Many websites will tout that they’ll find you the best agent (like localagentfinder and openagent and dozens of other comparison websites) and what they do is gather statistics for you. Most of these statistics are publicly available to you if you do a bit of searching around so the fact that these sites gather all the information into one place is helpful. Despite these statistics, hiring a real estate agent is a combination of performance and personality.
When you begin the journey of hiring a real estate agent you need to consider that your agent will most often be the go-to person for every step of the selling process, after all they’ve been through this process many times before. This means that you’ll speak with them about:
When you consider that a property sale is one of the biggest financial transactions you may go through and that you’ll want to be kept informed at every step of the process, the most important thing is that you can reach and speak with the agent and that you both get along.
You’ll want to always be able to reach your agent, get their professional opinion and be able to communicate openly and honestly to achieve your goal.
Hiring a real estate agent is like hiring any other contractor, you need to
An agent who has been very active in the last 6 months will have the best idea of market values and the level of interest from buyers as well as what types of properties they are looking for. They’ll be in regular contact with other agents from their real estate agency office as well as agents from other agencies so they’ll have a very good understanding of what is going on in the local area.
The hard work for a real estate agent begins when the marketing campaign begins. They will start showing the property and speak with potential buyers about the property the area and the price (and other properties that are available to the buyer). This means that they’ll have to:
Knowing that this is where the hard work will be you should ask them questions about how they’ll manage this part of the process for you – you may even want to go to some open homes they are showing to get an idea of how they operate.
The point that is often missed by naive buyers or by bad real estate agents is that when a real estate agent is engaged by a
party, the real estate agent enters into a fiduciary relationship with that party (the principal). As part of the fiduciary relationship, the real estate agent must act in good faith and in the best interests of its principal. This is the guiding legal rule of all principal and agent relationships.
A real estate sales agent acts for YOU, the seller, so every decision they make, even thing they say and everything they do should be aimed at helping you achieve your goals. If the agent says something negative about the property or you, the vendor, they are undermining the success of the campaign and putting of potential buyers.
Subscribe for FREE in-depth interviews and education guides