Hello guys, today we share about questions to ask real estate agents so that you can help find the right agent for you whether you’re looking at selling or buying a home being that today’s article is about home selling we’re gonna be specifically during these ten questions towards a listing agent and questions that you should be asking them.
Can I See Your References
You want to make sure that you’re working with a reputable agent so you want to know whether what kind of reviews these people have what kind of ratings that they have you can easily Google the agent if you find an agent or if you get called by an agent and you’re like hey you know I kind of like that guy or gal we should give them a shot then go ahead and get their information Google them ahead of time before you meet with them and ask them if they have any references they can also put you in touch with if you want to actually talk to any of their past clients but by googling them at least you’ll see what kind of online presence they have which abode well for also a marketing experience that they have and we’ll cover that point in a download line here in a moment but you can get an idea of what real families are saying by their their client testimonials and their ratings and reviews online.
Take a look at that this is too big to get anything wrong that’s too important to you I mean you’re getting rid of sell your home as many of our biggest asset don’t get it wrong.
Can I Have A Cma For This Area
you might be wondering what the heck is a CMA well CMA is an acronym for (comparative market analysis) and a comparative market analysis is actually a report of what are the current listings available in your neighborhood.
What are the current homes that are under contract in your neighborhood and what does it what are the homes that are closing within the last three to six months in your community most appraisers take a lot of stock in the most sent three months of homes that are closing your neighborhoods so those would be the ones that you should focus on the most to know what’s most liking kind a comparative market analysis is just like it sounds it is a report that consists of likee kind homes to your so if you have a single-story home all other homes of that report should be single-story.
If you have a pool than ideally all the other homes have a pool too if not then some adjustments need to be made either direction depending on what you have and keeping it within a concentric amount of square foot. So if you have let’s say a 3,000 square foot home you probably wouldn’t want to go below 2,800 square feet on that comparable range and no greater than 3,200 square feet in that comfortable range and then do a average price per square foot break down at that point and then adding back any type of features and benefits or making any subtractions based upon what homes are selling and what your home has or does not have.
Your professional listing agent your professional real estate advisor will assist you with that ask them for a full on comparative market analysis report.
Is This Area Growing Or Is It Slowing
You would want to know what the kind of trends that we’re looking at so that whenever you get ready to put your home on the market you know reasonably how many days on market you could expect to be on market on average and what kind of circumstances you may be looking at as pricing if the area is growing then and you price it right price about fair market value then you probably gonna sell pretty good.
If you have a good if your house is ready to sell you’ve staged your home you cleaned it you follow the advice of your real estate agent and probably go a long ways to helping you out with that now at the area’s declining you might have to undercut your own price to be able to sell it even if it fair market value today is $400,000 on that home but it looks like in three months or so it’s trending down and it might drop by two percent you might be better just pricing it out three ninety to get ahead of that curve so you’re not chasing the market and taking longer and longer to sell and ultimately for less money than you could have got by pricing it right out of the gate.
Do You Work Solo Or As Part Of A Team
The benefits of a team are that we have continuity of service seven days a week for the clients that we represent and even though each agent has a family has people that they’re working with we the the families all have peace of mind of knowing that they all have access to me at anytime and they also have the peace of mind of knowing that if one of the agents get sick or if when the agents aren’t available then we have other agents including myself that will gladly step in and help them and help them get the services that they need that they deserve answer the questions that they have so that there’s not anything missed in their consumer experience and buying or selling a home it’s crucially important.
So working solo sometimes a little bit more difficult might need a little bit more patience some so we’ll ages pull this off marvelously at the same time all agents at some point in time going to need some downtime so they can stay fresh and they could stay and vigor rated and representing your best interests at all times so being part of a team you go into full coverages it’s just about what circumstances best for you and understanding that affront understanding who’s going to be handling the process and understanding what the team is doing to help you.
How Many Clients Are You Currently Representing
This is another really important question to ask because if a real estate agent especially of their sole agent is representing an absorbent amount of people and give you an example of what is an absorbent amount of people for a real estate agent to realistically work if they said hey right now I’m carrying like 40 listings and I have 15 buying clients that’s a total of 55 people that they’re working through the real estate process if that’s the case then you may be getting a sliver of that agents time here and there and everywhere.
Now different agents have different systems employed some of them some agents are extremely efficient and have systems that padded down a proven process and communication patterns down like down to a teen and find science.
Like on our team we got everything just dialed in to help people and we keep track of everything and we’re able to pivot and move and keeping track of everything that’s going on and know exactly where we are in the process when update how the update which goes into a later point as well whenever you talking about updates and getting in staying inform some people prefer email updates some people refer text conversations some people prefer us to descend our cat updates some people prefer us to just pick up the phone and call some people want to meet in person all five of those methods are great.
All five of those methods are fine it just depends on what you the client what and how comfortable you are with that now if you have a if you have an agent whether they’re solo a team and they’re not working or that many agents are excuse me working with that many clients maybe they only closed five or six homes in the last 12 months cycle that could indicate a performance issue or it could indicate a personal standard that that agent has where that’s just what they’re comfortable doing and just for reference the National Association of Realtors or an acronym in AR for short report that the average real estate agent under five years will help something like three point seven families of Europe .
I don’t know where the point seven comes from but it’s their math the average agent over five years in the business will normally help somewhere around ten to twelve families on an annual basis so keep that in mind as you go forward you really want agents that are helping at least twelve or more families a year that way you make sure that you’re getting an agent that’s in constant motion with the process just something to consider something to think about.
How Will You Mark My Home
Get a marketing a plan of action from that real estate agent that you’re meeting with ask them specifically you know what’s the digital marketing that you’re looking at what’s the physical mark and you’re looking at are you going to call the neighborhood are you looking at wanting to do open houses what type of social media presence do you use how does it go out on the website.
How’s it going across the Internet what about broker open houses ask what their process is to market your home and it should consist between what’s considered active methods of marketing compared to passive methods of marketing excuse me so whenever you’re looking at active methods those are like people calling in to your neighborhood knocking on the doors of lighting your neighbors over letting people know excuse me letting people know what’s going on with your home and that it’s available for sale so passive is more of your online lead generation activity blogging pictures putting stuff out making information available about your home across all the other major web sites and also more specific local marketing as well.
How Do Your Realtor Fees Work
You know people always want to know about real estate commissions how does that work well let’s use a fictitious example let’s say the real estate commission was 6% you’d want to know where that 6% Commission is going.
Right off the top I’ll tell you no it doesn’t all go to your listing agent it’s gonna be split in a lot of cases in this fictitious example you’d be having 3% go to the listing agent you’d have 3% going to the buyer’s agent so it’s split right in half off the begin to begin with.
You want to know who’s paying for the professional photography you absolutely want professional photography for your home you want to who’s paying for that he’s paying for the marketing whether you’re gonna be paying for it whether the agents gonna be paying for it from the Commission who’s gonna be paying for what and how and when.
What Experience Do You Have
This goes back to number 1 when we’re talking about references what experience do you have right so what experience do you have selling homes what experience do you have buying homes what kind of professional designations are certifications do you have as a real estate agent for reference as kind of a cheat sheet I’ll give you two designations you want to keep an eye out for when it comes to selling your house number one is a seller’s representative specialist designation denote it as an SRS the number.
Number two which is the biggie this is the one that you want across the board anywhere in the nation is a certified residential specialist the certified residential specialist is a group of top agents across the United States that represent the top 3% of the real estate profession so you want that agent those designations come with certain training requirements and they also come with certain performance requirements the CRS being the certified residential specialist one actually has the most stringent criteria to earn and it can take a lot of time for people to earn depending where they are in their careers.
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