Successful seller Sue* paid no commission as part of the Lystr first 50 promotion and only $3850 in marketing fees. She saved more than $25,000 in costs with Lystr. Photo: Lystr.
Early adopters of a new property sales product are pocketing big savings and wondering one thing: where has ‘co-selling’ been all this time?
Online real estate solution Lystr gives sellers all the tools and support they need to sell their home while paying about one third of the standard real estate agent’s commission.
“If you’ve ever questioned the value of an agent’s commission or wondered how much you could save by taking care of certain aspects yourself, this is for you,” Lystr CEO Chris Scullin says.
Lystr is neither a DIY option, nor the traditional all-in-one arrangement where agents take matters completely out of sellers’ hands.
It lands somewhere in between, allowing sellers to cherry-pick the aspects of their property sale they want handled by the pros at a flat rate and providing the option to take on the tasks they can handle themselves – and avoiding big commissions in the process.
“It’s a true disruptor to a practice that’s been the same forever,” Chris says. “We call it co-selling.”
The Lystr concept came to Chris when he was building one of Canberra’s most successful property management-only businesses.
He began to question the value propositions sales agents offered in the selling process.
“There was a lot of talk about industry knowledge and these big databases of potential clients. But I’d think to myself ‘If that were really as valuable as they say, couldn’t they skip the marketing costs and sell off market?’,” he says.
“Agents don’t want you to learn about the process – they need you to need them. But when you hear real estate sales agents are the least trusted professionals in the country, and see the astronomical fees, you start to wonder if there’s an alternative.”
The DIY solutions Chris found tended to leave sellers out on a limb if something went wrong, or potentially lose tens of thousands if they weren’t confident negotiators.
He envisioned a tech-based ecosystem that brought everything together a user needed to sell their property and ran them through the workflow, fully supported by a real estate agent.
“For most people we’re talking about the biggest transaction of their life. Some people might have the confidence to take that on solo, but many don’t,” Chris says.
Lystr CEO Chris Scullin celebrates with Dinah*, the first person to buy a property using Lystr. Photo: Lystr.
From marketing through to settlement, Lystr guides sellers step by step to take on as much or as little of the process as they want, while ensuring no expensive balls are dropped.
Steps are automated where possible and guidance offered for the elements sellers want to take on themselves. Qualified experts – from photographers to building inspectors and conveyancers – are built into the system, ready for hire if you get stuck.
This includes director and licensee Kirsty Bohane, a class one licensed NSW and ACT agent. Her 15 years in real estate sales and property management allowed Lystr to re-imagine old processes and develop more efficient ways of working, while ensuring sellers remained compliant.
“Lystr coordinates it for you, step by simple step,” she says.
“It’s not possible to measure how much hiring an agent truly adds to the result, if they will get a higher price, faster sale or negotiate a better deal. There’s simply been no alternative – until now.
“In a nutshell, the platform removes the middleman to reduce selling costs in the process. It’s an alternative that provides transparency, accountability and security over the traditional method.”
The platform launched in March this year and has already facilitated successful co-sales in Canberra – and major winnings for the sellers.
One Canberra woman sold a home appraised by another Canberra agent at $790,000 via Lystr for $850,000 after it was on the market for three weeks. She saved more than $25,000 in fees in the process.
Chris says the maths is simple. A standard commission in Canberra is about 2.2 per cent including GST and the average property price is about $950,000 – a commission of $20,900.
This does not include marketing, which can cost from $5000 to $8000.
Lystr’s fixed agent fee is $5500 and its fixed marketing fee is $3850 including GST, which includes a signboard, photography, listings on the major property sites and giveaway brochures for open homes.
All in all the cost on Lystr comes in at less than $10,000 versus an average $29,000.
“You’re paying a third of the price, depending on the value of your home,” Chris says.
For more information visit Lystr.
* Names withheld on request.
