartment in the 20th, very far away… The property and the co-ownership were also in a horrible state…” Will follow a 17 square meters better located but presented as “well worth a two-piece…”

Her apartment hunter cost Sandra 10,000 euros

It is still thanks to the hunter that Sandra ends up buying an apartment in the 18th century. “Without him, it would have taken me a lot longer”she admits, while less than three months passed between his first call to the apartment hunter and the signing of the authentic deed of purchase. And again, “things would have gone much faster without the confinements of 2020”admits Sandra. “On average, a real estate hunter divides the search time by 10»assures Cyrille Keff.

There remains the question of the cost of using an apartment hunter. Settled upon signing the authentic deed of purchase, regulated by the Hoguet law governing real estate agents, it represents “2 to 3% of the purchase price”specifies the general director of Mon Chasseur Immo. It was more for Sandra, who paid her hunter 10,000 euros, for an apartment purchased for 200,000 euros. A sum which was added to the agency’s fees and “notary” fees, and which Sandra regrets a little. “At the time, I was happy to have called on an apartment hunter. But, five years later, given certain problems in the co-ownership, I tell myself that he could have accompanied me more to go through the minutes of the general meeting… These 10,000 euros, I would perhaps have better to invest them in work. Or in the acquisition of an additional square meter.”