Choosing Your Agent -You’ll get what you pay for!

So how do you find a good, competent agent? (if you don’t already have one, that is). Even if you have an agent in mind, do yourself a favor and interview a total of 3, more if you have the stomach for it. Referrals from friends & co-workers are a great resource. Your company may even have some internal resources, like a referral directory or something similar. Utilize these & learn from the good (or bad) experiences of others. Also see which agents are most active in your neighborhood. These folks have a local expertise than can be a real advantage.
Look at the agent’s current & past (sold) listings. How do/did they look? How long have they been on the market? What did they sell for in comparison to the original asking price? You want an agent that prices their listings correctly the first time, so the home sells in a reasonable amount of time for as close to full price as possible. Don’t hire an agent that will price the home higher than the recent comparable sales say it should be, even if you demand them to. Some agents will surely take your listing, but will then beat you up week after week to drop the price so it has a chance of selling before it becomes totally “stale” on the market and buyers (and buyer’s agents) lose interest in seeing it. If your home becomes “stale”, it may not sell, or will sell for far less than its true market value. Often, sellers will want to “test” the market at a higher price, thinking the buyers will still be there when they finally drop it to the real market price. Resist this temptation! It will ultimately cost you much more in the end. Hire a professional agent that will stand their ground with you, or at most, will only let you “test” your price for a few weeks at the most. These are the people that are performing and doing the most business in this market. They will closely monitor the web traffic, showings & agent feedback during this time. The results nearly always show that an over-priced home suffers. A professional agent will insist that you price the home correctly if this is the case.
In today’s market, there are a few key things that are just plain critical in your agent; For one, they must use a professional photographer (or at least be willing to) for your home’s photos. Everyone surfs online for houses now and the photos tell the story of your home. You want appropriately lit, clear, wide-angle photography that will showcase your home’s best features & space. A professional will have an “eye” for how to shoot your specific house properly. How many times have you been looking online at houses and been turned off purely by the quality of the pictures? Either they were too dark, too bright, out of focus, or just didn’t make sense? I can’t tell you how many pictures of bathrooms, for example, I’ve seen that had an open toilet as the focal point of the shot. Why??? What does this picture add to the “story” of your home? (in this case, I don’t think I want to know!) Or, another is a photo of a living room with a television still turned on. Really?? Are you kidding me? The best of the worst for me are empty houses where all you see are the corners of a room, or homes that are so cluttered that you can’t see the house for all of the “stuff” that’s jammed in there. These sure make me want to jump in the car and look at them! (that’s sarcasm) A professional photographer, working with a competent Realtor, will help to be sure that the pictures don’t make your home look cluttered. Clutter is a killer!
Next, what is the agent’s plan to market your home? Where will it be exposed? For how long? What kind of an internet presence will the listing have? Don’t sweat the print ads or whether or not it’s going to be in the newspaper or “Homes & Land Magazine”. Few buyers read newspaper ads for homes anymore and fewer yet call on those magazine ads. Why would they, when they can get so much more from the internet? You want an agent that will give your home a massive amount of internet exposure, not only locally, but on a national scale, too. They should use services that provide “syndication” of your listing to multiple real estate search engines & websites. Just posting your listing on their own website & placing a Craigslist ad won’t do. So many buyers of our listings are relocating here now, or have done so just recently. National exposure gets your listing in front of these buyers before they have left their home state (or country). It’s a must. On this note, many Realtors & real estate brokers will tell you that they advertise their listings on Realtor.com (the most heavily trafficked real estate website in the nation); This is good, but be sure you look at their listings on this website. 99% of brokers & agents will have a very limited ad with just a single photo (or none at all!) of the exterior of your home, a few stats and the brokerage’s contact information. You want to choose an agent that has “enhanced” listings on Realtor.com. Enhanced listings will have all of the home’s photos, a virtual tour with even more pictures, a full description of the listing and the complete contact information for the listing agent(s). These listings get much more traffic than the basic ones do. You may end up with a buyer for your home that saw it there first and put it on their short list to see while visiting town on a home-finding tour before their official relocation takes place. You want these buyers! These buyers are highly motivated and have little time to see homes (so they only look at those they could do the most research on). Be sure that yours gets on a buyers short-list by having an enhanced listing.
Communication & feedback (or a lack thereof) are crucial to your success or failure when selling your home. The agent you choose should have a system and a schedule for communicating regularly with you and for providing you with feedback from agents that preview & show your home, as well as what their potential buyers thought about it. The best type of feedback would be the kind that provides you with an un-filtered e-mail describing the price, condition & presentation of your home. I would much rather have you get a frank piece of feedback about something we can change in the house that will make a difference than unknowingly allow that condition to continue, turning off buyer after buyer. Food & pet odors are frequent complaints. Of course, your agent should remark about this type of issue on their first visit to your home, if the problem exists at that time. Many pet owners don’t realize that Fido leaves a distinct smell behind. They are used to it and don’t notice it. Buyers will. And, many people won’t buy a home that smells like a wet dog or a dirty litter box. You want this feedback so the problem can be fixed right away!
Lastly, we circle back to the subtitle of this piece – “You Get What You Pay For”. In this extremely competitive real estate environment, and with sales volumes down by more than 40% in our region, there is a glut of agents desperate for business. Most of these desperate agents will either be new to the business, “site” agents that are used to selling new home plats (that no longer have new plats to sell) or older agents that haven’t kept up with the times and don’t understand how to operate in our new, technology-driven marketplace. Just about all of the above will be lacking the qualities I have described so far in a highly successful, professional Realtor. This will be obvious as you interview them. As a result, since they can’t justify their value, they do the one thing they think will get them the business – they drastically cut their commission. Hey, we all want to save a buck. There’s nothing wrong with that. But, although it may be tempting to sign with the biggest discounting agent, take a moment to reflect on why they are willing to do this. If they are willing to work for peanuts, you should seriously question their ability to perform for you. If they were a big success, they wouldn’t be so willing to throw their money away – they would pass up a seller wanting a big discount and move on to the next that didn’t. And if they are willing to throw their own money away so easily, how willing do you think they are going to be to fight tooth and nail for your money? If they are heavily discounting their commission, they aren’t going to have the budget it takes to properly market your home for very long, if at all. You WILL get what you pay for. To put it another way, let’s say you needed brain surgery. Which doctor would you choose – the one offering her services for $199 or the professional that expects to be paid accordingly for their skill & value they bring. I’ll take the skilled brain surgeon, thank you very much!
Commissions can certainly be negotiated, however. Especially if you are selling your home and buying a new one with the same agent. There’s always some room to give a loyal, repeat client a break when there are two transactions involved. Just be sure that if the commission will be discounted, that the discount only be taken on the listing side – the commission offered to the buyer’s agent should always be higher, like 3%, which is typical in our area. With so many homes to choose from, you want to attract as many buyer’s agents to your listing as possible. A full commission for the buyers agent will do this.
Happy Selling!
Tim