Hiring the perfect realtor takes a whole lot of stress off of you. If you’re selling your house, keep reading for seven tips for finding the perfect realtor.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past year or two, you know the housing market has been hot pretty much everywhere in the country. You also probably know that it’s starting to cool down in 2019.
Despite the hot housing market, you still need a good realtor to sell your home. The perfect realtor knows the market you’re in, how to price your home, how to market it, and what it’s worth compared to other homes. Don’t just assume a hot market means you’ll sell right away.
A good realtor can mean the difference between selling in a week or selling in a day. And while that might not seem like a big deal, when you think of one day’s worth of showing versus a week of keeping your house clean, shuttling your kids and pets around while strangers walk through your home, and managing the stress of wondering when or if you’ll sell, you’ll appreciate that quick sale.
If you’re in search of a perfect realtor, you’re in the right place. Keep reading for 7 tips to help you find the agent who’s going to sell your house and minimize your stress.
1. Get Referrals
Get referrals from your friends, family, people at work, strangers you meet at open houses, anyone who has a realtor that they love. We read reviews incessantly for just about everything we buy and every service we seek. Finding the perfect realtor should be no different.
You might even talk to their past clients, even if you don’t know them. Do your homework to make sure you’re choosing the best realtor for you and your home.
2. Check Their Credentials
There are different certifications and designations that realtors can get, including:
• ABR (Accredited Buyer’s Representative)
• CRS (Certified Residential Specialist)
• SRS (Seller Representative Specialist)
• Short Sale and Foreclosure Resource (SFR)
Make sure you check these out and choose a realtor who has credentials that meet your needs.
3. Look at Their Past Sales
If you need to find a realtor to sell a house, you want to look at what types of houses they’ve sold before, how quick they sold, and how close to the listing price they sold before.
If you’re selling a million dollar plus home, you probably don’t want a realtor who has only sold homes under $250,000. They simply may not have the experience marketing and pricing a home like yours.
4. Look at Their Current Listings
Look at the potential agent’s current listings. You can find these in online real estate databases or on the agent’s website. See how they are presented. Are the photos attractive and professional? Is the home staged appropriately? Is the write-up professional, free of errors, and enticing?
If their current listings aren’t presented well, it’s a safe bet that yours will look the same. You should also look at what type of homes they are and where they are located. Are they in a similar style and price range to yours? In the general area where yours is located?
This goes back to the discussion of past sales above. If they’ve never sold a home like yours before or have never sold in your neighborhood or geographical area, there may be a better option out there for you.
5. Go With Your Gut
Sometimes you need to ignore your brain and go with your gut. If you meet with several realtors and there’s one that seems like the logical choice if you listen to your brain but one you just know in your gut is right for you, go with your gut. It rarely steers us wrong.
Sometimes an extremely professional and experienced agent can seem like the logical choice, but you may not click with them. Another agent may be less experienced but you really like them and feel comfortable with them. That’s going to be your better choice.
6. Find An Agent Who You Can Trust
Don’t contract with an agent who blows smoke up your you know what. Hire an agent who will tell you the truth about your home, the repairs it needs, its value, and whether you should accept an offer or not.
Your realtor should be looking out for your best interests, not his or her bottom line. If you don’t feel like you can trust a realtor to do what’s best for you, it’s time to move on.
7. Assess Their Communication
Once you’ve narrowed down your potential realtors to a short list, send them an email, give them a call, or send them a text during business hours and see how long it takes to respond. Ideally, a good realtor will get back to you that same day. Essentially this is a test to see how accessible they are to you.
We’re not saying that they need to be available 24/7, but the home buying process moves quickly and doesn’t always happen between 9-5. Weekends, evenings, and even holidays are fair game for real estate transactions.
If your realtor is MIA or takes days to get back to you, you could lose your dream home, have a potential buyer walk away from the deal, or have your closing delayed.
If you don’t hear back from them within a few hours, it’s safe to say they should be eliminated from consideration.
Final Thoughts on Finding the Perfect Realtor
Finding the perfect realtor can seem overwhelming, but these tips should get you on the right track. Don’t do this in haste, as you want to make sure you take the time to really do your research and pick someone right for you.
A good realtor can make all the difference in the home selling process. For more resources on home selling, moving, and life in general, explore some of the other areas of our blog.
