Finding A Top Real Estate Agent For Today’s Market
There’s
no doubt the real estate market has seen better days. In most places of
the country, housing prices are as low or lower than they were a decade
ago. With the increasing difficulty of landing top dollar for your
home, now more than ever people need to work with a top real estate
agent to get the home sold at quickly and at a decent price.
While
most people agree that finding a top tier real estate broker is
critical, many are unsure how to go about looking for one. After all,
real estate agents at their very core are salespeople, so every one of
them will undoubtedly emphasize to you the advantages of working with
them. However, there are some ways to tell if the real estate agent you
are considering is truly a top tier realtor that is likely to get you
the results you’re seeking:
1. What trade associations is he/she a member of?
This
should be the first question asked of any prospective real estate
agent, and it’s a great way to weed out the career agents from the
part-timers who do this “real estate thing” on the weekends to earn
extra money. A real estate broker who is truly committed to his/her
career will at minimum be a member of the National Association of
Realtors. If the agent you are considering is not a member of this
organization, say to yourself “next” and move on.
2. How well do they know your neighborhood?
This
is an often overlooked and quite costly mistake many home sellers
make-not working with a real estate agent that is familiar with the
local neighborhood. This happened to me back in 2006. When we went to
list our home, we chose to use a real estate broker from the other side
of town because she was recommended by a friend and had a good track
record of sales. Problem was, she wasn’t familiar with our neighborhood
and she over-priced our home by about 10%.
As
a result, the house sat on the market for months while the overall
housing market began to fall. As prices fell, we kept cutting our
prices, but we were always behind the curve. 9 months later, the value
of our home had dropped by around 20%. Long story short-to this day, we
still own the home and rent it, because right now the market is just too
far down to sell. Had we used a real estate broker from our own
neighborhood back in 2006, we would have sold the house at a much better
price than we could get today.
3. Who are their associates?
A
good tell-tale sign of whether or not you are talking to a top real
estate agent is who their associates are. A top realtor will surround
themselves with a top-notch team of professionals from related
industries like mortgage, title, home inspector, stager, etc. If the
real estate broker you are talking to does not have a first class team
they are working with, it’s a pretty good sign they are not as serious
about selling homes as they should be.
4. What marketing methods do they use?
This
is extremely important in today’s housing market. With so many homes
and so few buyers, your real estate agent is going to need to use every
possible marketing method at his/her disposal to bring qualified traffic
through your home. Talk to them, make sure they use a good variety of
standard online and offline methods at the very least. But the real
tell-tale sign of a top realtor is one that is using not just
conventional marketing methods, but a very ‘out of the box’ methods
you’ve never heard of.