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1. How long have you been licensed and working full-time?
Are you full-time, or do you have a primary day job?
Are you a salesperson, provisional broker (that is an NC thing), or broker?
Generally, a full-time experienced agent is the only logical choice. You are getting into this to sell your house, not to support a newbie in their dream.
2. How many sales have you closed, representing buyers? Representing sellers?
Anything over 20 in the last couple of years indicates reasonable current experience.
20 closings in 20 years of licensing? Walk away.....
3. What were the appraised values vs. contract price for your closed sales over the last 6 months or year?
You won't know the appraisal price for selling your house unless there is an issue or someone on the other side fumbles.
But, ask about their performance on the buy side. It reflects their skills in dealing. Appraisal value is MUCH more interesting than list price vs. sales price. The appraisal:sales price comparison considers agent performance to disinterested and professional third party opinions.
4. Will you give me a sample contract, a sample listing agency agreement, a printed or PDF CMA, a Net Proceeds guesstimate sheet, and other sample docs to study before asking me to sign anything beyond a mandated agency disclosure?
Should all be an easy "Yes," and better yet, with the possible exception of a detailed CMA, should be in their hand if you are meeting face to face after any significant prior notice.
5. Do I have to allow dual agency, designated agency, or any other form of compromise on my fiduciary representation and advocacy to work with you or your firm?
"No," is a very good answer, and particularly for a first time seller. You want full advocacy.
6. Are you my point of contact and available throughout the listing and transaction? Or, are you just involved in securing the listing, and then I am turned over to a staff and a "team?"
"A team? When will I meet the people who I will be working with?"
I.e., some agents lose sight of client service.
While many teams function well, they can also be outsourced/virtual assistants, or transient workers. Lots of turnover.
How long have your team members been with you?
7. How will we all communicate?
This is a key point.
Phone, text, fax, email, US Mail, snapchat, FB Messenger, whatever.... You all need to be on the same wavelength.
Does the agent use electronic signatures? Does the agent only use electronic signatures? Do YOU want to use electronic signatures?
And there is merit to saving all communications.
8. Can you afford to be in business?
Have you ever taken a loan advance on a commission? Pressure to pay that off is an inducement to close the sale, and could compromise the client.
Are all your dues current?
All office expenses current?
And, NO client, buyer or seller should ever hear about the agent's cost of doing business. If an agent tells you this is an expensive business to be in, thank them. Then find someone with a grip on expenses, and a bit more worldly insight into business.
Now, a good agent may tell you that your marketing dollar is better spent in one area than another, for better return on the time and dollar investment, but you should NEVER hear that "This is a really expensive business."
9. I'm serious here:
Ask the agent about their favorite listing success, and to tell you about a listing failure.
(If they've never failed, they just got their license over the weekend. "Next!")
This is a "Trust your gut" question to get them off their scripted pitch, and the agent should enjoy telling you a story or two.
Also:
You should be looking at the agents' listing histories, to see write-ups, marketing, MLS input, photos and virtual tours, because that is how YOUR property will be presented.
Separate your pride from the fact that marketing is for bring sales, not for stroking your ego.
Zillow....
Let's just say, we start with the same cow....
If I make you a hamburger, it will be lovingly crafted, juicy, meaty, and fresh and hot off the grill. (Man, my mouth is watering now.)
Zillow?
"Do you want fries with that?"
Last edited by MikeJaquish; 01-19-2017 at 07:53 AM..
Thank you, everybody!! This whole thing is really overwhelming (and, truth be told, depressing). Having some guidance really helps. xx
I find making a list helps.
1) Start interviewing real estate agents. We don't sign the listing until we are closer to putting our home on the market. But once we decide on one, we communicate with her/him until we are ready to sign. This is a good time to find out if what they have to offer is going to be worth $18K+.
2) Hire a home inspector to give us a detailed summary of what needs to be fixed, what problems we can expect with with a buyer's home inspection.
3) Go around and make lists of what we plan to fix, paint, plant...
4) Decide what work we plan to do ourselves and what will will hire out. This is when I start gathering names of reliable contractors, house cleaners, and smart stagers from neighbors, agents, online community bulletin boards...
5) Hire contractors and start doing the repairs that need to be done. Get going on the repairs we plan to do ourselves.
6) Rent a storage unit and start filling it with items we want to to keep but don't need to be in the house when it is "on the market." Family portraits and photos, clothes we want to keep but don't plan to wear the next few months, tea pot collection, paperwork...
7) Haul off stuff we no longer want. I don't do yard sales. It's a ton of work and I already have plenty to do. Plus, Plus, experience has been that I only make about enough to take us all out to dinner and in the great scheme, it's not worth the effort. Salvation Army does a much better job of recycling than we do. They will even take all the canned tomatoes and
Baskets are a good way to organize and store things in closets and on shelves. Looks snappy and makes it easier to move around when the painting happens.
8) Hire a stager to come through and consult on paint colors, what furniture to keep and how to arrange things, how to up our curb appeal. This is money well spent. Any furniture she/he says to get rid of, I either take to our storage unit or haul off a consignment shop or Salvation Army. Look on CL for items she recommends such as an entryway table or ???
9) Hire painters. Good painters will spend a good half the time on prep work. We've tried to do our own painting from time to time, but with all the sorting and shifting things around, planting, pruning, and spreading mulch, cleaning and finishing up the repairs... we've got plenty on our plate and professional painters do a much nicer and faster job.
10) Put everything back in place and hire a house cleaner to come through and do a deep cleaning, get the places in the back of cupboards, around the tubs... Have the stager come back for a final consultation and get it model-home ready. Make arrangements for our pets to stay somewhere else for the first two weeks our home is on the market.
