SELLERS CAN SAVE UP TO 65% ON AGENTS FEES Changingplaces, Australia's fastest growing real estate operation is revolutionising the way people sell their homes whilst re-introducing the quaint old-fashioned concept of ethical behaviour to the industry.

Changingplaces Managing Director, Cameron Fisher, believes the industry must undergo change, simply because traditional agencies, and most newcomers, operate from a flawed basic structure.

This kind of comment is not going to endear Cameron to his peers. Nor is his observation that most agents have received a 40 per cent boost to their incomes within the past two years, without working any harder.

"That's the average percentage increase in the value of homes in Melbourne compared with two years ago. It means that agents working on commission, and that's the vast majority, are earning 40 per cent more today, when their workload has been lessened by aids like the Internet."

Cameron isn't worried about upsetting his peers; he's more concerned with offering his clients value for money through a system which replaces the anomalies of commission-based fees with a fixed fee structure.
"There is little difference in the effort required to sell a $275,000 home compared with a $475,000 home," he explains. "And yet the commission received by the agent is vastly more rewarding."

Part of the reason changingplaces can afford to charge such low fees as well as providing a higher level of service and still remain in business, is the way the company is structured:

"We don't believe in plush, expensive offices with wall-to-wall secretaries. Administration and management are centralised, and the immense savings from these factors are passed onto the client."

The two other areas which separate his business from its competition are service and ethics. Twenty years in the business have left Cameron saddened and disenchanted by the behaviour of many of his peers.

"Practices like providing unrealistically high valuations, simply to obtain a listing, false verbal offers to demonstrate a `true market value,' dummy bids and so on. None of this conduct has any place in an agency that cares about ethics."

In the area of service Cameron makes a simple observation based on his years in the business:

"Most people are needlessly traumatised by the experience of selling their homes," he says. "It's right up there with stressful situations like death and divorce, and this shouldn't be the case.

"We change it around firstly by offering a reasonably priced, and above all honest and ethical, service and secondly by helping with all the hassles which come with selling a home and moving."