Questions for a Realtor

Questions for a Realtor

Our contract has come to an end with our current realtor and before hiring another realtor we decided we needed to do a little more research. We wanted to come up with a list of questions for a realtor. The realtor we had used previously had been dealing with too many personal issues to do a good job for us. We live in a small town so we heard about it all over the course of the year! Before choosing our next realtor we wanted to come up with a list of questions to ask so that we could insure that whoever we hired would do a good job selling our home.

Here are the 10 questions we came up with.

1. Experience: Length of time the agent has been working in residential real estate. We will ask about the number of homes they’ve sold in the last year and whether they specialize in buyers or sellers. Our agent should have enough sales under their belts to handle everything from the listing to the closing. You can even ask for references.
2. Process: How will they help us? What marketing systems and approaches will they use to sell our home?
3. Marketing: How will the agent plan to market our home? We are in a unique situation and more than likely the person that buys our home will be buying it as a second home. We need to know how the agent will market our home to the greatest number of potential buyers.
4. Communication: We want to hear from our agent on a regular basis. How will they communicate, by email or phone? We want to know what’s going on in the market, what other homes are selling and how our home compares.
5. Representation: Will the agent work with both buyers and sellers? Sometimes the agent will have someone else in the office represent the buyer sometimes they handle both. What’s most important is that our agent is able to walk us through their protocol for such a scenario before an actual offer.
6. Price Range: What is a reasonable price to list our house? Does the agent have experience working with people that are looking for homes in our price range? Can he see our property through a buyer’s eyes?
7. Home Loans: Does the agent have a solid grasp of home financing because often loan issues can make or break a deal?
8. Costs: What is the agent’s commission? Is he or she willing to negotiate? They may not budge, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Also ask about their cancellation policy. What happens if we find someone to buy our home? Do we still have to pay the realtor the full commission?
9. Stats: Comparative Market Analysis -What other houses are on the market in your price range? How long have they been on the market? What properties have sold in the last year?
10. Personality/Philosophy: Do our personalities mesh? Do we want to work with someone who is known as a real shark or do we want to work with someone who is more nurturing?

Rather than hiring a realtor based on our gut feeling we want to be more prepared this time around so that our house will sell and we can make our move! Selling a home is a big transaction and we want to choose the realtor that will do the best job for us. By having a list of questions for a realtor we should be better prepared this time around.