11) Review the comps. Decide with our agent on a fair listing price and sign the listing contract. Get the house ready for the photographer to come through and take photos for the MLS listing. With everyone shopping online, having an agent who uses a professional photographer is a plus.
12) Drop our pets off (showing the house with the pets underfoot is possible, but a lot more work and pet signs turn off some buyers), have the housecleaners come through one final time, have the first open house.
Live for the next few weeks as if our home is a hotel. Keep everything spiffy and in place and be ready to load the dishwasher and shove dirty clothes in the washer at a moment's notice. Even when we had three little kids, I could get the house ready to show and be out the door in twenty minutes.
See, only a dozen steps.
My husband was in the military and we moved every few years. We've found that the more time we invest up front, the less time our home is on the market, the less negotiating we need to do, and the more money we make.
1) Start interviewing real estate agents. We don't sign the listing until we are closer to putting our home on the market. But once we decide on one, we communicate with her/him until we are ready to sign. This is a good time to find out if what they have to offer is going to be worth $18K+.
2) Hire a home inspector to give us a detailed summary of what needs to be fixed, what problems we can expect with with a buyer's home inspection.
3) Go around and make lists of what we plan to fix, paint, plant...
4) Decide what work we plan to do ourselves and what will will hire out. This is when I start gathering names of reliable contractors, house cleaners, and smart stagers from neighbors, agents, online community bulletin boards...
5) Hire contractors and start doing the repairs that need to be done. Get going on the repairs we plan to do ourselves.
6) Rent a storage unit and start filling it with items we want to to keep but don't need to be in the house when it is "on the market." Family portraits and photos, clothes we want to keep but don't plan to wear the next few months, tea pot collection, paperwork...
7) Haul off stuff we no longer want. I don't do yard sales. It's a ton of work and I already have plenty to do. Plus, Plus, experience has been that I only make about enough to take us all out to dinner and in the great scheme, it's not worth the effort. Salvation Army does a much better job of recycling than we do. They will even take all the canned tomatoes and
Baskets are a good way to organize and store things in closets and on shelves. Looks snappy and makes it easier to move around when the painting happens.
8) Hire a stager to come through and consult on paint colors, what furniture to keep and how to arrange things, how to up our curb appeal. This is money well spent. Any furniture she/he says to get rid of, I either take to our storage unit or haul off a consignment shop or Salvation Army. Look on CL for items she recommends such as an entryway table or ???
9) Hire painters. Good painters will spend a good half the time on prep work. We've tried to do our own painting from time to time, but with all the sorting and shifting things around, planting, pruning, and spreading mulch, cleaning and finishing up the repairs... we've got plenty on our plate and professional painters do a much nicer and faster job.
10) Put everything back in place and hire a house cleaner to come through and do a deep cleaning, get the places in the back of cupboards, around the tubs... Have the stager come back for a final consultation and get it model-home ready. Make arrangements for our pets to stay somewhere else for the first two weeks our home is on the market.
11) Review the comps. Decide with our agent on a fair listing price and sign the listing contract. Get the house ready for the photographer to come through and take photos for the MLS listing. With everyone shopping online, having an agent who uses a professional photographer is a plus.
12) Drop our pets off (showing the house with the pets underfoot is possible, but a lot more work and pet signs turn off some buyers), have the housecleaners come through one final time, have the first open house.
Live for the next few weeks as if our home is a hotel. Keep everything spiffy and in place and be ready to load the dishwasher and shove dirty clothes in the washer at a moment's notice. Even when we had three little kids, I could get the house ready to show and be out the door in twenty minutes.
See, only a dozen steps.
My husband was in the military and we moved every few years. We've found that the more time we invest up front, the less time our home is on the market, the less negotiating we need to do, and the more money we make.
Good luck.
You are a dream come true for a Realtor, I hope they appreciate your hard work! Great advice!
Some solid advice above. My experience says with the typical 6% realtor fees the bottom line selling cost will be about 8-9% thus on $160K, $13K to $14.5K and that is off the top of the $160K.
My experience says with the typical 6% realtor fees the bottom line selling cost will be about 8-9% thus on $160K, $13K to $14.5K and that is off the top of the $160K.
Thank you. It's nice to see some solid figures. I have a feeling he's going high (and low) with his estimates so we don't find at the end that we've gotten ourselves into a financial pickle. While I appreciate his integrity (he has a reputation as a nice guy), in some ways he's just scaring us off. We don't *have* to move. We'd like to get out of the area as we really only moved here so my husband could get some experience under his belt in his current field. We don't have a lot of ties here, and, although we like the area for the most part, we'd really like to be closer to extended family. It feels irresponsible to spend upwards of $40,000 when we could stick around a few more years, get some additional equity under our belt, and (hopefully) move without having to buy our way out. It's hard to know what to do.
Thank you! Just curious as to why the Zillow estimate is no good. Wouldn't they be using the same stats the real estate agents use? They can't *always* be off, can they?
No. In our state, sales prices (what houses actually ended up selling for) are not public record, so the folks at Zillow have no access to that information. Realtors do. So Zillow can be wildly inaccurate.
Interview at least 3 Realtors. They should each do listing presentations, show you comps (similar houses in the same area) and the prices they actually sold for, how long they were on the market, etc. They should be able to give you a good estimate on the listing price of your house.
Try to get recommendations for Realtors from friends, co-workers, etc. People they actually worked with, not just a co-worker whose friend sells real estate. I've found that for every good Realtor out there, there are 5 who are completely useless. You need to find one of the good ones.
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