Choose The Right Agent!
As a seller, it's
important to choose the right agent, remember, they represent you and
only you.
Use these questions to interview several agents before you make a
choice.
- Are you a full time Agent?
- How long have you been in the Real Estate business?
- Is your license in good standing (see DRE.ORG there
is a license
check )
- Are you an MLS (Multiple Listing Service) Member?
- How familiar are you with the area where our home is
located?
- How many homes did you sell in this area in the last
year?
- Can you supply 3 names and addresses of recent
clients for whom you sold a home that we can contact for reference
purposes?
- How did you arrive at the suggested listing price for
our home?
- What is your
specific marketing plan for our house?
- How do you plan on keeping us informed of the
progress of the sale of our home?
Considering discount or "less-than-full"
service?
Unless
you have a lot of Real Estate
experience and time, you'll usually lose much more than you'll
gain. If
you are considering a discount realtor or FSBO (For Sale by Owner) ask
yourself
if you have the time available to do all of the following things in
order to market
your house properly:
- Research
selling prices of comparable homes in my area over the previous 3-6
months.
- Staging,
and determining how to prepare my house with minimum resources for max
return (e.g. painting, landscaping...)
- Decide
in which local newspapers and other print publications to
advertise my house, and work up a good ad and color photos for
each, and follow up on each publication date that I submitted and paid
for
- Ditto
for on-line publications, web sites and search engines.
- Qualifying.
Can I screen people who might respond to my ads, or come knock at my
door. If the ForSale sign in front of a home is a broker's sign, people
will call the broker; otherwise even if it says "by appointment only",
they will ring the doorbell at any time of the day or night.
- Usually
when a broker makes an appointment to bring someone over, they are
either on time or if they're going to be more than 15 mins late, the
seller gets a phone call. With "Mr & Mrs Bargainhunter" who called
on your ad, you could have been sitting around for 2 hours wondering if
they are still going to show up or whether they either changed their
mind when they made the appointment.
- Do
I have the time available to risk waiting on no-shows and "looky-loos".
People usually don't bother wasting a Professional Realtor's time for
the same thing.
- Offers,
negotiating, counteroffering.
- Can I handle contingencies,
disclosures, inspections, all part of the closing process.
Rarely, after an offer is accepted, things go smooth as silk to
closing. It can be an excruciating time.
- Think
about it. The maximum price you get will be determined by level
exposure of to qualified buyers. Offering less than 3% to
Realtors means less exposure.
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