Agent or samsar? What the difference means for your commission

Most property in Palestine changes hands through a samsar — an intermediary who knows who is selling, knows who is buying, and brings the two together. It is an old arrangement, it works, and a good samsar is genuinely valuable. Many transactions would not happen without one.

Manzel operates differently, and if you are going to work with us it is worth understanding how — mainly because the difference determines what you pay, when, and to whom.

This is not an argument that one model is honourable and the other is not. It is a description of two different arrangements with different protections.

A samsar typically operates on relationships rather than contracts. There is often no written mandate from the owner, which means several samsars may be working the same property at once, sometimes without knowing about each other.

Commission is usually negotiated per transaction. The amount is a matter of custom and bargaining rather than a published rate, and it is frequently not settled until the deal is close to completion — which is the moment when a buyer has the least leverage and the most invested.

Because the arrangement is informal, there is often no clear answer to some practical questions. Who is responsible if a representation about the property turns out to be wrong? What happens to the fee if the deal collapses at the last stage? If two samsars both claim to have introduced the buyer, who is owed what? These questions are usually resolved by negotiation, and sometimes by dispute.

We hold a written contract with the owner. Before a property appears on this site, the owner has signed a mandate appointing us to represent it. This is why we can tell you that every property here is genuinely available and genuinely for sale by the person entitled to sell it — a verification step that is part of our approval process before anything is published.

Our commission is fixed and published. On a sale it is two percent from the buyer and two percent from the seller. The buyer's two percent is already inside the asking price displayed on the listing. The seller's two percent is deducted from the same sale, under the mandate they signed before the property was published. Neither rate is negotiated per deal, neither is different for a foreign buyer than a local one, and neither changes because you seemed keen.

Rentals run on the same principle. Our fee on a rental is one month's rent, payable by the owner. You pay us nothing: the rent advertised is the rent you pay to the owner, with no fee of ours added to it or taken out of it. It is published here for the same reason the sale rates are, and it is set out again in the fee terms you accept before full details are released.

You are told before you are shown. Before we release full property details, we set out our fee terms and ask you to acknowledge them. That acknowledgment is recorded with a date. You know what you will pay before you have invested time in a property, not after.

One point of contact. You deal with us. There is no situation where a second intermediary appears late in the process with a claim.

Each side's fee is its own. You never pay the seller's share, and the seller never pays yours. What gives double-siding its bad name is not that two fees exist — it is that they are undisclosed, negotiated late, and pressed from both directions at once. Ours are published, fixed, and acknowledged in writing before you see a property's details.

The most common problem we see with informal arrangements is not dishonesty. It is ambiguity — a fee discussed loosely at the start, remembered differently by two parties, and settled under pressure at the end.

A written mandate and a published rate remove that. You may still decide the fee is too high, and that is a legitimate reason to work with someone else. But you will decide it at the beginning, with the number in front of you, rather than at the point where you have already committed.

The price on a listing already contains our buyer-side two percent. Nothing is added to it afterwards. The figure you see is the figure you pay: no separate invoice from us at signature, no second conversation about our fee late in the deal, no line item that appears at the end.

The seller's two percent comes out of the same sale — the owner receives the sale figure less their own share. So across one transaction we are paid four percent in total, two from each side, and each half is visible to the party bearing it before anyone commits to anything.

This is worth asking whoever you deal with, in any transaction: what does the displayed price include, and what will be added later? The answer is not always this clear.

Commission is payable only on completion of a purchase arising from an introduction we made. If no purchase completes, nothing is due — not for the introduction, not for the viewings, not for the work in between. There is no registration fee, no retainer, and no charge for walking away.

On completion, the buyer's two percent is paid as part of the purchase price, because it is already inside it; the seller's two percent is deducted from the same sale. Neither side pays anything before that point, and neither side pays the other's share.

The operative phrase is "arising from an introduction we made". If we introduce you to a property and you go on to buy that property, our fee is due — whether the contract is signed through us, directly with the owner, or through someone brought in later. That is not a trap. It is the rule that makes an agency possible at all: without it, the agency does the work, the parties meet, the agency is bypassed and the commission is lost. We would rather state the rule plainly now than find we disagree about it after a sale. The fee terms you accept before details are released set this out in full, including the period over which it runs.

We are not suggesting you should never work with one. In many parts of the country a samsar will know about properties that no agency has, and for some transactions that local knowledge is worth more than a formal process.

What we would say is this. Whoever you work with, ask two questions before you view anything. First: what is your fee, in writing — and what does the quoted price already include, and what will be added to it later? Second: are you also being paid by the other side? Neither question costs anything to ask, and between them they prevent most of the disputes we hear about.

This article is general information and is not legal advice. What governs your position is the fee terms you accept before details are released and the contract you sign. Where your circumstances raise a question this article does not answer, speak to a qualified lawyer about your own situation.