Selling a home is always a stressful endeavour. There is just so much at stake, including your own emotional health. Your real estate agent has access to information that can help make your ride on the property market a lot smoother.
Here are the five essential questions that you MUST ask your real estate agent before signing ANYTHING.
Real Estate Agent Questions: How Will You Market My Property?
This is a seemingly straight-forward question that will actually reveal a lot about your agent. If the response to this question is newspapers, signboards and real estate websites then you know you’ve come across a dinosaur. These are outdated ways of appealing to prospective purchasers.
You need to fix your attention on a real estate agent who is more savvy when it comes to digital marketing and remarketing of properties. They should have a lot more to talk about than the three examples listed above.
Why is your commission (higher/lower) than your competitor?
You have a right to know why and this is definitely a question you owe it to yourself to ask. If the commission is low, you MIGHT get a bargain or you MIGHT get CHEAP service to match. Real estate agents can often be a case of ‘you get what you pay for’ and you don’t want to end up short-changing yourself.
What’s your real estate agency’s average time on the market?
Some homes sit vacant on the market for weeks that turn into months. Cobwebs gather and the price that the owners pay for continual advertisement grows higher and higher.
You need to know what the average turnaround time is. You also need to know exactly HOW your real estate agent proposes to move your home as quickly as possible.
Real Estate Agent Questions: Check The Figures
If you are presented with any figures, particularly listing prices, it is absolutely within your rights to question how they came to that number. Ask to see the numbers on everything and demand that you be walked through any decision making. Any good agent will be able to back up their pitch and may even use real estate specific apps to manage the sale of a property that can show you their performance in “real time”.
Who is my buyer and as my agent, how will you serve them?
Real estate agents make their bread and butter by knowing the market. You can talk to them about the typical person/couple/family likely to traipse through an open home. What are these people looking for? How can your property appeal to them?
Expert Tip: Real estate agents, sellers and stylists make one big mistake, they prepare each property to be “on trend” instead of creating a look and feel that will appeal the right buyers. You can have all the Hamptons or Coastal design you like but if your buyers don’t like it, it will hinder the sale of the property.
Based on this information you may want to engage the efforts of a property stylist who will help buyers make a personal connection with your home.
